Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2017-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

OF THE REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, AND WHAT THEIR CHANCES OF DURATION ARE.

The Union is only an Accident. — Republican Institutions have more Permanence. — A Republic for the Present is the natural State of the Anglo-Americans. — Reason of this. — In order to destroy it, all the Laws must be changed at the same Time, and a great Alteration take place in Manners. — Difficulties which the Americans would experience in creating an Aristocracy.

THE dismemberment of the Union, by introducing war into the heart of those States which are now confederate, with standing armies, a dictatorship, and a heavy taxation, might eventually compromise the fate of republican institutions. But we ought not to confound the future prospects of the republic with those of the Union. The Union is an accident, which will only last as long as circumstances favor it; but a republican form of government seems to me the natural state of the Americans, which nothing but the continued action of hostile causes, always acting in the same direction, could change into a monarchy. The Union exists principally in the law which formed it; one revolution, one change in public opinion, might destroy it forever; but the republic has a deeper foundation to rest upon.

What is understood by a republican government in the United States, is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself. It is a regular state of things really founded upon the enlightened will of the people. It is a conciliatory government, under which resolutions are allowed time to ripen; and in which they are deliberately discussed, and are executed only when mature. The republicans in the United States set a high value upon morality, respect religious belief, and acknowledge the existence of rights. They profess to think that a people ought to be moral, religious, and temperate, in proportion as it is free. What is called the republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority, which, after having had time to examine itself, and to give proof of its existence, is the common source of all the powers of the State. But the power of the majority itself is not unlimited. Above it, in the moral world, are humanity, justice, and reason; and in the political world, vested rights. The majority recognizes these two barriers; and if it now and then overstep them, it is because, like individuals, it has passions, and, like them, it is prone to do what is wrong, whilst it discerns what is right.

But the demagogues of Europe have made strange discoveries. A republic is not, according to them, the rule of the majority, as has hitherto been thought, but the rule of those who are strenuous partisans of the majority. It is not the people who preponderate in this kind of government, but those who know what is good for the people; — a happy distinction, which allows men to act in the name of nations without consulting them, and to claim their gratitude whilst their rights are trampled under foot.

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