American Institutions and Their Influence Part 34

In ages which answer to this description, men desert their religious opinions from lukewarmness rather than from dislike; they do not reject them, but the sentiments by which they were once fostered disappear. But if the unbeliever does not admit religion to be true, he still considers it useful. Regarding religious inst.i.tutions in a human point of view, he acknowledges their influence upon manners and legislation. He admits that they may serve to make men live in peace with one another and to prepare them gently for the hour of death. He regrets the faith which he has lost; and as he is deprived of a treasure which he has learned to estimate at its full value, he scruples to take it from those who still possess it.

On the other hand, those who continue to believe, are not afraid openly to avow their faith. They look upon those who do not share their persuasion as more worthy of pity than of opposition; and they are aware, that to acquire the esteem of the unbelieving, they are not obliged to follow their example. They are hostile to no one in the world; and as they do not consider the society in which they live as an arena in which religion is bound to face its thousand deadly foes, they love their contemporaries, while they condemn their weaknesses, and lament their errors.

As those who do not believe, conceal their incredulity; and as those who believe, display their faith, public opinion p.r.o.nounces itself in favor of religion: love, support, and honor, are bestowed upon it, and it is only by searching the human soul, that we can detect the wounds which it has received. The ma.s.s of mankind, who are never without the feeling of religion, do not perceive anything at variance with the established faith. The instinctive desire of a future life brings the crowd about the altar, and opens the hearts of men to the precepts and consolations of religion.

But this picture is not applicable to us; for there are men among us who have ceased to believe in Christianity, without adopting any other religion; others who are in the perplexities of doubt, and who already affect not to believe; and others, again, who are afraid to avow that Christian faith which they still cherish in secret.

Amid these lukewarm partisans and ardent antagonists, a small number of believers exist, who are ready to brave all obstacles, and to scorn all dangers in defence of their faith. They have done violence to human weakness, in order to rise superior to public opinion. Excited by the effort they have made, they scarcely know where to stop; and as they know that the first use which the French made, of independence, was to attack religion, they look upon their contemporaries with dread, and they recoil in alarm from the liberty which their fellow-citizens are seeking to obtain. As unbelief appears to them to be a novelty, they comprise all that is new in one indiscriminate animosity. They are at war with their age and country, and they look upon every opinion which is put forth there as the necessary enemy of the faith.

Such is not the natural state of men with regard to religion at the present day; and some extraordinary or incidental cause must be at work in France, to prevent the human mind from following its original propensities, and to drive it beyond the limits at which it ought naturally to stop.

I am intimately convinced that this extraordinary and incidental cause is the close connexion of politics and religion. The unbelievers of Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents, rather than as their religious adversaries; they hate the Christian religion as the opinion of a party, much more than as an error of belief; and they reject the clergy less because they are the representatives of the Divinity, than because they are the allies of authority.

In Europe, Christianity has been intimately united to the powers of the earth. Those powers are now in decay, and it is, as it were, buried under their ruins. The living body of religion has been bound down to the dead corpse of superannuated polity; cut the bonds which restrain it, and that which is alive will rise once more. I know not what could restore the Christian church of Europe to the energy of its earlier days; that power belongs to G.o.d alone; but it may be the effect of human policy to leave the faith in all the full exercise of the strength which it still retains.

HOW THE INSTRUCTION, THE HABITS, AND THE PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE AMERICANS PROMOTE THE SUCCESS OF THEIR DEMOCRATIC INSt.i.tUTIONS.

What is to be understood by the instruction of the American People.--The human Mind is more superficially instructed in the United States than in Europe.--No one completely uninstructed.--Reason of this Rapidity with which Opinions are diffused even in the uncultivated States of the West.--Practical Experience more serviceable to the Americans than Book-learning.

I have but little to add to what I have already said, concerning the influence which the instruction and the habits of the Americans exercise upon the maintenance of their political inst.i.tutions.

America has. .h.i.therto produced very few writers of distinction; it possesses no great historians, and not a single eminent poet. The inhabitants of that country look upon what are properly styled literary pursuits with a kind of disapprobation; and there are towns of very second rate importance in Europe, in which more literary works are annually published, than in the twenty-four states of the Union put together. The spirit of the Americans is averse to general ideas; and it does not seek theoretical discoveries. Neither politics nor manufactures direct them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually enacted in the United States, no great writers have hitherto inquired into the principles of their legislation. The Americans have lawyers and commentators, but no jurists; and they furnish examples rather than lessons to the world. The same observation applies to the mechanical arts. In America, the inventions of Europe are adopted with sagacity; they are perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the wants of the country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture is not cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inventors. Fulton was obliged to proffer his services to foreign nations for a long time before he was able to devote them to his own country.

[The remark that in America "there are very good workmen but very few inventors," will excite surprise in this country. The inventive character of Fulton he seems to admit, but would apparently deprive us of the credit of his name, by the remark that he was obliged to proffer his services to foreign nations for a long time. He might have added, that those proffers were disregarded and neglected, and that it was finally in his own country that he found the aid necessary to put in execution his great project. If there be patronage extended by the citizens of the United States to any one thing in preference to another, it is to the results of inventive genius. Surely Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Perkins, have been heard of by our author; and he must have heard something of that wonderful invention, the cotton-gin of Whitney, and of the machines for making cards to comb wool. The original machines of Fulton for the application of steam have been constantly improving, so that there is scarcely a vestige of them remaining. But to sum up the whole in one word, can it be possible that our author did not visit the patent office at Washington? Whatever may be said of the _utility_ of nine-tenths of the inventions of which the descriptions and models are there deposited, no one who has ever seen that depository, or who has read a description of its contents, can doubt that they furnish the most incontestible evidence of extraordinary inventive genius--a genius that has excited the astonishment of other European travellers.--_American Editor_.]

The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the state of instruction among the Anglo-Americans, must consider the same object from two different points of view. If he only singles out the learned, he will be astonished to find how rare they are; but if he counts the ignorant, the American people will appear to be the most enlightened community in the world. The whole population, as I observed in another place, is situated between these two extremes.

In New England, every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its const.i.tution. In the states of Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.

When I compare the Greek and Roman republics with these American states; the ma.n.u.script libraries of the former, and their rude population, with the innumerable journals and the enlightened people of the latter; when I remember all the attempts which are made to judge the modern republics by the a.s.sistance of those of antiquity, and to infer what will happen in our time from what took place two thousand years ago, I am tempted to burn my books, in order to apply none but novel ideas to so novel a condition of society.

What I have said of New England must not, however, be applied indiscriminately to the whole Union: as we advance towards the west or the south, the instruction of the people diminishes. In the states which are adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, a certain number of individuals may be found, as in our own countries, who are devoid of the rudiments of instruction. But there is not a single district in the United States sunk in complete ignorance; and for a very simple reason; the peoples of Europe started from the darkness of a barbarous condition to advance toward the light of civilisation; their progress has been unequal; some of them have improved apace, while others have loitered in their course, and some have stopped, and are still sleeping upon the way.

Such has not been the case in the United States. The Anglo-Americans settled in a state of civilisation, upon that territory which their descendants occupy; they had not to begin to learn, and it was sufficient not to forget. Now the children of these same Americans are the persons who, year by year, transport their dwellings into the wilds: and with their dwellings their acquired information and their esteem for knowledge. Education has taught them the utility of instruction, and has enabled them to transmit that instruction to their posterity. In the United States society has no infancy, but it is born in man's estate.

The Americans never use the word "peasant," because they have no idea of the peculiar cla.s.s which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager, have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coa.r.s.e habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilisation. At the extreme borders of the confederate states, upon the confines of society and of the wilderness, a population of bold adventurers have taken up their abode, who pierce the solitudes of the American woods, and seek a country there, in order to escape that poverty which awaited them in their native provinces. As soon as the pioneer arrives upon the spot which is to serve him for a retreat, he fells a few trees and builds a log-house. Nothing can offer a more miserable aspect than these isolated dwellings. The traveller who approaches one of them toward night-fall, sees the flicker of the hearth-flame through the c.h.i.n.ks in the walls; and at night, if the wind rises, he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling which shelters him. Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself the result of the labor and the experience of eighteen centuries. He wears the dress, and he speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious of the future, and ready for argument upon the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to inhabit the back-woods, and who penetrates into the wilds of a New World with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers.

It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which public opinion circulates in the midst of these deserts.[204] I do not think that so much intellectual intercourse takes place in the most enlightened and populous districts of France.[205] It cannot be doubted that in the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where instruction, which awakens the understanding, is not separated from moral education which amends the heart. But I by no means exaggerate this benefit, and I am still farther from thinking, as so many people do think in Europe, that men can be instantaneously made citizens by teaching them to read and write. True information is mainly derived from experience, and if the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not a.s.sist them much at the present day.

I have lived a great deal with the people in the United States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense.

An American should never be allowed to speak of Europe; for he will then probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his own country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what means he exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical science and his positive notions from books; the instruction he has acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by partic.i.p.ating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government, from governing. The great work of society is ever going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands.

In the United States politics are the end and aim of education; in Europe its princ.i.p.al object is to fit men for private life. The interference of the citizens in public affairs is too rare an occurrence for it to be antic.i.p.ated beforehand. Upon casting a glance over society in the two hemispheres, these differences are indicated even by its external aspect.

In Europe, we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits of private life into public affairs; and as we pa.s.s at once from the domestic circle to the government of the state, we may frequently be heard to discuss the great interests of society in the same manner in which we converse with our friends. The Americans, on the other hand, transfuse the habits of public life into their manners in private; and in their country the jury is introduced into the games of school-boys, and parliamentary forms are observed in the order of a feast.

THE LAWS CONTRIBUTE MORE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE UNITED STATES THAN THE PHYSICAL CIRc.u.mSTANCES OF THE COUNTRY, AND THE MANNERS MORE THAN THE LAWS.

All the Nations of America have a democratic State of Society.--Yet democratic Inst.i.tutions subsist only among the Anglo-Americans.--The Spaniards of South America, equally favored by physical Causes as the Anglo-Americans, unable to maintain a democratic Republic.--Mexico, which has adopted the Const.i.tution of the United States, in the same Predicament.--The Anglo-Americans of the West less able to maintain it than those of the East.--Reason of these different Results.

I have remarked that the maintenance of democratic inst.i.tutions in the United States is attributable to the circ.u.mstances, the laws, and the manners of that country.[206] Most Europeans are only acquainted with the first of these three causes, and they are apt to give it a preponderating importance which it does not really possess.

It is true that the Anglo-Americans settled in the New World in a state of social equality; the low-born and the n.o.ble were not to be found among them; and professional prejudices were always as entirely unknown as the prejudices of birth. Thus, as the condition of society was democratic, the empire of democracy was established without difficulty.

But this circ.u.mstance is by no means peculiar to the United States; almost all the transatlantic colonies were founded by men equal among themselves, or who became so by inhabiting them. In no one part of the New World have Europeans been able to create an aristocracy.

Nevertheless democratic inst.i.tutions prosper nowhere but in the United States.

The American Union has no enemies to contend with; it stands in the wilds like an island in the ocean. But the Spaniards of South America were no less isolated by nature; yet their position has not relieved them from the charge of standing armies. They make war upon each other when they have no foreign enemies to oppose; and the Anglo-American democracy is the only one which has. .h.i.therto been able to maintain itself in peace.

The territory of the Union presents a boundless field to human activity, and inexhaustible materials for industry and labor. The pa.s.sion of wealth takes the place of ambition, and the warmth of faction is mitigated by a sense of prosperity. But in what portion of the globe shall we meet with more fertile plains, with mightier rivers, or with more unexplored and inexhaustible riches, than in South America?

Nevertheless South America has been unable to maintain democratic inst.i.tutions. If the welfare of nations depended on their being placed in a remote position, with an unbounded s.p.a.ce of habitable territory before them, the Spaniards of South America would have no reason to complain of their fate. And although they might enjoy less prosperity than the inhabitants of the United States, their lot might still be such as to excite the envy of some nations in Europe. There are, however, no nations upon the face of the earth more miserable than those of South America.

Thus, not only are physical causes inadequate to produce results a.n.a.logous to those which occur in North America, but they are unable to raise the population of South America above the level of European states, where they act in a contrary direction. Physical causes do not therefore affect the destiny of nations so much as has been supposed.

I have met with men in New England who were on the point of leaving a country, where they might have remained in easy circ.u.mstances, to go to seek their fortunes in the wilds. Not far from that district I found a French population in Canada, which was closely crowded on a narrow territory, although the same wilds were at hand; and while the emigrant from the United States purchased an extensive estate with the earnings of a short term of labor, the Canadian paid as much for land as he would have done in France. Nature offers the solitudes of the New World to Europeans; but they are not always acquainted with the means of turning her gifts to account. Other peoples of America have the same physical conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans, but without their laws and their manners; and these peoples are wretched. The laws and manners of the Anglo-Americans are therefore that cause of their greatness which is the object of my inquiry.

I am far from supposing that the American laws are preeminently good in themselves; I do not hold them to be applicable to all democratic peoples; and several of them seem to me to be dangerous, even in the United States. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the American legislation, taken collectively, is extremely well adapted to the genius of the people and the nature of the country which it is intended to govern. The American laws are therefore good, and to them must be attributed a large portion of the success which attends the government of democracy in America: but I do not believe them to be the princ.i.p.al cause of that success; and if they seem to me to have more influence upon the social happiness of the Americans than the nature of the country, on the other hand there is reason to believe that their effect is still inferior to that produced by the manners of the people.

The federal laws undoubtedly const.i.tute the most important part of the legislation of the United States. Mexico, which is not less fortunately situated than the Anglo-American Union, has adopted these same laws, but is unable to accustom itself to the government of democracy. Some other cause is therefore at work independently of those physical circ.u.mstances and peculiar laws which enable the democracy to rule in the United States.

Another still more striking proof may be adduced. Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship G.o.d in the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the same laws. Whence, then, do their characteristic differences arise?

Why, in the eastern states of the Union, does the republican government display vigor and regularity, and proceed with mature deliberation?

Whence does it derive the wisdom and durability which mark its acts, while in the western states, on the contrary, society seems to be ruled by the powers of chance? There, public business is conducted with an irregularity, and a pa.s.sionate and feverish excitement, which does not announce a long or sure duration.

I am no longer comparing the Anglo-American states to foreign nations; but I am contrasting them with each other, and endeavoring to discover why they are so unlike. The arguments which are derived from the nature of the country and the difference of legislation, are here all set aside. Recourse must be had to some other cause; and what other cause can there be except the manners of the people?

It is in the eastern states that the Anglo-Americans have been longest accustomed to the government of democracy, and that they have adopted the habits and conceived the notions most favorable to its maintenance.

Democracy has gradually penetrated into their customs, their opinions, and the forms of social intercourse; it is to be found in all the details of daily life equally as in the laws. In the eastern states the instruction and practical education of the people have been most perfected, and religion has been most thoroughly amalgamated with liberty. Now these habits, opinions, customs, and convictions, are precisely the const.i.tuent elements of that which I have denominated manners.

In the western states, on the contrary, a portion of the same advantages is still wanting. Many of the Americans of the west were born in the woods, and they mix the ideas and the customs of savage life with the civilisation of their parents. Their pa.s.sions are more intense; their religious morality less authoritative; and their convictions are less secure. The inhabitants exercise no sort of control over their fellow-citizens, for they are scarcely acquainted with each other. The nations of the west display, to a certain extent, the inexperience and the rude habits of a people in its infancy; for although they are composed of old elements, their a.s.semblage is of recent date.

The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the real cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations that is able to support a democratic government; and it is the influence of manners which produces the different degrees of order and of prosperity, that may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the geographical position of a country may have upon the duration of democratic inst.i.tutions is exaggerated in Europe. Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners. These three great causes serve, no doubt, to regulate and direct the American democracy; but if they were to be cla.s.sed in their proper order, I should say that the physical circ.u.mstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws very subordinate to the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a const.i.tution in spite of the manners of a country: while the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of human observation, and the common termination of all inquiry. So seriously do I insist upon this head, that if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence which I attribute to the practical experience, the habits, the opinions, in short, to the manners of the Americans, upon the maintenance of their inst.i.tutions, I have failed in the princ.i.p.al object of my work.

WHETHER LAWS AND MANNERS ARE SUFFICIENT TO MAINTAIN DEMOCRATIC INSt.i.tUTIONS IN OTHER COUNTRIES BESIDE AMERICA.

The Anglo-Americans, if transported into Europe, would be obliged to modify their Laws.--Distinction to be made between democratic Inst.i.tutions and American Inst.i.tutions.--Democratic Laws may be conceived better than, or at least different from, those which the American Democracy has adopted.--The Example of America only proves that it is possible to regulate Democracy by the a.s.sistance of Manners and Legislation.

I have a.s.serted that the success of democratic inst.i.tutions in the United States is more intimately connected with the laws themselves, and the manners of the people, than with the nature of the country. But does it follow that the same causes would of themselves produce the same results, if they were put into operation elsewhere; and if the country is no adequate subst.i.tute for laws and manners, can laws and manners in their turn prove a subst.i.tute for a country? It will readily be understood that the necessary elements of a reply to this question are wanting: other peoples are to be found in the New World beside the Anglo-Americans, and as these peoples are affected by the same physical circ.u.mstances as the latter, they may fairly be compared together. But there are no nations out of America which have adopted the same laws and manners, being dest.i.tute of the physical advantages peculiar to the Anglo-Americans. No standard of comparison therefore exists, and we can only hazard an opinion upon this subject.

It appears to me in the first place, that a careful distinction must be made between the inst.i.tutions of the United States and democratic inst.i.tutions in general. When I reflect upon the state of Europe, its mighty nations, its populous cities, its formidable armies, and the complex nature of its politics, I cannot suppose that even the Anglo-Americans, if they were transported to our hemisphere, with their ideas, their religion, and their manners, could exist without considerably altering their laws. But a democratic nation may be imagined, organized differently from the American people. It is not impossible to conceive a government really established upon the will of the majority; but in which the majority, repressing its natural propensity to equality, should consent, with a view to the order and the stability of the state, to invest a family or an individual with all the prerogatives of the executive. A democratic society might exist, in which the forces of the nation would be more centralized than they are in the United States; the people would exercise a less direct and less irresistible influence upon public affairs, and yet every citizen, invested with certain rights, would partic.i.p.ate, within his sphere, in the conduct of the government. The observations I made among the Anglo-Americans induce me to believe that democratic inst.i.tutions of this kind, prudently introduced into society, so as gradually to mix with the habits and to be infused with the opinions of the people, might subsist in other countries beside America. If the laws of the United States were the only imaginable democratic laws, or the most perfect which it is possible to conceive, I should admit that the success of those inst.i.tutions affords no proof of the success of democratic inst.i.tutions in general, in a country less favored by natural circ.u.mstances. But as the laws of America appear to me to be defective in several respects, and as I can readily imagine others of the same general nature, the peculiar advantages of that country do not prove that democratic inst.i.tutions cannot succeed in a nation less favored by circ.u.mstances, if ruled by better laws.

If human nature were different in America from what it is elsewhere; or if the social condition of the Americans engendered habits and opinions among them different from those which originate in the same social condition in the Old World, the American democracies would afford no means of predicting what may occur in other democracies. If the Americans displayed the same propensities as all other democratic nations, and if their legislators had relied upon the nature of the country and the favor of circ.u.mstances to restrain those propensities within due limits, the prosperity of the United States would be exclusively attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example, without sharing their natural advantages. But neither of these suppositions is borne out by facts.