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Activity That Reigns in All Parts of the Political Body in the United States; Influence That It Exercises on Society - 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.


Activity That Reigns in All Parts of the Political Body in the United States; Influence That It Exercises on Society

It is more difficult to imagine the political activity that reigns in the United States than the liberty or equality that is found there.—The great movement that constantly agitates the legislatures is only an episode, a prolongation of this universal movement.—Difficulty that the American has occupying himself only with his own affairs.—Political agitation spreads into civil society.—Industrial activity of the Americans coming in part from this cause.—Indirect advantages that society gains from the government of democracy.

When you pass from a free country into another that is not, you are struck by a very extraordinary spectacle: there, everything is activity and movement; here, everything seems calm and immobile. In the one, the only question is improvement and progress; you would say that society, in the other, having gained all good things, aspires only to rest in order to enjoy them. The country that gets so worked up to be happy is, however, generally richer and more prosperous than the one that seems so satisfied with its lot. And in considering the one and the other, you have difficulty imagining how so many new needs make themselves felt each day in the first, while so few seem to be experienced in the second.z

If this remark is applicable to free countries that have retained monarchical form and to those in which aristocracy dominates, it is very much more applicable to democratic republics. There, it is no longer a portion of the people that sets out to improve the state of society; the whole people take charge of this concern. It is a matter of providing for the needs and conveniences not only of a class, but of all classes at the same time.a

It is not impossible to imagine the immense liberty that the Americans enjoy. You can also have an idea of their extreme equality, but what you cannot understand, without having already witnessed it, is the political activity that reigns in the United States.

Scarcely have you landed on American soil than you find yourself in the middle of a sort of tumult; a confused clamor arises on all sides; a thousand voices reach your ear at the same time; each one expresses various social needs. Around you, everything stirs: here, the people of a neighborhood have gathered to know if a church should be built; there, some are working on choosing a representative; farther along, the deputies of a district go as fast as they can to the city, in order to see to certain local improvements; in another place, it is the farmers of the village who abandon their fields to go to discuss the plan of a road or of a school. Some citizens assemble for the sole purpose of declaring that [{freemasonry menaces the security of the State}] they disapprove of the government’s course; while others gather to proclaim that the men in office are the fathers of the country. Here are still others who, seeing drunkenness as the principal source of the evils of the State, come to pledge solemnly to give an example of temperance.1

The great political movement that constantly agitates American legislatures, the only one that is noticed outside, is only an episode and a sort of prolongation of the universal movement that begins in the lowest ranks of the people and then reaches, one by one, all classes of citizens. You cannot work harder to be happy.

It is difficult to say what place political concerns occupy in the life of a man in the United States. To get involved in the government of society and to talk about it, that is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure that an American knows. This is seen even in the smallest habits of his life; women themselves often go to public assemblies and, by listening to political speeches, relax from household cares. For them, clubs replace theatrical entertainments to a certain point. An American does not know how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly; and if he happens by chance to get excited, he will say: Gentlemen, while addressing his interlocutor.

In certain countries, the inhabitant accepts only with a kind of repugnance the political rights that the law grants him; dealing with common interests seems to rob him of his time, and he loves to enclose himself within a narrow egoism exactly limited by four ditches topped by hedges.

In contrast, from the moment when the American would be reduced to attending only to his own affairs, half of his existence would be taken away from him; he would feel an immense emptiness in his days, and he would become unbelievably unhappy.2

I am persuaded that if despotism ever succeeds in becoming established in America, it will have even more difficulties overcoming the habits that liberty has engendered than surmounting the love of liberty itself.

This constantly recurring agitation that the government of democracy has introduced into the political world passes afterward into civil society. Everything considered, I do not know if that is not the greatest advantage of democratic government, and I praise it much more for what it causes to be done than for what it does.

Incontestably the people often direct public affairs very badly; but the people cannot get involved in public affairs without having the circle of their ideas expand, and without seeing their minds emerge from their ordinary routine. The common man who is called to the government of society conceives a certain esteem for himself. Since he is then a power, very enlightened minds put themselves in the service of his. People speak to him constantly in order to gain his support, and by seeking to deceive him in a thousand different ways, they enlighten him. In politics, he takes part in enterprises that he did not conceive, but that give him a general taste for enterprises. Every day new improvements to make to common property are pointed out to him, and he feels the desire to improve his personal property arise. Perhaps he is neither more virtuous nor more happy, but he is more enlightened and more active than his predecessors. I do not doubt that democratic institutions, joined with the physical nature of the country, are the cause, not direct, as so many people say, but indirect of the prodigious movement of industry that is noticed in the United States. It is not the laws that give birth to it, but the people learn to produce it by making the law.d

When the enemies of democracy claim that one man does what he undertakes better than the government of all, it seems to me that they are right. The government of one man, supposing equality of enlightenment on both sides, brings more consistency to its enterprises than that of the multitude; it shows more perseverance, more of an idea of the whole, more perfection in details, a more correct discernment in the choice of men. [{So a republic is not administered as well as a monarchy, supposing equality of enlightenment on both sides.}] Those who deny these things have never seen a democratic republic, or have judged only on a small number of examples. Democracy, even when local circumstances and the dispositions of the people allow it to persist, does not offer the sight of administrative regularity and methodical order in government; that is true. Democratic liberty does not execute each of its enterprises with the same perfection as intelligent despotism; often it abandons them before gaining the fruit, or chances dangerous ones; but in the long run it produces more than despotism; it does not do each thing as well, but it does more things. Under its dominion, it is, above all, not what the public administration executes that is great, but what is executed without it and outside of it. Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it does what the most skillful government is often impotent to create; it spreadse throughout the social body a restless activity, a superabundant force, an energy that never exists without it and that, if only circumstances are favorable, can bring forth wonders. Those are its true advantages.

In this century, when the destinies of the Christian world appear to be in suspense, some hasten to attack democracy like a powerful enemy, while it is still growing; others already adore it as a new god coming out of nothingness; but both know only imperfectly the object of their hate or their desire; they fight in the shadows and strike only at random.

What do you ask of society and its government? We must understand one another.

Do you want to give the human spirit a certain nobility, a generous fashion of envisioning the things of this world? Do you want to inspire in men a sort of contempt for material goods? Do you desire to bring about or to maintain profound convictions and prepare great devotions?

Is it a matter for you of polishing mores, of elevating manners, of making the arts shine? Do you want poetry, fame, and glory?

Do you claim to organize a people in a way to act strongly on all others? Do you intend it to attempt great undertakings, and, whatever the result of its efforts, to leave an immense trace in history?

If such, in your view, is the principal object that men must propose for themselves in society, do not opt for the government of democracy; it would not lead you surely to the goal.

But if it seems useful to you to divert the intellectual and moral activity of man toward the necessities of material life, and to use it to produce well-being; if reason appears to you more profitable to men than genius; if your object is not to create heroic virtues, but peaceful habits; if you like to see vices more than crimes, and prefer to find fewer great actions, on the condition of encountering fewer cases of heinous crimes; if, instead of acting within the bosom of a brilliant society, it is enough for you to live in the midst of a prosperous society; if, finally, in your view, the principal object of a government is not to give the entire body of the nation the most strength or the most glory possible, but to provide for each of the individuals that make up the society the most well-being and to avoid the most misery; then equalize conditions and constitute the government of democracy.f

If there is no more time to make a choice, and a force superior to men is already carrying you, without consulting your desires, toward one of these two governments, seek at least to derive from it all the good that it can do; and knowing its good instincts, as well as its bad inclinations, endeavor to limit the effect of the second and to develop the first.g

CHAPTER 7

Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and Its Effectsa

Natural strength of the majority in democracies.—Most of the American constitutions have artificially increased this natural strength.—How.—Binding mandates.—Moral dominion of the majority.—Opinion about its infallibility.—Respect for its rights.—What augments it in the United States.

The very essence of democratic governments is that the dominion of the majority be absolute; for, in democracies, nothing outside of the majority can offer resistance.

Most of the American constitutions have also sought to augment this natural strength of the majority artificially.1

Of all political powers, the legislature is the one that most willingly obeys the majority. The Americans have wanted the members of the legislature to be named directly by the people, and for a very short term, in order to force them to submit not only to the general views, but also to the daily passions of their constituents.

They have taken the members of the two houses from the same classes and named them in the same way; in this way, the movements of the legislative body are almost as rapid and no less irresistible than those of a single assembly.c

Within the legislature thus constituted, the Americans gathered together nearly the entire government.

At the same time that the law increased the strength of powers that were naturally strong, it weakened more and more those that were naturally weak. It gave to the representatives of the executive power neither stability nor independence; and, by subjecting them completely to the caprices of the legislature, it took from them the little influence that the nature of democratic government would have allowed them to exercise.d

In several states, the law delivered the judicial power to election by the majority; and in all, it made the existence of the judicial power dependent, in a way, on the legislative power, by leaving to the representatives the right to fix the salaries of judges annually.e

Customs have gone still further than the laws.

In the United States, a custom is spreading more and more that will end by making the guarantees of representative government empty; it happens very frequently that the voters, while naming a deputy, trace a plan of conduct for him and impose on him a certain number of definite obligations from which he cannot deviate in any way. Except for the tumult, it is as if the majority itself deliberated in the public square.

Several particular circumstances in America also tend to make the power of the majority not only predominant, but irresistible.

The moral dominion of the majority is based in part on the idea that there is more enlightenment and wisdom in many men combined than in one man alone, more in the number than in the choice of legislators. It is the theory of equality applied to minds. This doctrine attacks the pride of man in its last refuge. Consequently the minority admits it with difficulty and gets used to it only with time. Like all powers, and perhaps more than any other, the power of the majority thus needs to last in order to seem legitimate. When it is beginning to be established, it makes itself obeyed by force; only after living under its laws for a long time do you begin to respect it.

The idea that the right to govern society belongs to the majority because of its enlightenment was carried to the soil of the United States by the first inhabitants. This idea, which alone would be enough to create a free people, has today passed into the mores, and you find it in the least habits of life.

The French, under the old monarchy, held as a given that the king could do no wrong;f and when he happened to do something wrong, they thought that the fault was with his advisors. This facilitated obedience marvelously. You could murmur against the law, without ceasing to love and respect the law-maker. Americans have the same opinion about the majority.

The moral dominion of the majority is based as well on the principle that the interests of the greatest number must be preferred to those of the few. Now, it is easily understood that the respect professed for this right of the greatest number naturally increases or decreases depending on the state of the parties. When a nation is divided among several great irreconcilable interests, the privilege of the majority is often unrecognized, because it becomes too painful to submit to it.

If a class of citizens existed in America that the legislator worked to strip of certain exclusive advantages, held for centuries, and that he wanted to bring down from an elevated position and restore to the ranks of the multitude, it is probable that the minority would not easily submit to his laws.

But since the United States was populated by men equal to each other, no natural and permanent dissidence is yet found among the interests of the various inhabitants.g

There is such a social state in which the members of the minority cannot hope to attract the majority because to do so it would be necessary to abandon the very object of the struggle that the minority wages against the majority. An aristocracy, for example, cannot become a majority while preserving its exclusive privileges, and it cannot allow its privileges to slip away without ceasing to be an aristocracy. [In these countries, it is almost impossible for the moral power of the majority ever to succeed in being recognized by all.]

In the United States, political questions cannot be posed in as general and absolute a way, and all parties are ready to recognize the rights of the majority, because all hope one day to be able to exercise those rights to their profit.

So in the United States the majority has an immense power in fact and a power of opinion almost as great; and once the majority has formed on a question, there is, so to speak, no obstacle that can, I will not say stop, but even slow its course and leave time for the majority to hear the cries of those whom it crushes as it goes.

The consequences of this state of affairs are harmful and dangeroush for the future.

[z. ] In the margin: “<≠What is even much more surprising is that often [v: sometimes] the people who do nothing to improve their lot, find themselves as satisfied with their destiny as the people who stir themselves to make theirs better. The second wonders that one can be so happy in the midst of so much misery; and the first, that one can go to so much trouble to become happy.≠>”

[a. ] In the margin: “≠A European would be very unhappy if you forced him to pursue well-being with so much effort.

“It is difficult to believe that men are happy when they make so much effort to become happier.

“It is the story of the rich tradesman who dies of boredom when he is forced to abandon his business.≠”

[d. ] In the margin: “≠Superiority of the strength of the people which is worth more than the government. It is difficult to make the people listen to reason, but when they hear it, they advance toward reason with a much stronger step and with a much more powerful effort. Criminal investigation in America. Smuggling.≠”

[e. ] The manuscript adds: “in a way unknowingly.”

[f. ] See appendix V of this edition, particularly pp. 1369-71.

[g. ] Note in the manuscript at the end of the chapter: “≠Perhaps, in place of these generalities, it would be better to develop this single idea that if the government of democracy is not favorable to the first part of the picture, it has the advantage of serving the well-being of the greatest number.

“Perhaps put all this at the end of the advantages of democracy like a kind of summary.≠”

[a. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:

Before beginning the notes on this chapter, I want to make two general reflections:

1. Isn’t there a kind of contradiction between this chapter and the last paragraph of page 3 of the second volume, where the author expresses himself this way: “In the United States, as in all countries where the people rule, the majority governs in the name of the people. This majority is composed principally of a mass of men who, either by taste or by interest, sincerely desire the good of the country; agitating around this quite peaceful mass, parties work to draw it toward them and gain its support”?

2. I do not know if this chapter is well placed in the book. In one of the preceding chapters, entitled Of the Right of Association, the author says, p. 67: “In our time, the right of association has become a guarantee against the tyranny of the majority.”

The logical order of ideas demands that the disadvantages be cited before the remedy. I observe, moreover, that the author must revise the sentence I have just transcribed and make it less absolute, if he does not want it to harm singularly the effect of the chapter on omnipotence (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 81-83).

It seems that the idea of the tyranny of the majority is mentioned for the first time on the occasion of a conversation with Sparks, 29 September 1831 (non-alphabetic notebooks 1 and 2, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 96). John Stuart Mill, following Tocqueville, will take up this expression again and use it in his famous essay On Liberty. Nonetheless, as Joseph Hamburger points out (“Mill and Tocqueville on Liberty,” in John M. Robson and M. Laine, eds., James and John Stuart Mill. Papers of the Centenary Conference, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976, pp. 111-25), if Mill uses the term, the consequences he derives from it are quite far removed from those of Tocqueville. H. O. Pappe as well is skeptical about the possible influence of Tocqueville on Mill (“Mill and Tocqueville,” Journal of the History of Ideas 25, no. 2 (1964): 217-44).

Ludovic, the protagonist in Marie, also insists on the sway of opinion in America (I, pp. 165, 172-74, and 203),.

[c. ] Hervé de Tocqueville: “If this is so, we do not see clearly why the American constitutions created two houses; it is probable that there is something too absolute in the author’s phrasing” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 83).

[d. ] “In America executive power is nothing and can do nothing. The entire strength of government is entrusted to society itself, organized under the most democratic form that has ever existed. In America all danger comes from the people; it is never born outside” (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 21).

[e. ] “Importance of the judicial power as barrier to democracy, its weakness. See Federalist, p. 332 [No. 78 (ed.)].

“In most states, judges are dependent upon the legislature for their salaries; in several, elected by the legislature or by the people. Growing causes of tyranny” (YTC, CVe, p. 64). Cf. conversations with Mr. Storer, Spencer, and Judge MacLean (non-alphabetic notebooks 1, 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 69, 124 and 127).

[f. ] Hervé de Tocqueville: “I do not know why Alexis applies to the old monarchy the principle that the king could do no wrong. The Charter of 1814 and that of 1830 have this principle as a basis” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 83).

[g. ] Majority./

The moral dominion of the majority is established with more difficulty than another because it is based upon ideas of equality shocking to many minds that have not become accustomed to it.

Like all other empires, it is lost by abuse. Tyranny of the majority leads to appeals by minorities to physical force. From that, confusion, anarchy and the despotism of one man. The American republics, far from raising the fear of anarchy at the present moment, raise only the fear of despotism of the majority; anarchy will come only as a consequence of this tyranny.

There is such a social state in which the minorities can never become majorities, without losing enormously or even ceasing to be. In these countries, the dominion of the majority can only be established with great difficulty and can only be maintained with even more difficulty. France in this case./

In America, the dominion of the majority will be overturned not because it lacks strength, but wisdom. The government is centralized in such a way that the governing majority is omnipotent. It will lack not physical force, but moral force. In all power exercised by the people, there is something variable, something of scant wisdom.

I would like someone to explain to me what is meant when this banal phrase is put forth: that an entire people cannot completely go beyond the limits of reason.

It is undoubtedly rare for an entire people to go beyond those limits. But what generally does the will of the people mean? A majority; but what is a majority taken as a whole if not an individual who has opinions and, most often, interests contrary to another individual called the minority?

Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why would you not admit the same thing for the majority? As for me, I see only God who can be vested with omnipotence without disadvantage (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 2-3).

[h. ] The manuscript says: “. . . very harmful and highly dangerous for the future.”