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Of the Idea of Rights in the United States - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2 [1835]

Edition used:

Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, translated from the French by James T. Schleifer. A Bilingual French-English editions, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). Vol. 2.

Part of: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Of the Idea of Rights in the United States

There are no great peoples without the idea of rights.—What is the way to give the people the idea of rights.—Respect for rights in the United States.—What gives rise to it.

After the general idea of virtue, I do not know any more beautiful than that of rights, or rather, these two ideas merge. The idea of rights is nothing more than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world.

With the idea of rights, men have defined what license and tyranny were. Enlightened by it, each person has been able to show himself independent without arrogance and submissive without servility. The man who obeys violence yields and abases himself; but when he submits to the right of command that he acknowledges in his fellow, he rises, in a way, above even the one commanding him. There are no great men without virtue; without respect for rights, there is no great people. You can almost say that there is no society; for what is a gathering of rational and intelligent beings bound together only by force?t

I wonder what way there is today to inculcate men with the idea of rights and to make it apparent to their senses, so to speak; and I only see a single one; it is to give all of them the peaceful exercise of certain rights. You see that clearly with children, who are men, except for strength and experience. When a child begins to move among external objects, instinct leads him to put everything that comes within reach to his own use; he has no idea of the property of others, not even that of existence; but as he is informed about the cost of things and as he discovers that things can, in turn, be taken from him, he becomes more circumspect and ends by respecting in his fellows what he wants them to respect in him.

What happens to the child concerning toys, happens later to the man concerning all the objects belonging to him. Why in America, country of democracy par excellence, does no one raise against property in general the complaints that often resound in Europe? Is it necessary to say? In America there are no proletarians. Each person, having an individual possession to defend, recognizes in principle the right of property.

In the political world, it is the same. In America the common man has conceived a high idea of political rights, because he has political rights; he does not attack the rights of others, so that no one violates his. And while in Europe this same man has no regard even for the sovereign authority, the American submits without murmuring to the power of the least of his magistrates.

This truth appears even in the smallest details of the existence of peoples. In France, there are few pleasures exclusively reserved for the upper classes of society; the poor man is admitted almost everywhere the rich man is able to enter. Consequently you see him conduct himself with decency and respect all that is useful for the enjoyments that he shares. In England, where wealth has the privilege of pleasure, like the monopoly of power, the complaint is that when the poor man succeeds in getting furtively into the place destined for the pleasures of the rich man, he loves to cause pointless damage. Why be astonished by this? Care has been taken so that he has nothing to lose.

The government of democracy makes the idea of political rights descend to the least of citizens, as the division of property puts the idea of the right of property in general within reach of all men. That is one of its greatest merits in my view.

I am not saying that it is an easy thing to teach all men to use political rights; I am only saying that, when it is possible, the effects that result are great.

And I add that if there is a century when such an enterprise must be attempted, that century is our own.

Don’t you see that religions are growing weaker and that the divine notion of rights is disappearing? Don’t you find that mores are becoming corrupted and that, with them, the moral notion of rights is fading away?

Don’t you see, on all sides, beliefs giving way to reasoning, and sentiments, to calculation? If, in the midst of this universal disturbance, you do not succeed in linking the idea of rights to personal interest, which offers itself as the only fixed point in the human heart, what will you have left for governing the world, if not fear?u

So when you say to me that laws are weak, and the governed, turbulent; that passions are intense, and virtue, powerless, and that in this situation you must not think about increasing the rights of democracy, I answer that, because of these very things, I believe you must think about it; and in truth, I think that governments have still more interest in it than society does, for governments perish, and society cannot die.v However, I do not want to abuse the example of America.

In America, the people were vested with political rights in a period when it was difficult for them to make poor use of those rights, because the citizens were few and had simple mores. While growing, the Americans have not increased the powers of democracy; rather they have extended its sphere. [That is an invaluable advantage.]

It cannot be doubted that the moment when political rights are granted to a people who have, until then, been deprived of them is a moment of crisis, a crisis often necessary, but always dangerous.

The child inflicts death when he is unaware of the value of life; he takes property from others before knowing that someone can rob him of his. The common man, at the moment when he is granted political rights, finds himself, in relation to his rights, in the same position as the child vis-à-vis all of nature. In this case the celebrated phrase [of Hobbes] applies to him: Homo puer robustus.w

This truth is even revealed in America. The states in which citizens have enjoyed their rights for the longest time are those in which the citizens know best how to make use of their rights.

It cannot be said too much. There is nothing more fruitful in wonders than the art of being free; but there is nothing harder than apprenticeship in liberty. It is not the same with despotism. Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the misfortunes suffered; it is the support of legitimate rights, the upholder of the oppressed, and the founder of order. Peoples fall asleep amid the temporary prosperity that it brings forth; and when they awaken, they are miserable. Liberty, in contrast, is usually born amid storms; it is established painfully in the midst of civil discord, and only when it is already old can its benefits be known.

[t. ] In the world there are two kinds of respect for rights that must not be confused; one, unthinking, arises from custom and grows stronger in ignorance. What for a long time has been powerful and strong is respected, and the right to command is judged by the fact of command. This respect for rights only guarantees the existence of the strong, not that of the weak. Where it reigns, there is tranquillity, but there is no liberty; neither prosperity nor independence is found.

Authority based on this instinctive respect for (illegible word) [v: {for rights}] is absolute as long as no one contests its right; the day it is disputed, it is reduced almost to nothing.

There is another kind of respect for rights. The latter is reciprocal and guarantees the privileges of the subject as well as those of the prince. This respect for rights was based on reason and experience. Once it reigns in society, it is very difficult to destroy it.

[In the margin: The one is a sentiment rather than an idea. The other is based on an idea rather than on a sentiment. The one is instinctive; the other is rational.]

But there are centuries when peoples, having lost the habit of respecting what they do not know, still have not learned to know what they must respect. Then peoples are tormented by a profound illness, tossing and turning without rest, like a sick man stretched out aboard ship on his unsteady sickbed; there are even some who perish during this transition [from (ed.)] custom to reason.

[In the margin: You could more easily turn a river back upon its source than make this instinctive respect for rights reappear.]

I wonder what the way is . . . (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 11-13).

[u. ] It is because I see the rights of governments disputed, that I think it necessary to hasten to give rights to those governed.

It is because I see democracy triumphing, that I want to regulate democracy.

[In the margin: If morality was strong enough by itself, I would not regard it as so important to rely on what is useful.

If the idea of what is just was more powerful, I would not speak so much about the idea of what is useful.]

You say to me that, since morality has become lax, new rights will be new items for the passions of today; that since governments are already weak, new rights will give new weapons to their enemies to use against them; that democracy is already too strong in society without further introducing it into government.

I will answer that it is because I see that morality is weak that I want to put it under the safeguard of interest; it is because I see governments impotent that I would like to accustom the governed to respecting them; it is [broken text (ed.)] (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 30).

[v. ] To the side: “≠I am not saying that political rights must be granted as of today to the universality of citizens; I am saying the unlimited extension of rights is the end toward which you must always tend.≠”

[w. ] Tocqueville cites De Cive (see the critical edition of Howard Warrender, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 33), but what precedes the citation is more similar to Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Pléiade, 1964, III, pp. 153-54), in which Rousseau, who cites the same fragment, reproaches Hobbes for not knowing that ethical values are born with society and are not a product preceding society. Tocqueville pointed out in this same part of the chapter that a society cannot survive if its only bond is force and its only government, fear; on this point, this also makes him closer to Rousseau than to Hobbes. This proximity of ideas must not hide divergences on the concept of rights, which has scarcely any place in the theory of Rousseau.