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Of Republican Institutions in the United States, What Are Their Chances of Lasting? - 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 Republican Institutions in the United States, What Are Their Chances of Lasting?

The Union is only an accident.—Republican institutions have more of a future.—The republic is, for now, the natural state of the Anglo-Americans.—Why.—In order to destroy it, it would be necessary to change all the laws at the same time and modify all the mores.—Difficulties that the Americans have in creating an aristocracy.

The dismemberment of the Union, by introducing war within the states confederated today and with it permanent armies, dictatorship and taxes, could in the long run compromise the fate of republican institutions there.

But you must not confuse the future of the republic with that of the Union.x

The Union is an accident that will only last as long as circumstances favor it, but the republic seems to me the natural state of the Americans, and only the continuous action of contrary causes acting always in the same way could replace it with monarchy.y

The Union exists principally in the law that created it. A single revolution, a change in public opinion can shatter it forever. The republic has deeper roots.z

[≠Dispersed over an immense and half emptya territory, the Americans have found themselves from the beginning divided into a great number of small distinct societies that were not naturally attached to a common center. So it was necessary that each one of these small societies took care of its own affairs, since nowhere did you see a central authority that could naturally provide for them. Town and provincial liberty were introduced to America by the English, but they arose there all by themselves by the very nature of things. Now, town and provincial liberty are the basis of [v: the only lasting foundation that you can give to] republican institutions and as long as they exist in the United States, the United States will remain republican.≠]

What is understood by republic in the United States is the slow and tranquil action of society on itself. It is an ordered state actually based on the enlightened will of the people. It is a conciliatory government, where resolutions mature over a long time, are debated slowly and are executed with maturity.

Republicans in the United States value mores, respect beliefs, recognize rights. They profess this opinion, that a people must be moral, religious and moderate, in proportion as it is free. What is called a republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority. The majority, after it has had the time to recognize itself and to take note of its existence, is the common source of powers. But the majority itself is not omnipotent. Above it in the moral world are found humanity, justice and reason; in the political world, vested rights. The majority recognizes these two barriers, and if it happens to cross them, it is because the majority has passions, like every man; and like him, it can do evil while perceiving good. [{For me, I will have no difficulty in saying, in all countries where the republic is practical, I will be republican.}]

But we have made strange discoveries in Europe.

According to some among us, the republic is not the rule of the majority, as we have believed until now; it is the rule of those who answer for the majority. It is not the people who lead these sorts of governments, but those who know the greatest good of the people: happy distinction, that allows acting in the name of nations without consulting them, and claiming their gratitude while trampling them underfoot.b Republican government is, moreover, the only one in which the right to do everything must be recognized, and that can despise what men until now have respected, from the highest laws of morality to the ordinary rules of common sense.

Until our time it had been thought that despotism was odious, whatever its forms. But it has been discovered in our day that there are legitimate tyrannies and holy injustices in the world, provided that they are exercised in the name of the people.

[≠That is not a vague theory; they are maxims that are professed while basing them on facts. These doctrines have found ardent missionaries. I believe that I hear them saying to us:

You imagined, they say to us, that the republic was by its nature a free and tolerant government, and you thought perhaps that the trial that had formerly been made of it among us must not be imputed to the system itself, but to those who put it into practice and to the extraordinary circumstances in which this country found itself.≠]c

The ideas that the Americans have formed about the republic singularly facilitate its use for them and ensure that it will last.d Among them, if the practice of republican government is often bad, at least the theory is good, and the people always finish by conforming their acts to it.

It was impossible in the beginning and it would still be very difficult in America to establish a centralized administration. Men are spread over too large a space and are separated by too many natural obstacles for one man to be able to undertake to direct the details of their existence. So America is par excellence the country of provincial and town government.

To this cause, whose action made itself equally felt on all the Europeans of the New World, the Anglo-Americans added several others that are particular to them.

When the colonies of North America were established, municipal liberty had already penetrated English laws as well as mores, and the English emigrants adopted it not only as something necessary, but also as a good whose value they knew.

[We have seen furthermore that in this matter the influence exercised by the country has been greater or lesser depending on the circumstances that accompanied colonization and the previously contracted habits of the colonists.

The French carried to America the tradition of absolute monarchy; the English came there with the customs of a free people.

≠When the French arrived in Canada they first founded a city that they called Québec. From this city the population spread little by little by degrees, like a tree that spreads it roots in a circle. Québec has remained the central point, and the French of Canada are still today only one and the same people, submitted in most cases to one and the same government.≠

{It was not this way in the United States, above all in the part of the country that was called New England.}] We have seen, furthermore, how the colonies were founded. Each province and each district so to speak was populated separately by men strangers to one another, or associated for different ends.

So the English of the United States found themselves from the beginning divided into a great number of small distinct societies that were attached to no common center, and it was necessary for each one of these small societies to take care of its own affairs, since nowhere did you see a central authority that naturally had to and easily could provide for them.

Thus the nature of the country, the very manner in which the English colonies were founded, the habits of the first emigrants, all united to develop town and provincial liberties there to an extraordinary degree.

In the United States the institutions of the country are therefore as a whole essentially republican; to destroy in a lasting way the laws that established the republic, it would be necessary in a way to abolish all the laws all at once.

If today a party undertook to establish a monarchy in the United States, it would be in a still more difficult position than whoever would want at the present moment to proclaim the republic in France. Royalty would not find legislation prepared for it in advance, and then in actual fact you would see a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions.e

The monarchical principle would penetrate with as much difficulty into the mores of the Americans.

In the United States, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people is not an isolated doctrine that is attached neither to the habits nor to the ensemble of dominant ideas; you can on the contrary envisage it as the last link in a chain of opinions that envelops the entire Anglo-American world. Providence has given to each individual, what ever he is, the degree of reason necessary for him to be able to direct himself in the things that interest him exclusively. Such is the great maxim on which in the United States civil and political society rests: the father of the family applies it to his children, the master to his servants, the town to those it administers, the province to the town, the state to the provinces, the Union to the states. Extended to the whole of the nation, it becomes the dogma of the sovereignty of the people.

[≠So the republican principle of the sovereignty of the people is not only a political principle, but also a civil principle.≠]

Thus in the United States the generative principle of the republic is the same one that regulates most human actions. So the republic, if I can express myself in this way, penetrates the ideas, the opinions and all the habits of the Americans at the same time that it is established in their laws; and in order to succeed in changing the laws, they would have to be changed wholesale as it were. In the United States the religion of the greatest number itself is republican; it subjects the truths of the other world to individual reason, as politics relinquishes to the good sense of all the responsibility for the interests of this one; and it agrees that each man should freely take the path that will lead him to heaven, in the same way that the law recognizes the right of each citizen to choose his government.

Clearly only a long series of facts, all having the same tendency, can substitute for this ensemble of laws, opinions and mores an ensemble of the opposite mores, opinions and laws.

If the republican principles must perish in America, they will succumb only after a long social effort, frequently interrupted, often resumed; several times they will seem to arise again, and will disappear never to return only when an entirely new people will have taken the place of those who exist today. Now, nothing can portend such a revolution, no sign announces it.

What strikes you the most on your arrival in the United States is the type of tumultuous movement in which political society is immersed. The laws change constantly, and at first view it seems impossible that a people so little sure of its will does not soon substitute for the present form of its government an entirely new form. These fears are premature. There are as regards political institutions two types of instability that must not be confused. The one is attached to secondary laws; that one can reign for a long time within a well-settled society. The other constantly shakes the very foundations of the constitution, and attacks the generative principles of the laws; this one is always followed by troubles and revolutions; the nation that suffers it is in a violent and transitory state. Experience demonstrates that these two types of legislative instability do not have a necessary link between them, for we have seen them exist conjoined or separately depending on times and places. The first is found in the United States, but not the second. The Americans frequently change the laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected.

Today the republican principle reigns in America as the monarchical principle dominated in France under Louis XIV. The French of that time were not only friends of monarchy, but also they did not imagine that you could put anything in its place; they acknowledged it as you acknowledge the course of the sun and the vicissitudes of the seasons. Among them royal power had no more advocates than adversaries.

This is how the republic exists in America, without struggle, without opposition, without proof, by a tacit agreement, a sort of consensus universalis.

Nonetheless, I think that by changing their administrative procedures as often as they do, the inhabitants of the United States compromise the future of republican government.

Hampered constantly in their projects by the continual changeability of legislation, it is to be feared that men will end up considering the republic as an inconvenient way to live in society; the evil resulting from the instability of secondary laws would then put into question the existence of the fundamental laws, and would lead indirectly to a revolution. But this time is still very far from us.

What you can foresee from now on is that by leaving the republic the Americans would pass rapidly to despotism, without stopping for a very long time at monarchy. Montesquieu said that there was nothing more absolute than the authority of a prince who followed a republic since the undefined powers that had been given without fear to an elective magistrate are then put into the hands of a hereditary leader.f This is generally true but particularly applicable to a democratic republic. In the United States the magistrates are not elected by a particular class of citizens, but by the majority of the nation; they represent immediately the passions of the multitude, and depend entirely on its will; so they inspire neither hate nor fear. Also I have noted the little care that has been taken to limit their powers by tracing limits to its action, and what an immense share has been left to their arbitrariness. This order of things has created habits that would survive it. The American magistrate would keep his undefined power while ceasing to be responsible, and it is impossible to say where tyranny would then stop.

[≠If Napoleon had followed Louis XIV, {he would have found royal power strong but surrounded by impediments that would have imposed limits on his spirit of domination} he would have shown himself more stable but not as absolute as he was. Napoleon following a representative of the people could do anything.≠]

There are men among us who are waiting to see aristocracy arise in America and who already foresee with exactitude the period when it must grasp power.

I have already said, and I repeat, that the current movement of American society seems to me more and more democratic.

I do not claim, however, that one day the Americans will not end by restricting among themselves the circle of political rights, or by confiscating these very rights for the profit of one man; but I cannot believe that they will ever grant the exclusive use of those rights to a particular class of citizens or, in other words, that they will establish an aristocracy.

An aristocratic body is composed of a certain number of citizens who, without being placed very far from the crowd, raise themselves nonetheless in a permanent manner above it; you touch and cannot strike them; you mix with them each day, and cannot merge with them.

It is impossible to imagine anything more contrary to the nature and to the secret instincts of the human heart than a subjugation of this type; left to themselves men will always prefer the arbitrary power of a king to the regular administration of nobles.

In order to last an aristocracy needs to establish inequality in principle, to legalize it in advance, and to introduce it into the family at the same time that it spreads it throughout the society; all things that repulse natural equity so strongly that only by coercion can you obtain them from men.

Since human societies have existed I do not believe that you can cite the example of a single people that, left to itself and by its own efforts, has created an aristocracy within itself; all the aristocracies of the Middle Ages are daughters of conquest. The conqueror was the noble, the conquered the serf. Force then imposed inequality, which once entered into the mores lasted by itself and passed naturally into the laws.

You have seen societies that, because of events prior to their existence, are so to speak born aristocratic, and that are then led by each century back toward democracy. Such was the fate of the Romans, and that of the barbarians who came after them. But a people who, starting from civilization and democracy, would come closer by degrees to inequality of conditions, and would finish by establishing within itself inviolable privileges and exclusive categories, there is something that would be new in the world.

Nothing indicates that America is destined to be the first to give such a spectacle.

[≠I do not know if the Americans, like all peoples who have run the course before them, will end by submitting to one master, but I cannot believe that they will ever have a true aristocracy./

A party that undertook to establish monarchy in America today would find itself in as difficult a position as the one that wanted to proclaim the republic in France. In France you would implant the republican principle in the middle of secondary institutions that are still eminently monarchical. In America you would establish a king who would find in his hands only republican institutions.≠]

[x. ]“Division of the American empire./

“When I spoke to Mr. Schermerhorn about the possible division that could take place among the united provinces, he seemed to me not to believe that the thing was to be feared in the least in the near future, but thinks that it could happen someday by and by.

“April 1831” (YTC, BIIb, unpublished travel note).

[y. ] In the margin: “≠The republic in the United States does not arise only from the laws, but from the nature of the country, from habits, from mores.≠”

[z. ] Of the different ways that you can imagine the republic./

What is understood by republic in the United States is an ordered State actually based on the enlightened will of the people. It is a government where [v: liberty of discussion and thought reigns from which] resolutions mature over a long time, are debated slowly and are executed with maturity. What is called the republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority. The majority, after it has had the time to recognize itself and to take note of its existence, is the source of all powers. But the majority itself is not omnipotent; above it in the moral world are found humanity and reason, in the material world, vested rights. The majority in its omnipotence recognizes these two barriers, and if it has sometimes happened to overturn them, it felt itself carried away by its passions beyond its rights, just as man constantly happens to do evil, while entirely recognizing the existence and the sanctity of virtue. That is what is understood by republic in the United States.

[In the margin: I cannot believe that the Roman republic could have begun at the time of Catilina./

It is this government that must leave to each man the largest part of his independence and liberty and that is the farthest removed from despotism.]

[To the side: In all the countries where this republic would be practical, I would be a republican.]

But we have made strange discoveries in Europe and we are much more advanced than that.

The republic according to certain men in Europe is not the rule of the majority as has been believed until now; it is the rule of those who speak in the name of the majority. It is not the people who act in these kinds of governments, it is those who want the greatest good for the people. Republican government is, moreover, the only one in which the right to do everything must be recognized and that must not keep strictly to any divine or human law in order to reach the end that it proposes, which is nothing other than the greatest happiness of humanity. This end in itself alone justifies all the rest.

[In the margin: Happy distinction that allows acting in the name of nations without consulting them.]

Republican liberty does not try to persuade but to break; it proceeds only by sudden movements and always has the ax or the hammer in hand in order to make its way in the world.

[In the margin: Republican liberty is the power to dare anything (illegible word, crossed out), it is scorn for all the rules, [v: holy laws] from those of morality to those of common sense.

You believed that the cause of aristocracy was lost. But here are (illegible word). I tell you that those men are the only partisans of aristocracy, at least not still the aristocracy of the rich and the nobles in truth. They are the aristocracy of cut-th[roats (ed.)]

When I see one of these alleged republicans, it seems to me that I always hear him say [v: see the executioner in his official outfit standing on the scaffold crying out]: Peoples of the earth (for it is always the entire earth that he addresses from their [sic] rooftop) come to us, for except for your fathers there has never been anything more foolish than you, and if you do not put your destiny in our hands, you will never be able to prosper, unless we get involved in your destiny.

You imagined, fellow citizens, that the republic was by its nature a mild and prosperous government, and you thought that the trial that had formerly been made of it among us must not be imputed to the system itself, but to those who put it into practice and to the extraordinary circumstances in which the (illegible word) was found; know that the republic that we are proposing is very exactly the one that you have seen in the past, and that it can be established as such only with the aid of a profound and radical revolution in property and in ranks. Some have told you that the men made so famous by the misfortunes of a generation were madmen, miserable men intoxicated with power and blood by an unexpected success, and that you must not charge liberty with the evils that they did in its name. Beware of listening to such language, fellow citizens; the men that you hear about did only what they had to do. What are called their crimes are actions as beautiful as they are immortal. They sacrificed themselves for you, ungrateful men, even while slitting your throats. You would perhaps be tempted to believe that we, their successors, adopt their love for the good while deploring their errors; do not be mistaken, fellow citizens; we think that in our time as in theirs dictatorship alone can save the country and that liberty can be established only after punishing writers [v: all our adversaries] by death, and that respect for rights can arise only after trampling all rights under foot. [v: We admire on all points these great men and we burn to walk in their steps; while waiting, we kiss the sacred dust where they left their footprint. And even their costumes, holy relic, we would like to make reappear in order to begin from now on to resemble them in a few ways.]

So come to us dear fellow citizens, come so we can share your fortunes among ourselves [v: so we can trample your beliefs underfoot] and so we can cut your throat following the principles that we received from our fathers and that we will leave to our children. How to resist such language? Aren’t these agreeable speeches and pleasant missionaries?

[To the side: As long as those who sincerely want the establishment of the republic do not push far away from their ranks such miserable men, the kings of Europe can still rest easy on their thrones] (YTC, CVh, 2, pp. 68-74).

This fragment, of complicated transcription, contains various other variants and versions.

[a. ] While preparing the plan for this chapter, Tocqueville had noted: “The republic is in a way the natural state of small, enlightened States” (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 43).

[b. ] “≠Royalty has had its valets and its spies, why would the republic not have its cutthroats?

“An aristocracy of wolves, worse.

“Great capitals annul the representative system≠” (YTC, CVj, 2, p. 22).

[c. ] In the margin: “≠Some limit themselves to praising the disinterestedness of Robespierre and the greatness of soul of Danton. Others go still further.≠”

[d. ] Tocqueville wrote to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831:

Here we are very far from the ancient republics, it must be admitted, and yet this people is republican and I do not doubt that it will be for a long time still. And the republic is for it the best of governments.

I explain this phenomenon to myself only by thinking that America finds itself for now in a physical situation so happy that particular interest is never contrary to general interest, which is certainly not the case in Europe (YTC, BIa2).

[e. ] “25 October 1831.—The people are always right, that is the dogma of the republic the same as the king can do no wrong is the religion of monarchical States. It is a great question to know if one is more false than the other; but what is very certain is that neither the one nor the other is true” (pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 184).

[f. ] Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes et la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, chapter XV, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Pléiade, 1951), I, p. 150.