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Online Library of Liberty - CHAPTER 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States a - Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2
Front Page Titles (by Subject) CHAPTER 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States a - Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2	Return to Title Page for Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2The Online Library of LibertyA project of Liberty Fund, Inc.
Search this Title:Also in the Library:Subject Area: Political TheorySubject Area: SociologyCollection: Books Published by Liberty FundE-Books: Liberty Fund E-BooksOrder this book from Liberty FundCHAPTER 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States a - 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.
Care that the Americans have taken to separate Church and State.—Laws, public opinion, the efforts of priests themselves, work toward this result.—To this cause must be attributed the power that religion exercises on souls in the United States.—Why.—What is today the natural state of man in the matter of religion.—What particular and accidental cause, in certain countries, works against men conforming to this state.
The Anglo-Americans, transported to Europe, would be obliged to modify their laws.—Democratic institutions must be distinguished from American institutions.—You can imagine democratic laws better than or at least different from those that American democracy has given itself.—The example of America proves only that we must not despair of regulating democracy with the aid of laws and mores.
I saidn that the success of democratic institutions in the United States was due to the laws themselves and to mores more than to the nature of the country.
But does it follow that these same causes alone transported elsewhere have the same power, and if the country cannot take the place of laws and mores, can laws and mores in turn take the place of the country?
Here you will understand without difficulty that the elements of proof are lacking. In the New World you meet peoples other than the Anglo-Americans, and since these peoples are subject to the same physical causes as the latter, I have been able to compare them to each other.
But outside of America there are no nations that, deprived of the same physical advantages as the Anglo-Americans, have still adopted their laws and their mores.
Therefore we do not have a point of comparison in this matter; we can only hazard opinions.
It seems to me first that the institutions of the United States must be carefully distinguished from democratic institutions in general.
When I think of the state of Europe, its great peoples, its populous cities, its formidable armies, the complexities of its politics, I cannot believe that the Anglo-Americans themselves, transported with their ideas, their religion, their mores to our soil, could live there without considerably modifying their laws.
But you can imagine a democratic people organized in a different manner from the American people.
Is it impossible to conceive of a government based on the real will of the majority, but in which the majority, doing violence to its natural instincts of equality, in favor of order and the stability of the State, would consent to vest a family or a man with all the attributions of the executive power? Can you not imagine a democratic society in which national forces would be more centralized than in the United States, in which the people would exercise a less direct and less irresistible dominion over general affairs, and in which, nonetheless, each citizen, vested with certain rights, would, within his sphere, take part in the working of the government?o
What I saw among the Anglo-Americans leads me to believe that democratic institutions of this nature, introduced prudently into society,p which would mix little by little with the habits and would gradually merge with the very opinions of the people, would be able to subsist elsewhere than in America.q
If the laws of the United States were the only democratic laws that could be imagined or the most perfect that it is possible to find, I understand that you could conclude that the success of the laws of the United States proves nothing for the success of democratic laws in general, in a country less favored by nature.
But if the laws of the Americans seem to me defective in many points, and it is easy for me to imagine others, the special nature of the country does not prove to me that democratic institutions cannot succeed among a people where, physical circumstances being less favorable, the laws would be better.
If men showed themselves to be different in America from what they are elsewhere; if their social state gave birth among them to habits and opinions contrary to those that are born in Europe from this same social state, what happens in the American democracies would teach nothing about what should happen in other democracies.
If the Americans showed the same tendencies as all the other democratic peoples, and their legislators resorted to the nature of the country and to the favor of circumstances in order to keep these tendencies within just limits, the prosperity of the United States, having to be attributed to purely physical causes, would prove nothing in favor of peoples who would like to follow their example without having their natural advantages.r
But neither the one nor the other of these suppositions is justified by the facts.
I encountered in America passions analogous to those we see in Europe. Some were due to the very nature of the human heart; others, to the democratic state of society.
Thus I found in the United States the restlessness of heart that is natural to man when, all conditions being more or less equal, each one sees the same chances to rise. There I encountered the democratic sentiment of envy expressed in a thousand different ways. I observed that the people often showed, in the conduct of affairs, a great blend of presumption and ignorance, and I concluded that in America, as among us, men were subject to the same imperfections and exposed to the same miseries.
But when I came to examine attentively the state of society, I discovered without difficulty that the Americans had made great and happy efforts to combat these weaknesses of the human heart and to correct these natural defects of democracy.
So the Americans did not resort to the nature of the country to combat the dangers that arise from their constitution [v: social state] and from their political laws. To the evils that they share with all democratic peoples, they applied remedies that until now only they were aware of; and although they were the first to try them out, they succeeded.
The mores and laws of the Americans are not the only ones that can be suitable for democratic peoples; but the Americans have shown that we must not despair of regulating democracy with the help of laws and mores.
If other peoples, borrowing from America this general and fruitful idea, and without wishing to imitate the inhabitants of America in the particular application that they have made of this idea, attempted to adapt themselves to the social state that Providence imposes on men today, and thus sought to escape the despotism or the anarchy that threatens them, what reasons do we have to believe that they must fail in their efforts?s
The organization and the establishment of democracy among Christians is the great political problem of our time. The Americans undoubtedly do not solve this problem, but they provide useful lessons to those who want to solve it.
[p. ] In an initial plan of the work:Religious society./Nomenclature of the various sects.—From Catholicism to the sect that is furthest from it.Quakers, Methodists.—Point out what is antisocial in the doctrine of Quakers, Unitarians.Relations among the sects.Freedom of worship.—Toleration: in the legal respect; with respect to mores.Catholicism.Place of religion in the political order and its degree of influence on American society (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 26-27).Several ideas of this part are roughed out in a letter from Tocqueville to Chabrol dated 26 October 1831. Tocqueville answers certain questions that Louis Bouchitté had asked him concerning religion in the United States (YTC, BIa2).This passage is not without many similarities to “Note on the religious movement in the United States” by Gustave de Beaumont, very particularly to part III, “Relations of religions with the State” (Marie, II, pp. 213-25).
[q. ] I have heard it said in Europe that it was very unfortunate that these poor Americans had religion. When you have been in the United States, conviction that religion is more useful in republics than in monarchies, and in democratic republics more than anywhere else. Disastrous misunderstanding in France. Despotic powers of Europe favor religion./As for these cut-throats, liberty is the greatest gift of God, it is the republicans, I have nothing to say to them . . . but the others . . . may they know that liberty is an almost holy thing [v: what distinguishes us from beasts] (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 57).
[r. ] The manuscript says: “. . . you see the most free and most enlightened . . .”Hervé de Tocqueville: “Isn’t the expression a bit exaggerated?” (YTC, CIIIb, 1 p. 44).
[s. ] Several times Tocqueville uses the same expression in the book while referring to other aspects that attracted his attention, for example, the activity that reigns in the United States.
[t. ] Few questions have provoked more commentary than the religious beliefs of Tocqueville. All commentators nonetheless take as true the confession of faith made to Madame Swetchine in the famous letter of 26 February 1857 (Correspondance avec Madame Swetchine, OC, XV, 2, p. 315). There Tocqueville says that he lost his faith when he was sixteen years old, after reading several passages chosen haphazardly from his father’s library. His works and his correspondence allow us, however, to guess his assent to several great dogmas of Catholicism. As Luis Díez de Corral (La mentalidad política de Tocqueville con especial referencia a Pascal, Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, 1965, p. 118) notes, Tocqueville is closer to those who, in the words of Pascal, “seek while groaning,” eternally plagued by doubt and uncertainty, captives to the “wager.” In this regard, the author writes to Francisque de Corcelle:If you know a recipe for belief, for God ! give it to me. But what power does the will have over the free processes of the mind? If will alone were sufficient for belief, I would have been devout a long time ago; or rather I would always have been devout, for doubt has always seemed to me the most unbearable of the ills of the world; I have constantly judged it to be worse than death and inferior only to illnesses (Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC, XV, 2, p. 29).A little further in this chapter, Tocqueville explains what perhaps best corresponds to his own sentiment in the matter of religious beliefs. The latter, he says, are abandonedby coldness rather than by hatred; you do not reject them, they leave you. While ceasing to believe religion true, the unbeliever continues to judge it useful. Considering religious beliefs from a human aspect, he recognizes their dominion over mores, their influence over laws. He understands how they can make men live in peace and gently prepare men for death. So he regrets faith after losing it, and deprived of a good of which he knows the whole value, he is afraid to take it away from those who still possess it (p. 486).Also see Luis Díez del Corral, El pensamiento político de Tocqueville, Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1989, pp. 227-71.
[4. ] Unless you give this name to the functions that many among them occupy in schools. Most education is confided to the clergy.
[5. ] See the Constitution of New York, art. 7 #4.Id. of North Carolina, art. 31.Id. of Virginia.Id. of South Carolina, art. 1, #23.Id. of Kentucky, art. 2, #26.Id. of Tennessee, art. 8, #1.Id. of Louisiana, art. 2, #22.The article of the Constitution of New York is formulated as follows:And whereas the ministers of the gospel are, by their profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function; therefore, no minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall, at any time hereafter, under any presence or description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office or place within this State.
[u. ] What touches me more than the miracles and the prophecies is the very character of Christianity. There is the greatest sign of its divine origin. Give honor to all the religious codes of the world, you will see that they necessarily apply to a certain country, to certain mores, to a particular social state or people. I do not examine the proofs of these religions, and I say that they are false, because they are not made for all times and for all men. But Christianity seems universal and immortal like the human species./The influence that religion exercises over mores in the United States must not be exaggerated; it is not sufficient to make a virtuous people, but an orderly one./Its action on the women. It is the women who make mores.I said that democracy was the form of government in which it was most desirable that the people be happy; it is also the one in which it is most desirable that the people be moral and for the same reason.I would not hesitate to say, because I write in an irreligious century, that in the United States religion is the first of political institutions. And I even add that I am that much less afraid to say so because of this reason (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 58).
[v. ] In the manuscript: “. . . you see governments lean and rush toward the republic.”Hervé de Tocqueville: “The words and rush, which are meaningless, must be struck out; you could put and are carried toward” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 46).
[w. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:Here are two thoughts that do not seem correct to me. Why would people be carried beyond truth because, to do good, they had the courage to defy prejudice? Then, you will never find faithful people foolish enough to believe that unbelief is something new. This paragraph is to review. The author has not arrived at the true cause of the estrangement of the clergy and of pious persons from free institutions. You must seek it in the memory of the persecutions that religion suffered as soon as the word liberty resounded in France, and in the fear that the persecutions are repeating. The impression was so strong that it is not erased and that pious persons believe that the aegis of an absolute power is necessary in order for priests to be out of danger and for religion to be able to resist philosophical intolerance. The author can link this thought well to earlier ones, for he speaks on page 15 of men without religion who persecute those who believe with all the fervor of proselytism.Édouard de Tocqueville: “I agree with father. You must absolutely mention the memories of ’93 as a powerful cause of the antipathy of the French clergy for liberal ideas” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 46-48). The sentence “Since they have seen . . . pursue” was added following the comments of the family.
[x. ] As for me, I cannot believe that the evil is as great or as profound as is supposed. Never will the religious instinct perish in man, and what can better satisfy it than the religion of J[esus (ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)].? Christianity is not defeated, it is only bowed down. Formerly religion [v: Christianity] allowed itself to be mingled with the powers of the earth, and today I see it as though buried very much alive under their debris. So let us try to extricate it; it still has enough strength to rise again, but not to lift the weight that overwhelms it. The Christian religion in Europe resembles an old man whose shoulders are loaded down with a heavy burden; he walks painfully across the obstacles in the road. He bends under the weight; his limbs are heavy, his breathing is labored. He walks only with difficulty and at each step you would say he was about to die (YTC, CVh, 4. p. 67; a nearly identical fragment is found in YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 31-32).
[n. ] In the manuscript: “I proved . . .”Édouard de Tocqueville (or Louis de Kergorlay?): “I propose to put: I believe that I proved. The peremptory tone must be avoided” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 27).
[o. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:Here royalty or the monarchy, and if possible the hereditary monarchy, must find a place. It is indispensable that the author establish that the monarchical State is not incompatible with democratic institutions.Alexis must pay the greatest attention to avoid a pitfall in which he would be destroyed, that of allowing the belief that he has written a book in favor of the republic. Beyond the fact that reason, enlightened by experience, rejects the possibility of establishing republics strictly speaking among the great European nations, the idea and even the word republic are antipathetic to the very great majority of the French. So if Alexis left the slightest doubt about his dispositions on this subject, he would be blamed by the very greatest number and applauded only by a few scatterbrains and a few muddleheads (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 15).
[p. ] In the margin: “I can imagine a democratic nation in which, because political life was more active and more threatened, the executive power was stronger and more active than it has been until now in the New World.”
[q. ] Édouard de Tocqueville or Louis de Kergorlay:Here you seem to formulate a desire, and that seems to me to move away from the goal of your work, beyond other disadvantages that it can have in my view.Your book can only aspire to a great and general influence if you are very careful not to make yourself into a party man. Now, if you show yourself or if some see you as a republican, you will be considered as a party man.Take care that this ending does not appear as a plea on behalf of the republic. I tell you this from my soul and conscience, that ending has the appearance of being so and will be regarded as such; now this is what you have always told me you wanted to avoid.To show, to demonstrate that free institutions can be established in a lasting way only sheltered by morality and religious spirit is a superb thought. It is your whole book. Try not to compromise it (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 27-28).
[r. ] Édouard de Tocqueville or Louis de Kergorlay: “You give, it seems to me, in this paragraph and in a few others of the preceding chapter much too great an influence to the physical nature of a country on the mores and the tendencies of the inhabitants of this country. This influence is not non-existent, but it is far, I believe, from being what you suppose” (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 28).
[s. ] In the manuscript:If other democratic nations less fortunately situated than the American people, but instructed by experience, succeeded in making use of its discoveries while rejecting its errors, what reason do we have to believe that they must fail in their efforts? So if the example of the United States does not prove in a sufficient way that all countries can adapt themselves to democratic institutions, you can infer even less from it that democratic institutions suit only the United States.