Use and Abuse of Political Terms

mr. lewis is known in society as the son of the Right Hon. T. Frankland Lewis, and in literature, as the translator, jointly with Mr. Henry Tufnell, of two erudite and interesting works on classical antiquity, Muller’s Dorians, and Bockh’s Public Economy of Athens.[*] Mr. Lewis is also the author of a little work on logic;[†] to which subject, stimulated like many others of the Oxford youth, by the precepts and example of Dr. Whately, he has devoted more than common attention, and was so far peculiarly qualified for writing such a work as the volume before us professes to be. This alone should entitle him to no slight praise; for such is the present state of the human mind, in some important departments, that it is often highly meritorious to have written a book, in itself of no extraordinary merit, if the work afford proof that any one of the requisites for writing a good book on the same subject is possessed in an eminent degree.

Certain it is, that there scarcely ever was a period when logic was so little studied, systematically, and in a scientific manner, as of late years; while, perhaps, no generation ever had less to plead in extenuation of neglecting it. For if, in order to reason well, it were only necessary to be destitute of every spark of fancy and poetic imagination, the world of letters and thought might boast, just now, of containing few besides good reasoners; people to whom, one would imagine, that logic must be all in all, if we did not, to our astonishment, find that they despise it. But the most prosaic matter-of-fact person in the world must not flatter himself that he is able to reason because he is fit for nothing else. Reasoning, like all other mental excellencies, comes by appropriate culture: not by exterminating the opposite good quality, the other half of a perfect character. Perhaps the mere reasoners, with whom the world abounds, would be considerably less numerous, if men really took the pains to learn to reason. It is a sign of a weak judgment, as of a weak virtue, to take to flight at the approach of every thing which Edition: current; Page: [4] can, by any remote possibility, lead it astray. Men who, for want of cultivation, have the intellects of dwarfs, are of course the slaves of their imagination, if they have any, as they are the slaves of their sensations, if they have not; and it is partly, perhaps, because the systematic culture of the thinking faculty is in little repute, that imagination also is in such bad odour; there being no solidity and vigour of intellect to resist it where it tends to mislead. The sublimest of English poets composed an elementary book of logic for the schools;[*] but our puny rhymsters think logic, forsooth, too dry for them;* and our logicians, from that and other causes, very commonly say with M. Casimir Perier, A quoi un poëte est-il bon?

In undertaking to treat of the use and abuse of the leading terms of political philosophy, Mr. Lewis has set before himself a task to which no one but a logician could be competent, and one of the most important to which logic could be applied. If, however, we were disposed for minute criticism, we might find some scope for it in the very title-page. We might ask, what is meant by an abuse of terms; and whether a man is not at liberty to employ terms in any way which enables him to deliver himself of his own ideas the most intelligibly; to bring home to the minds of others, in the greatest completeness, the impression which exists in his own? This question, though it has a considerable bearing upon many parts of Mr. Lewis’s book, throws, however, no doubt upon the importance of the object he aims at. His end is, to prevent things essentially different, from being confounded, because they happen to be called by the same name. It is past doubt that this, like all other modes of false and slovenly thinking, might be copiously exemplified from the field of politics; and Mr. Lewis has not been unhappy in his choice of examples. The instances, in which the confusion of language is the consequence, and not the cause, of the erroneous train of thought (which we believe to be generally the more common case,) are equally worthy of Mr. Lewis’s attention, and will, no doubt, in time receive an equal share of it.

Some notion of the extent of ground over which our author travels may be gathered from his table of contents; which, with that view, we transcribe:

To explain thoroughly the various senses of any one of these terms, would require, possibly, as much space, as Mr. Lewis has devoted to them all. His observations, however, are those of an instructed and intelligent mind. They contain, perhaps, not much that is absolutely new; except that ideas, which the mind has made completely its own, always come out in a form more or less different from that in which they went in, and are, in that sense, always original. Moreover, any one who can look straight into a thing itself, and not merely at its image mirrored in another man’s mind, can also look at things, upon occasion, when there is no other man to point them out.*

Yet, highly as we think of this work, and still more highly of the author’s capabilities, we will not pretend that he has realized all our conceptions of what such a work ought to be. We do not think he is fully conscious of what his subject requires of him. The most that he ever seems to accomplish, is to make out that something is wrong, but not how that which is wrong may be made right. He may say, that this is all he aimed at; and so, indeed, it is. But it may always be questioned, whether one has indeed cut down to the Edition: current; Page: [6] very root of an error, who leaves no truth planted in its stead. Mr. Lewis, at least, continually leaves the mind under the unsatisfactory impression, that the matter has not been probed to the bottom, and that underneath almost every thing which he sees, there lies something deeper which he does not see. If in this we should be deemed hypercritical, we would say in our defence, that we should never think of ranging Mr. Lewis in the class of those, from whom we take thankfully and without asking questions, any trifling matter, which is all they have to bestow. The author of such a work as the present, is entitled to be tried by the same standard as the highest order of intellect; to be compared not with the small productions of small minds, but with ideal perfection.

Mankind have many ideas, and but few words. This truth should never be absent from the mind of one who takes upon him to decide if another man’s language is philosophical or the reverse. Two consequences follow from it; one, that a certain laxity in the use of language must be borne with, if a writer makes himself understood; the other, that, to understand a writer who is obliged to use the same words as a vehicle for different ideas, requires a vigorous effort of co-operation on the part of the reader. These unavoidable ambiguities render it easier, we admit, for confusion of ideas to pass undetected: but they also render it more difficult for any man’s ideas to be so expressed that they shall not appear confused; particularly when viewed with that habitual contempt with which men of clear ideas generally regard those, any of whose ideas are not clear, and with that disposition which contempt, like every other passion, commonly carries with it, to presume the existence of its object. It should be recollected, too, that many a man has a mind teeming with important thoughts, who is quite incapable of putting them into words which shall not be liable to any metaphysical objection; that when this is the case, the logical incoherence or incongruity of the expression, is commonly the very first thing which strikes the mind, and that which there is least merit in perceiving. The man of superior intellect, in that case, is not he who can only see that the proposition precisely as stated, is not true; but he who, not overlooking the incorrectness at the surface, does, nevertheless, discern that there is truth at the bottom. The logical defect, on the other hand, is the only thing which strikes the eye of the mere logician. The proper office, we should have conceived, of a clear thinker, would be to make other men’s thoughts clear for them, if they cannot do it for themselves, and to give words to the man of genius, fitted to express his ideas with philosophical accuracy. Socrates, in the beautiful dialogue called the Phædrus, describes his own vocation as that of a mental midwife:[*] not so Mr. A. or B., who, perhaps, owes the advantage of clear Edition: current; Page: [7] ideas to the fact of his having no ideas which it is at all difficult to make clear. The use of logic, it would seem, to such a person, is not to help others, but to privilege himself against being required to listen to them. He will not think it worth his while to examine what a man has to say, unless it is put to him in such a manner that it shall cost him no trouble at all to make it out. If you come to him needing help, you may learn from him that you are a fool; but you certainly will not be made wise.

It would be grossly unjust to Mr. Lewis to accuse him of any thing approaching to this; but we could have wished that his work could have been more decidedly cited as an example of the opposite quality. We desiderate in it somewhat more of what becomes all men, but, most of all, a young man, to whom the struggles of life are only in their commencement, and whose spirit cannot yet have been wounded, or his temper embittered by hostile collision with the world, but which, in young men more especially, is apt to be wanting—a slowness to condemn. A man must now learn, by experience, what once came almost by nature to those who had any faculty of seeing; to look upon all things with a benevolent, but upon great men and their works with a reverential spirit, rather to seek in them for what he may learn from them, than for opportunities of shewing what they might have learned from him; to give such men the benefit of every possibility of their having spoken with a rational meaning; not easily or hastily to persuade himself that men like Plato, and Locke, and Rousseau, and Bentham, gave themselves a world of trouble in running after something which they thought was a reality, but which he Mr. A. B. can clearly see to be an unsubstantial phantom; to exhaust every other hypothesis, before supposing himself wiser than they; and even then to examine, with good will and without prejudice, if their error do not contain some germ of truth; and if any conclusion, such as a philosopher can adopt, may even yet be built upon the foundation on which they, it may be, have reared nothing but an edifice of sand.

Such men are not refuted because they are convicted of using words occasionally with no very definite meaning, or even of founding an argument upon an ambiguity. The substance of correct reasoning may still be there, although there be a deficiency in the forms. A vague term, which they may never have given themselves the trouble to define, may yet, on each particular occasion, have excited in their minds precisely the ideas it should excite. The leading word in an argument may be ambiguous; but between its two meanings there is often a secret link of connexion, unobserved by the critic but felt by the author, though perhaps he may not have given himself a strictly logical account of it; and the conclusion may turn not upon what is different in the two meanings, but upon what they have in common, or at least analogous.

Until logicians know these things, and act as if they knew them, they must not expect that a logician and a captious man will cease to be, in common Edition: current; Page: [8] apprehension, nearly synonymous. How, in fact, can it be otherwise in the mind of a person, who knows not very clearly what logic is, but who finds that he can in no way give utterance to his conviction without infringing logical rules, while he is conscious all the time that the real grounds of the conviction have not been touched in the slightest degree?

It is only in a very qualified sense that these admonitions can be applied to Mr. Lewis; but there are so few persons of our time to whom they do not apply more or less, (and perhaps there have been but few at any time,) that we are not surprised to find them even in his case far from superfluous. It remains for us to establish this by particular instances.

Mr. Lewis, under the word right, gives a definition of legal rights, and then lays it down that all rights are the creatures of law, that is, of the will of the sovereign; that the sovereign himself has no rights, nor can any one have rights as against the sovereign; because, being sovereign, he is by that supposition exempt from legal obligation, or legal responsibility. So far, so good Mr. Lewis then says, that to call any thing a right which cannot be enforced by law, is an abuse of language. We answer,—Not until mankind have consented to be bound by Mr. Lewis’s definition. For example, when Dr. Johnson says[*] that a man has not a moral right to think as he pleases, “because he ought to inform himself, and think justly,” Mr. Lewis says [p. 21] he must mean legal right; and adds other observations, proving that he has not even caught a glimpse of Johnson’s drift. Again, according to him, whoever asserts that no man can have a right to do that which is wrong, founds an argument upon a mere ambiguity, confounding a right with the adjective right: and this ambiguity is “mischievous, because it serves as an inducement to error, and confounds things as well as words.” [P. xv.]

Now, we contend that Mr. Lewis is here censuring what he does not thoroughly understand, and that the use of the word right, in both these cases, is as good logic and as good English as his own. Right is the correlative of duty, or obligation; and (with some limitations) is co-extensive with those terms. Whatever any man is under an obligation to give you, or to do for you, to that you have a right. There are legal obligations, and there are consequently legal rights. There are also moral obligations; and no one, that we know of considers this phrase an abuse of language, or proposes that it should be dispensed with. It seems, therefore, but an adherence to the established usage of our language, to speak of moral rights; which stand in the same relation to moral obligations as legal rights do to legal obligations. All that is necessary is to settle distinctly with ourselves, and make it intelligible to those whom we are addressing, which kind of rights it is that we mean; if we fail in which, we become justly liable to Mr. Lewis’s censure. It has not Edition: current; Page: [9] totally escaped Mr. Lewis that there may be some meaning in the phrase, moral rights; but he has, by no means, correctly hit that meaning. He expounds it thus, “claims recommended by views of justice or public policy;” the sort of claim a man may be said to have to anything which you think it desirable that he should possess. [P. 8.] No such thing. No man in his sound senses considers himself to be wronged every time he does not get what he desires; every man distinguishes between what he thinks another man morally bound to do, and what he merely would like to see him do; between what is morally criminal, a fit subject for complaint or reproach, and what excites only regrets, and a wish that the act had been abstained from. No system of moral philosophy or metaphysics that we ever heard of, denies this distinction; though several have undertaken to account for it, and to place it upon the right footing.

If you may say that it is the moral duty of subjects to obey their government, you may also express this by saying that government has a moral right to their obedience. If you may say that it is the moral duty of sovereigns to govern well, or else to abdicate, you may say that subjects have a right to be well governed. If you may say, that it is morally culpable in a government to attempt to retain its authority, contrary to the inclinations of its subjects; you may say, that the people have a right to change their government. All this, without any logical inaccuracy, or “abuse of language.” We are not defending this phraseology as the best that can be employed; the language of right and the language of duty, are logically equivalent, and the latter has, in many respects, the advantage. We are only contending, that, whoever uses the word right shall not be adjudged guilty of nonsense, until it has been tried whether this mode of interpreting his meaning will make it sense. And this we complain that Mr. Lewis has not done.

To explain what we meant by saying that almost everything which Mr. Lewis sees has something lying under it which he does not see, we have now to shew, that, in catching at an imaginary ambiguity near the surface, he has missed the deeper and less obvious ambiguities by which men are really misled. Two of these we shall briefly set forth.

aSpeaking morally, you are said to have a right to do a thing, if all persons are morally bound not to hinder you from doing it. But, in another sense, to have a right to do a thing, is the opposite of having no right to do it,—bviz.b of being under a moral obligation to forbear cfromc doing it. In this sense, to say that you have a right to do a thing, means that you may do it without any breach of duty on your part, that other persons not only ought not to hinder you, but have no cause to think dthed worse of you for doing it. This is a Edition: current; Page: [10] perfectly distinct proposition from the preceding. The erighte which you have by virtue of a duty incumbent upon other persons, is obviously quite a different thing from a right consisting in the absence of any duty incumbent upon yourself. Yet the two things are perpetually confounded. Thus a man will say he has a right to publish his opinions; which may be true in this sense, that it would be a breach of duty in any other person to interfere and prevent the publication:—but he assumes thereupon, that in publishing his opinions, he himself violates no duty; which may either be true or false, depending, as it does, upon his having taken due pains to satisfy himself, first, that the opinions are true, and next, that their publication in this manner, and at this particular juncture, will probably be beneficial to the interests of truth, on the whole. fIn this sense of the word, a man has no right to do that which is wrong, though it may often happen that nobody has a right to prevent him from doing it.f

The second ambiguity is that of confounding a right, of any kind, with a right to enforce that right by resisting or punishing a violation of it. gMeng will say, for example, that they have a right to hah good government; which is undeniably true, it being the moral duty of their governors to govern them well. But in granting this, you are supposed to have admitted their right or liberty to turn out their governors, and perhaps to punish them, for having failed in the performance of this duty; which, far from being the same thing, is by no means universally true, but depends upon an immense number of varying circumstances,a and is, perhaps, altogether the knottiest question in practical ethics. This example involves both the ambiguities which we have mentioned.

We have dwelt longer on this one topic than the reader perhaps will approve. We shall pass more slightly over the remainder.

Our author treats with unqualified contempt all that has been written by Locke and others, concerning a state of nature and the social compact. [Pp. 185ff.] In this we cannot altogether agree with him. The state of society contemplated by Rousseau, in which mankind lived together without government, may never have existed, and it is of no consequence whether it did so or not. The question is not whether it ever existed, but whether there is any advantage in supposing it hypothetically; as we assume in argument all kinds of cases which never occur, in order to illustrate those which do. All discussions respecting a state of nature are inquiries what morality would be if there were no law. This is the real scope of Locke’s Essay on Government,[*] rightly understood: whatever is objectionable in the details did not Edition: current; Page: [11] arise from the nature of the inquiry, but from a certain wavering and obscurity in his notion of the grounds of morality itself. Nor is this mode of viewing the subject, we conceive, without its advantages, in an enlarged view, either of morality or law. Not to mention that, as is observed by Locke himself, all independent governments, in relation to one another, are actually in a state of nature, subject to moral duties but obeying no common superior;[*] so that the speculations which Mr. Lewis despises, tend, in international morality at least, to a direct practical application.

Even the social compact, (though a pure fiction, upon which no valid argument can consequently be founded,) and the doctrine connected with it, of the inalienable and imprescriptible rights of man, had this good in them, that they were suggested by a sense, that the power of the sovereign, although, of course, incapable of any legal limitation, has a moral limit, since a government ought not to take from any of its subjects more than it gives. Whatever obligation any man would lie under in a state of nature, not to inflict evil upon another for the sake of good to himself, that same obligation lies upon society towards every one of its members. If he injure or molest any of his fellow-citizens, the consequences of whatever they may be obliged to do in self-defence, must fall upon himself; but otherwise, the government fails of its duty, if on any plea of doing good to the community in the aggregate, it reduces him to such a state, that he is on the whole a loser by living in a state of government, and would have been better off if it did not exist. This is the truth which was dimly shadowed forth, in howsoever rude and unskilful a manner, in the theories of the social compact and of the rights of man. It was felt, that a man’s voluntary consent to live under a government, was the surest proof he could give of his feeling it to be beneficial to him: and so great was the importance attached to this sort of assurance, that where an express consent was out of the question, some circumstance was fixed upon, from which, by stretching a few points, a consent might be presumed. But the test is real, where, as in imperfectly settled countries, the forest is open to the man who is not contented with his lot.

Notwithstanding the length to which our remarks have extended, we cannot overlook one or two passages, less remarkable for their importance, than as proofs of the haste with which Mr. Lewis must have examined the authors and even the passages he has criticised.

Thus, where Mr. Bentham recommends natural procedure in the administration of justice, in opposition to technical, Mr. Lewis observes, that as it is impossible to suppose that any mode of judicial procedure should be left to the discretion of the judge guided by no rules, the word natural, in this case, “seems to be a vague term of praise, signifying that system which, to the writer, seems most expedient.” [Pp. 182-3.] It shews but little knowledge Edition: current; Page: [12] of Mr. Bentham’s habits of mind, to account in this way, of all others, for any phraseology he may think proper to adopt. The fact is, as has been explained a hundred times by Mr. Bentham himself,—that by natural procedure, he means what he also calls domestic procedure; viz. the simple and direct mode of getting at the truth which suggests itself naturally,—that is, readily and invariably, to all men who are inquiring in good earnest into any matter which, happening to concern themselves, they are really desirous to ascertain. That the technical methods of our own, and all other systems of law, are bad in proportion as they deviate from this, is what Mr. Bentham affirms, and, we will add, proves.

Again, when Mr. Mill speaks of the corruptive operation[*] of what are called the advantages of fortune, Mr. Lewis comments [pp. 184n-185n] upon the strangeness of this sentiment from the writer of a treatise on Political Economy;[†] that is, on the production and accumulation of wealth; and hints, that the work in question must have been composed with an object similar to that of a treatise on poisons. Did it never occur to Mr. Lewis, that Mr. Mill’s meaning might be, not that a people are corrupted by the amount of the wealth which they possess in the aggregate, but that the inequalities in the distribution of it have a tendency to corrupt those who obtain the large masses, especially when these come to them by descent, and not by merit, or any kind of exertion employed in earning them?

To add one instance more. Mr. Lewis falls foul of the often quoted sentence of Tacitus, “that the most degenerate states have the greatest number of laws; in corruptissimâ republicâ plurimæ leges;[‡] a position not only not true, but the very reverse of the truth, as the effect of the progress of civilization is to multiply enactments, in order to suit the extended relations, and the more refined and diversified forms of property, introduced by the improvement of society.” [P. 205.] Mr. Lewis is a scholar, and understands the words of Tacitus, but, in this case, it is clear, he has not understood the ideas. He has committed what he himself would call an ignoratio elenchi. By a corrupt society. Tacitus (we will take upon ourselves to assert) did not mean a rude society. The author was speaking of the decline of a nation’s morality, and the critic talks to you of the improvement of its industry. Tacitus meant, that, in the most immoral society, there is the most frequent occasion for the interposition of the legislator; and we venture to agree with him, thinking it very clear, that the less you are able to rely upon conscience and opinion, the Edition: current; Page: [13] more you are obliged to do by means of the law—a truth which is not only not the opposite of Mr. Lewis’s position, but stands in no logical relation to it at all, more than to the binomial theorem.

These are the blemishes of Mr. Lewis’s work. Yet they do not induce us to qualify our high opinion, both of the book and of its author. It is an able, and a useful publication; only, it is not a sufficient dissertation on the use and abuse of the leading political terms.

We have often thought, that a really philosophical Treatise on the Ambiguities of the Moral Sciences would be one of the most valuable scientific contributions which a man of first-rate intellectual ability could confer upon his age, and upon posterity. But it would not be so much a book of criticism as of inquiry. Its main end would be, not to set people right in their use of words, which you never can be qualified to do, so long as their thoughts, on the subject treated of, are in any way different from yours; but to get at their thoughts through their words, and to see what sort of a view of truth can be got, by looking at it in their way. It would then be seen, how multifarious are the properties and distinctions to be marked, and how few the words to mark them with, so that one word is sometimes all we have to denote a dozen different ideas, and that men go wrong less often than Mr. Lewis supposes, from using a word in many senses, but more frequently from using it only in one, the distinctions which it serves to mark in its other acceptations not being adverted to at all. Such a book would enable all kinds of thinkers, who are now at daggers-drawn, because they are speaking different dialects and know it not, to understand one another, and to perceive that, with the proper explanations, their doctrines are reconcilable: and would unite all the exclusive and one-sided systems, so long the bane of true philosophy, by placing before each man a more comprehensive view, in which the whole of what is affirmative in his own view would be included.

This is the larger and nobler design which Mr. Lewis should set before himself, and which, we believe, his abilities to be equal to, did he but feel that this is the only task worthy of them. He might thus contribute a large part to what is probably destined to be the great philosophical achievement of the era, of which many signs already announce the commencement; viz. to unite all half-truths, which have been fighting against one another ever since the creation, and blend them in one harmonious whole.

Rationale of Representation

this is the work of a writer who, in the difficult art of making philosophy popular, has excelled most of his contemporaries; and his present is not inferior to the best of his former productions.

The theoretical grounds of Representative Government, and the solutions of the more momentous of its practical problems, are laid down by our author, in the spirit which is now nearly universal among the more advanced thinkers on the subject, but with a felicity of adaptation to the wants of the most numerous class of readers, which is peculiarly his own. In addition to this, several popular fallacies, of most extensive prevalence, and infecting the very elements of political speculation, are refuted, conclusively and forcibly, and with as much depth of philosophy as the purpose required. The thoughts succeed one another in the most lucid order. The style is perspicuity itself. To a practised student in abstract speculation, it will appear diffuse; but this, in a book intended for popularity, is far from being a defect. To common readers a condensed style is always cramped and obscure: they want a manner of writing which shall detain them long enough upon each thought to give it time to sink into their minds. Our author is not, indeed, entitled to the transcendant praise due to those who, like Hobbes or Bacon, employ at pleasure either the power of condensation or that of enlargement; dwelling on the idea until it has made its way into the understanding, and then clenching it by one of those striking images, or of those pregnant and apophthegmatic expressions, which sum up whole paragraphs in a line, and engrave the meaning as with a burning steel upon the imagination. But if our author’s style does not come up to this exalted standard, it is easy, flowing, always unaffected, and has the greatest of merits, that to which all other excellencies of manner are merely subsidiary—that of perfectly expressing whatever he has occasion to express by it.

The work consists of an Introduction, and six Chapters: “On the proper Object and Province of Government;” “On the Grounds of Preference for a Representative Government;” “On the Representative Body;” “On the Electoral Body;” “On Elections;” and “On the Introduction of Changes in Political Institutions;” with two supplementary essays “On Political Equality,” and “On Rights.”

Edition: current; Page: [18]

This programme gives a correct indication of the scope and purpose of the book. It is rightly termed “The Rationale of Political Representation,” not “The Rationale of Government.” It attempts an outline of a part only of the philosophy of government, not the whole. The philosophy of government, a most extensive and complicated science, would comprise a complete view of the influences of political institutions; not only their direct, but what are in general so little attended to, their indirect and remote influences: how they affect the national character, and all the social relations of a people; and reciprocally, how the state of society, and of the human mind, aids, counteracts, or modifies the effects of a form of government, and promotes or impairs its stability. Such is not the design of this work; and, considered in this comprehensive sense, the science itself is in its infancy.* But the advantages of a representative government, and the principles on which it must be constructed in order to realise those advantages, form a branch of the subject, the theory of which, so far as one branch can be considered separately from the rest, may be regarded as nearly perfect; and to the exposition of this, the work before us is dedicated.

It must be admitted also, that this one branch of the inquiry runs parallel, for a considerable distance, to the main trunk. The reasons for having a representative government, and the reasons for having a government at all, are, to a very considerable extent, identical. The ends or uses of government are indeed multifarious, since we may include among them all benefits, of whatever kind, to the existence of which government is indispensable; but the first and most fundamental of all, the only one the importance of which literally amounts to necessity, is to enable mankind to live in society without oppressing and injuring one another. And the need of a representative government rests upon precisely the same basis. As mankind, in a state of society, have need of government, because, without it, every strong man would oppress his weaker neighbour; so mankind, in a state of government, have need Edition: current; Page: [19] of popular representation, because, without it, those who wielded the powers of government would oppress the rest.

Of this fundamental truth an acute sense is manifested by our author. He rests the necessity of a popular government upon one primary axiom: “That men will, in the majority of cases, prefer their own interest to that of others, when the two are placed in competition.” (P. 68.) Whoever denies this, denies the principle on which, it is most certain, he himself habitually acts, when the interest at stake happens to be his own. It is the principle which all persons, when at liberty to follow their inclinations, uniformly observe in the guardianship of their own property. They do not appoint an agent, with liberty to do as he pleases, and without reserving the power of instantaneous dismissal. If they did, they would expect that the obligations of his trust would be disregarded, when in competition either with the interest of his pocket or with that of his ease.

“From this principle,” says our author, “that men will prefer their own interest to that of others, when the two are placed in competition, it follows, that the interest of the community at large will be uniformly consulted only when they have the regulation of their own affairs.” [P. 69.]

But since government cannot be performed by the community en masse; since “it is implied in the very notion of government, that a few are invested with authority over the rest; since, from the nature of the case, the legislative power must be lodged in the hands of a few; and as the few possessing it will be tempted in a thousand ways to sacrifice the public good to their own private interest;” [pp. 69, 70-1] here is but one resource:

One might have imagined, that if any propositions on public affairs deserved the character of maxims of common sense, these did. Views of human affairs more practical and business-like, more in accordance with the received Edition: current; Page: [20] rules of prudence in private life, it would be difficult to find. These doctrines, nevertheless, or at least the possibility of drawing any conclusions from them, have met with questioners. That human beings will commonly prefer their own interests to those of other people, and that the way to secure fidelity to a trust is to make the trustee’s interest coincide with his duty, have been classed among propositions which are either not true, or, if true at all, only in a sense in which they are insignificant and unmeaning. Nor has the assertion been made of these doctrines alone, but of all propositions relating to the motives of human actions. “When we pass,” it has been said, “beyond maxims which it is impossible to deny without a contradiction in terms, and which therefore do not enable us to advance a single step in practical knowledge, it is not possible to lay down a single general rule respecting the motives which influence human actions.”[*] Such was the doctrine maintained in a memorable article in the Edinburgh Review, by a writer, all whose ingenuity and brilliancy would not have made his subsequent fortunes what they have been, but for the grateful acceptance which this doctrine found in influential quarters.

Our author has no great difficulty in disposing of this theory:

He then shows, by copious examples, what it is strange should require to be exemplified in order to be understood—that a general proposition may be of the greatest practical moment, although not absolutely true without a single exception; and that in managing the affairs of great aggregations of human beings, we must adapt our rules to the nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, and not to the thousandth extraordinary case, “ ’Tis certain,” says Hume (in a remarkable passage quoted by our author), “that general principles, however intricate they may seem, must always, if they are just and sound, prevail in the general course of things, though they may fail in particular cases; and it is the chief business of philosophers to regard the general course of things. I may add, that it is also the chief business of politicians, especially in the domestic government of the state, when the public good, which is or ought to be their object, depends on the concurrence of a multitude of causes—not as in foreign politics, upon accidents and chances, and the caprices of a few persons.”[*]

“The views of political reasoning here advocated,” continues our author, “might be confirmed by an appeal to some of our ablest writers;” and among other apt quotations, he adds two from Burke, whom Conservatives of all denominations glorify as an oracle, because on one great occasion his prejudices coincided with theirs, but for whose authority they have not a shadow of respect when it tells against their vulgar errors.

If principles of politics cannot be founded, as Burke says, “on the nature of man,” on what can they be founded? On history? But is there a single fact in history which can be interpreted but by means of principles drawn from human nature? We will suppose your fact made out: the thing happened (we will admit) as you affirm it did; but who shall tell what produced it?—the only question you want answered. On this subject our author has some instructive remarks, which we regret that our limits do not permit us to quote, as well as to corroborate by some others which we think necessary to complete the analysis of the subject. It is well worthy to be treated in a separate article.

It may be interesting to collate with our author’s refutation of the Edinburgh Reviewer, what the writer, who was the principal object of the reviewer’s attack, has deemed it needful to say in his defence. This is to be found in pp. 277 to 292 of a recent volume, entitled A Fragment on Mackintosh,[†] where it is shown that the necessity of identification of interest between the rulers and the ruled, and the probability (amounting practically to certainty) that, in so far as that identification is incomplete, the rulers will pursue their separate interest, to the detriment of the ruled, has been recognised as the foundation of political wisdom by almost all its greatest masters, ancient and modern. Well may the writer exclaim—“It is mortifying to find one’s self under the necessity of vindicating the wisdom of ages” against what he calls (not too severely) “pitiful objections.”[‡]

aFrom bthisb principle, of the necessity of identifying the interest of the government with that of the people, most of the practical maxims of a representative government are corollaries. All popular institutions are means towards rendering the identity of interest more complete. We say more complete, because (and this it is important to remark) perfectly complete it can never be. An approximation is all that is, in the nature of things, possible. By pushing to its utmost extent the accountability of governments to the people, you indeed take away from them the power of prosecuting their own interests at the expense of the people by force, but you leave to them the whole range and compass of fraud. An attorney is accountable to his Edition: current; Page: [23] client, and removable at his client’s pleasure; but we should scarcely say that his interest is identical with that of his client. When the accountability is perfect, the interest of rulers approximates more and more to identity with that of the people, in proportion as the people are more enlightened. The identity would be perfect, only if the people were so wise, that it should no longer be practicable to employ deceit as an instrument of government: a point of advancement only one stage below that at which they could do without government altogether; at least, without force, and penal sanctions, not (of course) without guidance, and organized co-operation.

Identification of interest between the rulers and the ruled, being, therefore, in a literal sense, impossible to be realized, cmust notc be spoken of as a condition which a government must absolutely fulfil; but as an end to be incessantly aimed at, and approximated to as nearly as circumstances render possible, and as is compatible with the regard due to other ends. For dthed identity of interest, even if it were wholly attainable, not being the sole requisite of good government, expediency may require that we should sacrifice some portion of it, or (to speak more precisely) content ourselves with a somewhat less approximation to it than might possibly be attainable, for the sake of some other end.

The only end, liable occasionally to conflict with that which we have been insisting on, and at all comparable to it in importance—the only other condition essential to good government—is this: That it be government by a select body, not by the epeoplee collectively: That political questions be not decided by an appeal, either direct or indirect, to the judgment or will of an uninstructed mass, whether of gentlemen or of clowns; but by the deliberately-formed opinions of a comparatively few, specially educated for the task. This is an element of good government which has existed, in a greater or less degree, in some aristocracies, though unhappily not in our own; and has been the cause of whatever reputation for prudent and skilful administration those governments have enjoyed. It has seldom been found in any aristocracies but those which were avowedly such. Aristocracies in the guise of monarchies (such as those of England and France) have very generally been aristocracies of idlers; while the others (such as Rome, Venice, and Holland) might partially be considered as aristocracies of experienced and laborious men. fBut of all governments, ancient or modernf, the one by which this excellence is possessed in the most eminent degree is the government of Prussia—a gmostg powerfully and hskilfully organized aristocracy of allh the most highly educated men in the kingdom. The British government in India partakes (with considerable modifications) of the same character.

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iWherei this principle has been combined with other fortunate circumstances, and particularly (as in Prussia) with circumstances rendering the popularity of the government almost a necessary condition of its security, a very considerable degree of good government has occasionally been produced, jevenj without any express accountability to the people. Such fortunate circumstances, however, are seldom to be reckoned upon. But though the principle of government by persons specially brought up to it will not suffice to produce good government, good government cannot be had without it; and the grand difficulty in politics will for a long time be, how best to conciliate the two great elements on which good government depends; to combine the greatest amount of the advantage derived from the independent judgment of a specially instructed kFew, with the greatest degree of the security for rectitude of purpose derived from rendering those Few responsible to the Many.

What is necessary, however, to make the two ends perfectly reconcilable, is a smaller matter than might at first sight be supposed. It is not necessary that the Manyk should themselves be perfectly wise; it is sufficient, if they be duly sensible of the value of superior wisdom. It is sufficient if they be aware, that the majority of political questions turn upon considerations of which they, and all persons not trained for the purpose, must necessarily be very imperfect judges; and that their judgment must in general be exercised rather upon the characters and talents of the persons whom they appoint to decide these questions for them, than upon the questions themselves. They would then select as their representatives those whom the general voice of the instructed pointed out as the most instructed; and would retain them, so long as no symptom was manifested in their conduct of being under the influence of interests or of feelings at variance with the public welfare. This implies no greater wisdom in the people than the very ordinary wisdom, of knowing what things they are and are not sufficient judges of. If the bulk of any nation possess a fair share of this wisdom, the argument for universal suffrage, so far as respects that people, is irresistible: for, the experience of ages, and especially of all great national emergencies, bears out the assertion, that whenever the multitude are really alive to the necessity of superior intellect, they rarely fail to distinguish those who possess it.a

The opinions which we have been stating are substantially those of our author: from whose pages we now proceed to exemplify their application.

From the principle that the interest of the ruling body should be as closely as possible identified with that of the people, follow most of the conclusions respecting the constitution of the supreme legislature, which are commonly Edition: current; Page: [25] contended for by the thorough reformers. Such are—first, that the utmost possible publicity should be given to the proceedings of parliament: secondly, that its members should be elected at stated periods: thirdly, that these periods should be short; sufficiently so, to render the sense of responsibility a perpetual, not an occasional feeling. Our author thinks, with most of the complete reformers, that three years are “the longest period consistent with a salutary sense of accountableness.” (P. 203.) Fourthly, the votes at elections must be so taken, as to express the real sentiments of the electors, and not the sentiments merely of some person who has the means of bribing or of coercing them. This, where there are great inequalities of fortune, and where the majority of all classes but the richest are more or less in a dependent condition, requires that the votes be taken in secret. All these topics are handled in our author’s best manner. We shall quote one passage from near the end of the discussion on the ballot; and should have extended our quotation, had not the subject been so recently and so fully treated by ourselves.[*] After replying to some of the common objections on the ballot, our author says—

We believe this to be a true picture of the feelings of at least the most powerful class among the enemies of popular institutions. Experience proves but too truly, that “to men accustomed to domineer over the wills of their fellow-creatures, it is intolerably irksome to be reduced to the necessity of appealing to their understandings.” The hands which have ruled by force will not submit to rule by persuasion. A generation at least must elapse, before an aristocracy will consent to seek by fair means the power they have been used to exercise by foul. And yet, their portion of importance under popular institutions is no niggardly one, unless made so by their own perverseness. In every country where there are rich and poor, the administration of public affairs would, even under the most democratic constitution, be mainly in the hands of the rich; as has been the case in all the republics of the old world, ancient and modern. Not only have the wealthy and leisured classes ten times the means of acquiring personal influence, ten times the means of acquiring intellectual cultivation, which any other person can bring into competition with them; but the very jealousies, supposed to be characteristic of democracy, conspire to the same result. Men are more jealous of being commanded by their equals in fortune and condition, than by their superiors. Political power will generally be the rich man’s privilege, as heretofore; but it will no longer be born with him, nor come to him, as heretofore, while he is asleep. He must not only resign all corrupt advantage from its possession, but he must pay the price for it of a life of labour. More than this: he must consent to associate with his poorer fellow-citizens, as if there existed between him and them something like human feelings, and must give over treating them as if they were a race to be kept coldly at a distance—a sort of beings connected with him by a less tie of sympathy than the brute animals of his household. Under really popular institutions, the higher classes must give up either this anti-social and inhuman feeling, or their political influence. Surely no good, hardly even any rational person, to whom the alternative was offered, would hesitate about the choice.

Is it not, then, a melancholy reflection, that in England (and in England, Edition: current; Page: [27] we believe, alone, among the great European nations) the youth of the aristocratic classes are even more intensely aristocratic than their fathers—more wedded to all that is most noxious in the privileges of their class—animated by a more violent hostility to those tendencies of their age, in accommodating themselves to which lies their sole chance of either being at ease in it, or exercising any beneficial influence over it? And how deeply ought this thought to impress upon us the necessity, the pressing and immediate necessity, of a radical reform in those institutions of education, which mould these youthful minds, and cherish, when they ought to counteract, the baneful influences exercised over them by the accident of their social position?

The question, Who should compose the constituency? is the next which presents itself. This is rather a more complicated question than any of the preceding, having to be decided by a compromise between conflicting considerations.

By making the members of the sovereign legislature elective, by sending them back to their constituents at short intervals, and by taking the votes in secret, we provide for the identity of their interest with that of the electors. But what if the interest of the electors differs from that of the community? We have then only an oligarchy of electors, instead of an oligarchy of senators. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that the former oligarchy will be less tenacious of its separate interest than the other, or less ready to sacrifice the public interest to it. Not only must the interest of the representatives be made, so far as possible, coincident with that of the electors, but the interest of the electors must be made coincident with the interest of the whole people.

If this principle were to be followed out, without limitation from any other principle, it would, we conceive, lead to universal suffrage. Imposing authorities, it is true, have held that a portion of the people may be found, much less than the whole, whose interest, so far as government is concerned, is identical with that of the whole. A portion might undoubtedly be found, less than the whole, whose interest would generally lie in good government, and only occasionally in bad. But complete identity of interest appears to us to be unattainable: (we are speaking, of course, as our argument requires, of selfish interest.)* The identity which is contended for cannot be identity Edition: current; Page: [28] in all things, but only in those which properly fall within the province of government. The payers of wages, for instance, and the receivers, have opposite interests on the question of high or low wages; but as this is a question in which the interference of government cannot be really beneficial to either, the interest of both, so far as relates to the purposes of government, is (it may be contended) the same. Admitting, however (which is more than we are prepared to admit), that there exists no mode in which the middle classes could really benefit their selfish interests at the expense of the poorer class, by means of their exclusive possession of the government; still, when there is a real diversity of interest between two parties, although confined to matters with which law cannot beneficially interfere, and the powers of law are in the hands of one party, it is rarely that we do not witness some Edition: current; Page: [29] attempt, well or ill advised, to make those powers instrumental to the peculiar purposes of the one party; and if these purposes are not thereby compassed, yet the interests of the other party often suffer exceedingly by the means used to compass them. Such, for example, were the laws against combinations of workmen;[*] and the laws which have existed at some periods of our history, fixing a maximum of wages. Nor is the evil annihilated although the excluded be a minority: the small number of the oppressed diminishes the profits of oppression, but does not always weaken the feelings which lead to it. Is the interest of the free blacks in the northern states of America the same with that of the whites? If so, why are they a kind of outcasts? So long, therefore, as any person capable of an independent will is excluded from the elective franchise, we cannot think that the evils of Edition: current; Page: [30] misgovernment, in so far as liable to arise from a diversity of interest between the ruling body and the community, are entirely guarded against.

There are, however, other evils to be contended with, besides those arising from diversity of interest; and granting, that, by the exclusion of one class from the suffrage, something must be given up of the identity of interest between the constituency and the entire community, yet if some purpose of more than equivalent utility be attained by the sacrifice, it may still be advisable. And this, in our author’s opinion, is the case. He proposes that a certain portion of identity of interest should be sacrificed, for the sake of obtaining a higher average degree of intelligence. That this is an object worth attaining at some cost, nobody will deny. A certain measure of intelligence in the electors is manifestly indispensable: a much larger measure would be eminently desirable; and if any test, even an approximative one, could be obtained of its existence, without trenching too much upon the identity of interest, the exclusion from the franchise of all who could not pass that test would add to the securities for good government. But when our author contends that such an approximative test may be found in the possession of a certain amount of property, we can only partially agree with him. It is but fair to quote the passage.

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These propositions must, we think, be greatly qualified. They are true until we rise above the class which cannot read, or which never does read, and consequently takes no interest in political affairs; for though the intelligence of many people does not come to them by reading, the habit of applying that intelligence to public matters commonly does. But when, ascending in the scale, we reach a class which habitually reads, especially which reads newspapers, we suspect that we attain as high an average of intelligence as is to be found in any class not expressly bred and educated for some intellectual profession. We are speaking, of course, of England: in any country possessing a really national education, both for rich and poor, the case, we allow, would be different. But in this country, and at this time, between an average Birmingham gun-maker, an average London shopkeeper, and an average country gentleman, we suspect the differences of intelligence are more apparent than real. The land-holder, we find, has just as little foresight of the consequences of his actions; miscalculates as egregiously in his own conduct, both public and private; hates just as intensely all who, from however patriotic motives, set themselves against any of the things which he likes; despises as sincerely, under the name of theorists and visionaries, all who see farther than himself; is as incapable of feeling the force of any arguments which conflict with his own opinion of his immediate and direct interest. These are the tests of intelligence, and not the being able to repeat Propria quœ maribus.[*] If the bulk of our operative manufacturers are to be excluded from the suffrage, it must be, we suspect, on quite other grounds than inferiority of intelligence to those who are permitted to exercise it.

We have never been able to understand why, if the real object in excluding poverty were to exclude ignorance and vice, the test should not be applied to ignorance and vice directly, and not to something which is a mere presumption of their existence. It would be easy to exclude all who cannot read, write, and cipher. If a higher test be desirable, there would be no great difficulty in contriving it. If there were here (as there are in Prussia, and as there would be in every country where the good of the people was cared for) schools for all, under the superintendence of the state, the test might be a certificate from the teacher at the public or some other school, of having passed creditably through it. A test of morality would, in the present state of society, be not so easy to devise; something, however, might be done towards it. To have been seen drunk, during the year previous, might be a disqualification at the annual registry. To have received parish relief during Edition: current; Page: [32] the same time, might be equally so. Conviction for any criminal offence might disqualify for a longer period, or for ever.

The most rational argument which we can conceive, for the exclusion of those who are called persons of no property, would be founded, not on inferiority of intellect, but on difference in apparent interest. All classes (it might be said) are in a most imperfect state of intelligence and knowledge; so much so, that they cannot be expected to be, and, as experience shows, hardly ever are, accessible to any views of their own ultimate interest which rest upon a train of reasoning. Since, then, it is certain that those who enjoy the franchise will exercise it in the manner dictated, not by their real and distant, but by their apparent and immediate interest, let us at least select, as the depositaries of power, those whose apparent and immediate interest is allied with the great principles on which society rests, the security of property, and the maintenance of the authority of law. These, we are sure, are safe in the hands of the possessors of property: an equal regard for them on the part of those without property would suppose a much higher degree of intelligence, since the latter benefit by them so much less obviously and directly, though not less really, than the former.

This places the question on a distinct and tangible issue; namely, whether the body of the operatives, or that portion of the body whom the rest follow, do in fact entertain opinions or feelings at variance with any of the primary principles of good government. This is a question not of argument, but of fact; and as such we think the question of universal suffrage ought always to be considered. That the prevalence of such mischievous opinions and feelings, and the difficulty of eradicating them where they exist, are vastly exaggerated, we have good reason to be assured: to what extent they really are entertained, we have no means of accurately knowing; and our belief is, that almost all persons of what are called the educated classes, if they have any opinion on the point, have it without evidence.

Happily there is no necessity for a speedy decision of the question. Many important things are yet to be done, before universal suffrage can even be brought seriously into discussion: and it will probably never be introduced, unless preceded by such improvements in popular education as will greatly weaken the apprehensions at present entertained of it. The middle classes, too, if freed from the coercive power of the rich, have an interest absolutely identical with that of the community on all the questions likely to engage much of the attention of parliament for many years to come; and no one is disposed to deny that we ought cautiously to feel our way, and watch well the consequences of each extension of the suffrage before venturing upon another. With a people like the English, whose feelings are not apt to be kindled by an abstract principle, but only by a practical grievance, very ordinary prudence would enable us to stop short at the point where good Edition: current; Page: [33] government is practically attained.

We return to the volume before us, from which we shall not again permit ourselves to stray so far.

Our author brings forward, with the prominence which justly belongs to them, several of the requisites of a well-constituted representative government, the importance of which is still far from being adequately felt. One is, that the supreme legislature should be relieved from the weight of purely local business which now oppresses it, by the establishment of subordinate representative assemblies.

On this question, which has already occupied ourselves, and to which we shall return again and again, this is not the place to enlarge.

Another change for which our author earnestly contends, is a large reduction in the numbers of the House of Commons. This had already been advocated by Mr. Bulwer, in his England and the English,[*] and was one of the many points in which that valuable work was in advance of the public mind. “Large assemblies,” our author justly observes [p. 161], “are unfit for deliberation;” and the immense consumption of the time of parliament, and neglect of the real business of the nation, which arises from the struggles of several hundred men, of few ideas and many words, to give their vocabulary an airing, is gradually forcing upon thinking persons the conviction, that, as our author proposes, the House should be reduced to one-half or one-third of its present numbers. A step, though but a small one, was made towards this important improvement by the first Reform Bill,[†] which broke in upon the magical number, 658; and it is to be regretted that the principle was given up, in deference to the most hypocritical clamour ever raised by Tories under the false pretence of zeal for popular rights. To diminish the number of the members of the House of Commons was treated as diminishing the amount of popular representation! As well might it be said, that the Spartans had twice as much government as we have, because they had two kings, while we have but one. Popular government does not consist in having the work done by more hands than are necessary to do it, but in having those hands, whether few or many, subject to popular control.

To the other strong reasons for reducing the numbers of the House, will sooner or later be added one of economy. We mean, of course, when the members are paid—a change to which we shall certainly come, and of which our author is a warm advocate:

In nearly all ages and countries, popular governments have found it for their interest that all the functionaries whom they employ should be paid. The unpaid is apt to become the self-paid, and to cost dearest of all: his work, at the best, is dilettante work, and is put aside from the smallest call of business or pleasure. Moreover, an unpaid legislature and an unpaid magistracy are institutions essentially aristocratic: contrivances for keeping legislation and judicature in the hands exclusively of those who can afford to serve without pay. This in itself may seem but a small consideration: the important matter is not by whom we are governed, but how:—with due securities for their being properly qualified, we should not complain, although the whole legislature were composed of millionnaires. But those securities are themselves weakened, by narrowing the range of the people’s choice. It is matter of general remark, how few able men have appeared of late years in parliament. What wonder? when, of the able men whom the country produces, nine-tenths at least are of the class who cannot serve without pay; and, for the first time since the constitution assumed its modern form, the members of the House of Commons are now practically unpaid. The rich have advantages in their leisure, and command of the means of instruction, which will render it easy for them, whenever they exert themselves, to be the ablest men in the community. That they do not take this trouble, is precisely because they are not exposed to the competition of the non-rich. Let in that competition upon them, if you would have them improve. In political, as in all other occupations, if you would stimulate exertion, you must throw open all monopolies.

If the members of the legislature were paid, legislation would become—what, to be well discharged, it must become—a profession: the study and the occupation of a laborious life. On this point our author’s remarks are well worthy of an attentive perusal:

Our author carries the practical application of this doctrine so far, as to propose (though, as he says, with some diffidence) that freedom from other business or professional avocation should be an indispensable qualification for being chosen a member of parliament. There is no doubt that it ought to be a strong recommendation, but we would not exact it by express law. It will occasionally happen, though, under a better system, much less Edition: current; Page: [37] often than at present, that half the time of one competitor is of more value than the whole time of another; and when the electoral body is rightly constituted, we know not why its choice should be fettered. We would not give power by handfuls with one hand, and take it back in spoonfuls with the other. If the people can be trusted at all, it is not in the estimation of these obvious grounds of disqualification that they are likely to be found deficient.* In the present state of society, the effect of the provision which our author desires to introduce would, we fear, be seriously mischievous: it would throw the whole business of legislation, and of control over the executive, into the hands of the idlers; excluding from parliament almost the only persons who bring habits of application and capacity for business into it. This objection, no doubt, would not exist, or at least not in the same degree, under the increased responsibility to the people which our author’s argument contemplates.

Neither would we, with our author [p. 181], require as a legal qualification “maturity of years,” beyond that which is now required. It will not, we suppose, be denied that a young man may render good service in Parliament; and if so, it may be that you have no other person who will render it as well. It might be proper enough to treat youth as a disqualification, if we were sure of finding old men suitable to our purpose: but considering the scarcity of fit men at any age, and the abundance of unfit men at all ages, we would not risk depriving ourselves of even one of the former for the sake of shutting out myriads of the latter. If your electors are likely persons to choose an unfit man, no sweeping rule of exclusion will prevent them from finding one. Nor do we see in so strong a light as our author the danger to be guarded against. It is not probable that, under any system but one of private nomination, very young men would ever compose any considerable proportion of the legislature: already the Reform Bill is understood to have excluded from the House most of the idle young men of family who formerly composed so large a portion of it: when, too, provincial assemblies, properly representative of the people, shall have been established, young men will serve their apprenticeship to public business there rather than in parliament. Those who Edition: current; Page: [38] are chosen in spite of so strong a ground of just prejudice, are likely to be among the ablest of their years; and, at least in an age of movement, it is not among young men that the greatest measure of political incapacity is usually found. It is true, as our author says, that “in legislation, as in other arts, there is a tact, a nicety of judgment, an intuitive apprehension of the relations of things, a wisdom which age, indeed, does not always bring, but which age alone can bestow.” [P. 180.] But the young members will not be called upon to be the actual framers of laws: they will only assist in judging of them. The general spirit and direction of the proceedings of the House will be determined by that immense majority of its members who will always be persons of mature years; and it would not be altogether useless to counteract the apathy and prejudice of age by a small infusion even of the conceit and dogmatism of youth. Age is naturally conservative, and unless some weight be placed in the other scale, there will be danger lest the timid and sluggish should give too much of their character to the entire mass.

Our author strongly condemns the degrading practice of canvassing. In a healthy state of moral feeling, to solicit an elector would be deemed an exactly similar insult to that of soliciting a juror.

We can add nothing to this masterly exposure.

Our author is no less decided in his condemnation of the practice of giving instructions to representatives, and of requiring pledges from candidates. We fully concur in his sentiments. The business of the constituency is to select as their representative the person best qualified, morally and intellectually, to form a sound judgment of his own on political questions; and having done this, they are not to require him to act according to their judgment, any more than they require a physician to prescribe for them according to their own notions of medicine.

We consider this point, as we have intimated in a former passage, to be fundamental; and to constitute, in reality, the test whether a people be ripe for the sound exercise of the power of complete control over their governors, or not. The parallel holds exactly between the legislator and the physician. The people themselves, whether of the high or the low classes, are, or might be, sufficiently qualified to judge, by the evidence which might be brought before them, of the merits of different physicians, whether for the body politic or natural; but it is utterly impossible that they should be competent judges of different modes of treatment. They can tell that they are ill; and that is as much as can rationally be expected from them. Intellects specially educated for the task are necessary to discover and apply the remedy.

But though the principle that electors are to judge of men, and representatives of measures (as a king or a minister appoints a general, but does not instruct him when and how to fight) is of the very essence of a representative government, we cannot dissemble the fact, that it is a principle almost entirely inapplicable to the peculiar situation of this kingdom at the present moment. How can electors be required to repose in their representatives any trust which they can possibly withhold, when, for the purpose of purifying a political system which swarms with abuses, the circumstances of society oblige them to employ as their agents men of the very classes for whose benefit all abuses exist, and of whose disposition to reform any one particle of those abuses which it is possible to preserve they feel the most well-grounded doubts? Who can blame the exaction of pledges from such a man as the honorable member for St. Andrew’s,[*] under the circumstances Edition: current; Page: [41] in which those pledges were exacted?* We assume, of course, that the constituency had not the option of electing a better man. If they had, they have themselves to blame for not making use of it. For, in the words of a passage quoted by our author from Roscommon’s Letters for the Press—“When we have to employ our fellow-creatures in any office, we should in general act more wisely were we to choose those who possess qualities adapted to it, than were we to attempt to bend unsuitable qualities to our purposes, by the force of motives applied for the occasion.”[*] “There is one general consideration,” says our author, “which deserves to be urged on electors, in their choice of a representative: they must take the trouble to choose a fit man, and not expect a man to become fit for the situation by being placed in it.” (P. 427.)

In the chapter “On the Introduction of Changes in Political Institutions,” our author takes the opportunity of combating the celebrated doctrine of Lord Holland and Sir James Mackintosh, that “governments are not made, but grow.”[†] This maxim was probably suggested by the numerous examples of political reformers whose institutions have been ephemeral, for want of having a sufficient hold upon the respect of the people to command steady obedience, or upon their affections, to be defended with any zeal against assault. But because governments, like other works of human contrivance, may be constructed with insufficient foresight and skill, does it follow that foresight and skill are utterly unavailing, and that no governments can hope for the support of the people’s affections in times of civilization, but those produced by the fortuitous concourse of atoms in ages of barbarism? The doctrine is not only philosophically, but even historically false. The laws of Moses, those of Mahomet, were made, and did not grow: they had, it is true, Edition: current; Page: [42] the direct sanction of religious faith; but the laws of Lycurgus, the laws of Solon, were made, and were as durable as any laws which grew have hitherto been found. Those of Lycurgus, indeed, stand in history a monumentum ære perennius[*] of the practicability of Utopianism. Each of the North American colonies made a government: the whole of them confederated have also made a government—no bad example hitherto of adaptation to the wants of the people who live under it. Frederic of Prussia made a whole system of institutions, which still exists, and an excellent one. Bonaparte made another, which also in substance still exists, though an abominable one. All these governments, in so far as they have have had any stability, had it because they were adapted to the circumstances and wants of their age. That such adaptation can be made by preconceived and systematic design, every one of them is an example.

All that there is of truth in the favourite doctrine of Sir James Mackintosh amounts to a truism, which in theory has never been overlooked, howsoever in practice it may have been disregarded: That legislators and political reformers must understand their own age: That they must consider, not only what is best in itself, but what the people will bear; not only what laws to make, but how to make the people obey them: That they must forbear to establish any thing which, to make it work, requires the continued and strenuous support of the people themselves, unless, either in the ancient habits of the people, or at least in their durable and strenuous convictions, a principle exists which can be enlisted in favour of the new institution, and induce them to give it that hearty assistance without which it must speedily become inoperative. What has usually been wanting to the due observance of this maxim has been, not the recognition of it, but a sufficient practical sense, how great an element of stability that government wants which has not the authority of time:

It is scarcely necessary to say that, in this country, and at this time, the danger is not lest such considerations as the above should have too little, but lest they should have too much, weight.

In the supplementary discourses of our author, on Political Equality, and on Rights, there are many just observations on the confusion which has been introduced into political reasoning by the use of vague and declamatory expressions as substitutes for a distinct appeal to the good of the community. Our author, however, while proposing to banish the words “natural rights” from philosophical discussion, makes an attempt, in which we do not think him quite successful, to discover a rational meaning for the phrase. Without doubt, as in the case of all other phrases which mankind use, there is something in their minds which they are endeavouring to express by it; but we hardly think that our author is looking for this in the right place. The subject, however, would lead us too far for the present occasion.

Having said so much of what the work before us does contain, we cannot conclude without drawing the author’s attention to one thing which it should have contained and does not. He has met and overthrown many of the fallacies by which the delivering over of the powers of government to partial interests is wont to be defended; but he has nowhere directly faced the master fallacy of all, the theory of class-representation, though it is one which attacks the very foundation of his doctrines. The theory in question maintains, that a good popular representation should represent, not the people, but all the various classes or interests among the people. The landed interest, it is said, should be represented, the mercantile interest should be represented; the monied, manufacturing, shipping interests, the lawyers, the clergy—each of these bodies should command the election of a certain number of members of the legislature; and the bulk of the people, it is commonly added, Edition: current; Page: [44] should also have the nomination of a certain small number of representatives. The essence of this system is, that it proposes to place a small fraction only of the ruling body under any inducements from their position to consult the general interest of the community; while it renders all the remainder the mere attorneys of certain small knots and confederacies of men, each of which, the theory itself admits, has a private interest of its own, which sinister interest, if it possessed the undivided control of the legislature, it would ruthlessly pursue, to the complete sacrifice of the general interest. The expectation then is, that because the ruling power is divided among several of these knots, instead of being wholly bestowed upon one of them, they, instead of combining, as they have the strongest motives to do, and sharing the benefits of misrule among them, will, with an incapacity of pursuing their obvious interest, unknown to any tribe of savages, employ their whole exertions in protecting the community against one another. Whether this be likely to be the fact let English history speak; for England has been ruled by a class-representation ever since the revolution. We subjoin an apologue, from a speech delivered in 1826, which shadows forth very faithfully what has been the course of history in this particular.*

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The ready answer to the doctrine of representation of interests is, that representation of separate and sinister interests we do not want. The only interest which we wish to be consulted is the general interest, and that, therefore, is the only one which we desire to see represented. How this, in the actual circumstances of a country, can best be accomplished, is the only question; and it must be decided by the considerations already adduced.

What, in contradistinction to a representation of classes, every rational person does wish to see exemplified in Parliament, is not the interests, but the peculiar position, and opportunities of knowledge, of all the classes whom the theory enumerates, and many more; not in order that partial interests may, but in order that they may not, be consulted. The first desideratum is, to place every member of the legislature under the most complete responsibility to the community at large, which the state of civilization of the community renders consistent with other necessary ends. The second is, to compose the legislature, in as large a proportion as possible, of persons so highly cultivated, intellectually and morally, as to be free from narrow or partial views, and from any peculiar bias. But as such persons are rarely to be found in sufficient numbers, it is doubtless desirable that the remainder of the body should be of as miscellaneous a composition as possible (consistently with accountability to the people), in order that the twist of one person may be neutralized by the contrary twist of another; and if the individuals must be biassed, the evil be at least avoided of having them all biassed one way. An indistinct perception of this truth, is what gives all its plausibility to the doctrine of class-representation. But the principle thus stated, needs Edition: current; Page: [46] no especial provision to be made for it in a scheme of representation. The diversity of local circumstances, and the varying spirit of local constituencies, provide for it sufficiently.

Recommending this important subject to the consideration of our author in his next edition, we take leave of him; cordially wishing that his country may be enriched with many similar productions from his pen, and regretting that he has not yet obtained the opportunity he sought, of proclaiming in the House of Commons the great principles which this work will contribute so largely to diffuse. That he failed to obtain that opportunity is anything but creditable, all circumstances considered, to the electors of the great and important town for which he offered himself as a candidate. We trust that, ere long, some liberal constituency will claim for itself the honour which his own townsmen knew not how to appreciate.

De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I]

“amongst the novel objects,” says M. de Tocqueville* in the opening of his work,

To depict accurately, and to estimate justly, the institutions of the United States, have been therefore but secondary aims with the original and profound author of these volumes—secondary, we mean, in themselves, but indispensable to his main object. This object was, to inquire, what light is thrown, by the example of America, upon the question of democracy; which he considers as the great and paramount question of our age.

In turning to America for materials with which to discuss that question, M. de Tocqueville, it needs hardly be remarked, is not singular. All who write Edition: current; Page: [50] or speak on either side of the dispute, are prompt enough in pressing America into their service: but it is for purposes, in general, quite different from that of M. de Tocqueville.

America is usually cited by the two great parties which divide Europe, as an argument for or against democracy. Democrats have sought to prove by it that we ought to be democrats; aristocrats, that we should cleave to aristocracy, and withstand the democratic spirit.

It is not towards deciding this question, that M. de Tocqueville has sought to contribute, by laying before the European world the results of his study of America. He considers it as already irrevocably decided.

The crowd of English politicians, whether public men or public writers, who live in a truly insular ignorance of the great movement of European ideas, will be astonished to find, that a conclusion which but few among them, in their most far-reaching speculations, have yet arrived at, is the point from which the foremost continental thinkers begin theirs; and that a philosopher, whose impartiality as between aristocracy and democracy is unparalleled in our time, considers it an established truth, on the proof of which it is no longer necessary to insist, that the progress of democracy neither can nor ought to be stopped. Not to determine whether democracy shall come, but how to make the best of it when it does come, is the scope of M. de Tocqueville’s speculations.

That comprehensive survey of the series of changes composing the history of our race, which is now familiar to every continental writer with any pretensions to philosophy, has taught to M. de Tocqueville, that the movement towards democracy dates from the dawn of modern civilization, and has continued steadily advancing from that time. Eight centuries ago, society was divided into barons and serfs: the barons being everything, the serfs nothing. At every succeeding epoch this inequality of condition is found to have somewhat abated; every century has done something considerable towards lowering the powerful and raising the low. Every step in civilization—every victory of intellect—every advancement in wealth—has multiplied the resources of the many; while the same causes, by their indirect agency, have frittered away the strength and relaxed the energy of the few. We now find ourselves in a condition of society which, compared with that whence we have emerged, might be termed equality; yet not only are the same levelling influences still at work, but their force is vastly augmented by new elements which the world never before saw. For the first time, the power and the habit of reading begins to permeate the hitherto inert mass. Reading is power: not only because it is knowledge, but still more because it is a means of communication—because, by the aid of it, not only do opinions and feelings spread to the multitude, but every individual who holds them knows that they are held by the multitude; which of itself suffices, if they continue to be Edition: current; Page: [51] held, to ensure their speedy predominance. The many, for the first time, have now learned the lesson, which, once learned, is never forgotten—that their strength, when they choose to exert it, is invincible. And, for the first time, they have learned to unite for their own objects, without waiting for any section of the aristocracy to place itself at their head. The capacity of cooperation for a common purpose, heretofore a monopolized instrument of power in the hands of the higher classes, is now a most formidable one in those of the lowest. Under these influences it is not surprising that society makes greater strides in ten years, towards the levelling of inequalities, than lately in a century, or formerly in three or four.

M. de Tocqueville is unable to imagine that a progress, which has continued with uninterrupted steadiness for so many centuries, can be stayed now. He assumes that it will continue, until all artificial inequalities shall have disappeared from among mankind; those inequalities only remaining which are the natural and inevitable effects of the protection of property. This appears to him a tremendous fact, pregnant with every conceivable possibility of evil, but also with immense possibilities of good: leaving, in fact, only the alternative of democracy or despotism; and unless the one be practicable, the other, he is deliberately convinced, will be our lot.

The contemplation of the entirely new position into which mankind are entering, and of their supine insensibility to the new exigencies of that new position, fills our author with solemn and anxious emotions. We invite the attention of English readers to a long and deeply interesting passage from his introductory chapter, as a specimen of a mode of thinking concerning the great changes now in progress, which will be new to many of them:

M. de Tocqueville then rises into the following powerful delineation of the state of society which has passed never to return, and of the happier, though, in his opinion, less brilliant state, to which we ought now to aspire: of the good which democracy takes away, and of that which, if its natural capabilities are improved, it may bring.

In the picture which follows, the author has had chiefly in view the state of France; and much of it would be grossly exaggerated as a description of Edition: current; Page: [54] England: but we may receive it as a warning of what we may in time expect, if our influential classes continue to forego the exercise of the faculty which distinguishes rational creatures from brutes, and either blindly resist the course of events, or allow them to rush on wildly without any aid from human foresight:

In quoting so much of this striking passage, we would not be understood as adopting the whole and every part of it, as the expression of our own sentiments. The good which mankind have lost, is coloured, we think, rather too highly, and the evils of the present state of transition too darkly; and we think, also, that more than our author seems to believe, of what was good in the influences of aristocracy, is compatible, if we really wish to find it so, with a well-regulated democracy. But though we would soften the colours of the picture, we would not alter them; M. de Tocqueville’s is, in our eyes, the true view of the position in which mankind now stand: and on the timely recognition of it as such, by the influential classes of our own and other countries, we believe the most important interests of our race to be greatly dependent.

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It is under the influence of such views that M. de Tocqueville has examined the state of society in America.

There is a country, says he, where the great change, progressively taking place throughout the civilized world, is consummated. In the United States, democracy reigns with undisputed empire; and equality of condition among mankind has reached what seems its ultimate limit.* The place in which to Edition: current; Page: [56] study democracy, must be that where its natural tendencies have the freest scope; where all its peculiarities are most fully developed and most visible. In America, therefore, if anywhere, we may expect to learn—first, what portion of human well-being is compatible with democracy in any form; and, next, what are the good and what the bad properties of democracy, and by what means the former may be strengthened, the latter controlled. We have it not in our power to choose between democracy and aristocracy; necessity and Providence have decided that for us. But the choice we are still called upon to make is between a well and an ill-regulated democracy; and on that depends the future well-being of the human race.

When M. de Tocqueville says, that he studied America, not in order to disparage or to vindicate democracy, but in order to understand it, he makes no false claim to impartiality. Not a trace of a prejudice, or so much as a previous leaning either to the side of democracy or aristocracy, shows itself in his work. He is indeed anything but indifferent to the ends, to which all forms of government profess to be means. He manifests the deepest and steadiest concern for all the great interests, material and spiritual, of the human race. But between aristocracy and democracy he holds the balance straight, with all the impassibility of a mere scientific observer. He was indeed most favourably placed for looking upon both sides of that great contest with an unbiassed judgment; for the impressions of his early education were royalist, while among the influences of society and the age liberalism is predominant. He has renounced the impressions of his youth, but he looks back to them with no aversion. It is indifferent to him what value we set upon the good or evil of aristocracy, since that in his view is past and gone. The good and evil of democracy, be they what they may, are what we must now look to; and for us the questions are, how to make the best of democracy, and what that best amounts to.

We have stated the purposes of M. de Tocqueville’s examination of America. We have now to add its result.

The conclusion at which he has arrived is, that this irresistible current, which cannot be stemmed, may be guided, and guided to a happy termination. Edition: current; Page: [57] The bad tendencies of democracy, in his opinion, admit of being mitigated; its good tendencies of being so strengthened as to be more than a compensation for the bad. It is his belief that a government, substantially a democracy, but constructed with the necessary precautions, may subsist in Europe, may be stable and durable, and may secure to the aggregate of the human beings living under it, a greater sum of happiness than has ever yet been enjoyed by any people. The universal aim, therefore, should be, so to prepare the way for democracy, that when it comes, it may come in this beneficial shape; not only for the sake of the good we have to expect from it, but because it is literally our only refuge from a despotism resembling not the tempered and regulated absolutism of modern times, but the tyranny of the Cæsars. For when the equality of conditions shall have reached the point which in America it has already attained, and there shall be no power intermediate between the monarch and the multitude; when there remains no individual and no class capable of separately offering any serious obstacle to the will of the government; then, unless the people are fit to rule, the monarch will be as perfectly autocratic as amidst the equality of an Asiatic despotism. Where all are equal, all must be alike free, or alike slaves.

The book, of which we have now described the plan and purpose, has been executed in a manner worthy of so noble a scheme. It has at once taken its rank among the most remarkable productions of our time; and is a book with which, both for its facts and its speculations, all who would understand, or who are called upon to exercise influence over their age, are bound to be familiar. It will contribute to give to the political speculations of our time a new character. Hitherto, aristocracy and democracy have been looked at chiefly in the mass, and applauded as good, or censured as bad, on the whole. But the time is now come for a narrower inspection, and a more discriminating judgment. M. de Tocqueville, among the first, has set the example of analysing democracy; of distinguishing one of its features, one of its tendencies, from another; of showing which of these tendencies is good, and which bad, in itself; how far each is necessarily connected with the rest, and to what extent any of them may be counteracted or modified, either by accident or foresight. He does this, with so noble a field as a great nation to demonstrate upon; which field he has commenced by minutely examining; selecting, with a discernment of which we have had no previous example, the material facts, and surveying these by the light of principles, drawn from no ordinary knowledge of human nature. We do not think his conclusions always just, but we think them always entitled to the most respectful attention, and never destitute of at least a large foundation of truth. The author’s mind, except that it is of a soberer character, seems to us to resemble Montesquieu most among the great French writers. The book is such as Montesquieu might have written, if to his genius he had superadded good sense, and the lights Edition: current; Page: [58] which mankind have since gained from the experiences of a period in which they may be said to have lived centuries in fifty years.

We feel how impossible it is, in the space of an article, to exemplify all the features of a work, every page of which has nearly as great a claim to citation as any other. For M. de Tocqueville’s ideas do not float thinly upon a sea of words; none of his propositions are unmeaning, none of his meanings superfluous; not a paragraph could have been omitted without diminishing the value of the work. We must endeavour to make a selection.

The first volume, the only one of which a translation has yet appeared, describes chiefly the institutions of the United States: the second, the state of society, which he represents to be the fruit of those institutions. We should have been glad to assume that the reader possessed a general acquaintance with the subject of the former volume, and to refer him, for details, to the work itself. But it so happens that in no one point has M. de Tocqueville rendered a greater service to the European public, than by actually giving them their first information of the very existence of some of the most important parts of the American constitution. We allude particularly to the municipal institutions; which, as our author shows, and as might have been expected, are the very fountain-head of American democracy, and one principal cause of all that is valuable in its influences; but of which English travellers, a race who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not,[*] have not so much as perceived the existence.

In the New England States, the part of the Union in which the municipal system which generally prevails through the whole, has been brought to the greatest perfection, the following are its leading principles. The country is parcelled out into districts called townships, containing, on an average, from two to three thousand inhabitants. Each township manages its local concerns within itself; judicial business excepted, which, more wisely than their English brethren, the Americans appear to keep separate from all other functions. The remaining part—that is, the administrative part of the local business—is not only under the complete control of the people—but the people themselves, convened in general assembly, vote all local taxes, and decide on all new and important undertakings. While the deliberative part of the administration is thus conducted directly by the people, the executive part is in the hands of a variety of officers, annually elected by the people, and mostly paid. The following details will be read with interest:

In this system of municipal self-government, coeval with the first settlement of the American colonies—a system which the herd of English travellers either have not observed, or have not thought worth mentioning, classing it doubtless in point of importance with their own parish affairs at home—our author beholds the principal instrument of that political education of the people, which alone enables a popular government to maintain itself, or renders it desirable that it should. It is a fundamental principle in his political philosophy, as it has long been in ours, that only by the habit of superintending their local interests can that diffusion of intelligence and mental activity, as applied to their joint concerns, take place among the mass of a people, which can qualify them to superintend with steadiness or consistency the proceedings of their government, or to exercise any power in national affairs except by fits, and as tools in the hands of others.

“The commune,” says M. de Tocqueville (we borrow the French word, because there is no English word which expresses the unit of the body politic, whether that unit be a town or a village)—

Nor is the salutary influence of this invaluable part of the American constitution seen only in creating, but at least equally so in regulating, the spirit of interference in public affairs. This effect, together with the influence of the same cause in generating patriotism and public spirit, are instructively delineated in the following passage:

These considerations are of the highest importance. It is not without reason that M. de Tocqueville considers local democracy to be the school as well as the safety-valve of democracy in the state,—the means of training the people to the good use of that power, which, whether prepared for it or not, they will assuredly in a short time be in the full exercise of. There has been much said of late—and truly not a word too much—on the necessity, now that the people are acquiring power, of giving them education, meaning school instruction, to qualify them for its exercise. The importance of school instruction is doubtless great; but it should also be recollected, that what really constitutes education is the formation of habits; and as we do not learn to read or write, to ride or swim, by being merely told how to do it, but by doing it, so it is only by practising popular government on a limited scale, that the people will ever learn how to exercise it on a larger.

M. de Tocqueville does not pretend, nor do we, that local self-government should be introduced into Europe in the exact shape in which it exists in New England. An assembly of the rateable inhabitants of a district, to discuss and vote a rate, would usually be attended only by those who had some private interest to serve, and would in general, as is proved by the experience of open vestries, only throw the cloak of democratic forms over a jobbing oligarchy. In a country like America, of high wages and high profits, every citizen can afford to attend to public affairs, as if they were his own; but in England it would be useless calling upon the people themselves to bestow habitually any larger share of attention on municipal management than is implied in the periodical election of a representative body. This privilege has recently been conferred, though in an imperfect shape, upon the inhabitants of all our considerable towns; but the rural districts, where the people are so much more backward, and the system of training so forcibly described by M. de Tocqueville is proportionally more needed,—the rural districts are not yet empowered to elect officers for keeping their own jails and highways in repair: that is still left where the feudal system left it, in the hands of the great proprietors; the tenants at will, so dear to aristocracy, being thought qualified to take a share in no elections save those of the great council of the nation. But some of the greatest political benefits ever acquired by mankind have been the accidental result of arrangements devised for Edition: current; Page: [64] quite different ends; and thus, in the unions of parishes formed under the new poor law,[*] and the boards of guardians chosen by popular election to superintend the management of those unions, we see the commencement of an application of the principle of popular representation, for municipal purposes, to extensive rural districts, and the creation of a machinery which, if found to work well, may easily be extended to all other business for which local representative bodies are requisite.

M. de Tocqueville, though he is not sparing in pointing out the faults of the institutions of the United States, regards those institutions on the whole with no inconsiderable admiration. The federal constitution, in particular, (as distinguished from the various state constitutions,) he considers as a remarkable monument of foresight and sagacity. The great men by whom, during two years’ deliberation, that constitution was constructed, discerned, according to him, with great wisdom, the vulnerable points both of democracy and of federal government, and did nearly everything which could have been done, in their circumstances, to strengthen the weak side of both.

Our space will not allow us to follow our author through the details of the American institutions; but we cannot pass without particular notice his remarks on one general principle which pervades them.

Two modes, says M. de Tocqueville, present themselves for keeping a government under restraint: one is to diminish its power; the other, to give power liberally, but to subdivide it among many hands.

The principle of sharing the powers of government among a great variety of functionaries, and keeping these independent of one another, is the mainspring of the American institutions. The various municipal officers are independent of each other, and of the general government of the state. The state governments, within their lawful sphere, are wholly independent of the federal government, and the federal government of them.* Each of the state governments consists of two chambers and a governor; and the federal government consists of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President of the United States. Of each of these tripartite bodies the three branches are mutually independent, and may, and frequently do, place themselves in direct opposition to one another.

In what manner is harmony maintained among these jarring elements? How is so minute a division of the governing power rendered compatible with the existence of government? Since the concurrence of so many wills is necessary to the working of the machine, by what means is that concurrence obtained? The town-officers, for instance, are often the sole agency provided for executing the laws made or orders issued by the federal or by the state government; but those authorities can neither dismiss them if they disobey, nor promote them to a higher post in their department, for zealous service. How, then, is their obedience secured?

The securities are of two kinds. First, all those functionaries who are made independent of each other within their respective spheres, depend upon, for they are periodically elected by, a common superior—the People. No one, therefore, likes to venture upon a collision with any co-ordinate authority, unless he believes that, at the expiration of his office, his conduct will be approved by his constituents.

This check, however, cannot suffice for all cases; for, in the first place, the authorities may be accountable to different constituencies. In a dispute, for instance, between the officers of a township and the state government, or between the federal government and a state, the constituents of each party may support their representatives in the quarrel. Moreover, the check often operates too slowly, and is not of a sufficiently energetic character for the graver delinquencies.

The remedy provided for all such cases is the interference of the courts of justice.

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The share of the tribunals in the government of the United States is of a most extensive and important kind. The tribunals are the supreme arbiters between each member of the sovereignty and every other. Not only are all executive officers amenable to them for acts done in their public capacity, but the legislatures themselves are so. They cannot, indeed, punish a legislature for having overstepped its authority, but they can set aside its acts. They are avowedly empowered to refuse to enforce any law, whether enacted by the federal or by the state legislatures, which they consider unconstitutional.

Two questions will naturally be asked: First—does not this remarkable provision render the constitution of the United States, what the French constitution affects to be, unalterable? And, secondly, are not the judges, who thus wield without responsibility the highest power in the state, an impediment to good government, analogous and almost equal to our House of Lords?

We answer both questions in the negative.

The constitution, though it cannot be altered by the ordinary legislature, may be solemnly revised by an assembly summoned for the purpose, in the forms prescribed by the constitution itself. Before such an authority, the tribunals would of course be powerless. Their control, in the mean time, prevents the letter and spirit of the constitution from being infringed upon, indirectly and by stealth, by authorities not lawfully empowered to alter it.

The other danger, that of the irresponsible power conferred upon the judges by making them in some sort the legislators in the last resort, is chimerical. We agree with M. de Tocqueville in thinking that the founders of the American constitution have nowhere manifested, more than in this provision, the practical sagacity which distinguished them. They saw that where both the laws and the habits of the people are thoroughly impregnated with the democratic principle, powers may safely be intrusted to the judges, which it would be most dangerous to confide to them in any other circumstances. A judge is one of the most deadly instruments in the hands of a tyranny of which others are at the head; but, while he can only exercise political influence through the indirect medium of judicial decisions, he acts within too confined a sphere for it to be possible for him to establish a despotism in his own favour. The Americans saw that courts of justice, without a monarchy or an aristocracy to back them, could never oppose any permanent obstacle to the will of the people; and knowing that aversion to change was not likely to be the fault of their government, they did not deem it any serious objection to an institution, that it rendered organic changes rather more difficult. In short, as in every government there must be some supreme arbiter, to keep the peace among the various authorities, and as, consistently with the spirit of the American institutions, that supreme arbiter could not be the federal government, the founders of the constitution deemed Edition: current; Page: [67] that this moderating power, which must exist somewhere, was nowhere so safe as in the hands of the courts of justice.

Having concluded his description of the institutions of the United States, M. de Tocqueville, in the second volume, proceeds to an examination of the practical working of those institutions; the character actually exhibited by democratic government in the American republic, and the inferences to be thence drawn as to the tendencies of democracy in general. The following is his statement of the question between democracy and aristocracy:

These ideas are considerably expanded, and some others added to them, in other parts of the volume.

In a general way, the following may be given as a summary of M. de Tocqueville’s opinion on the good and bad tendencies of democracy.

On the favourable side, he holds, that alone among all governments its Edition: current; Page: [71] systematic and perpetual end is the good of the immense majority. Were this its only merit, it is one, the absence of which could ill be compensated by all other merits put together. Secondly, no other government can reckon upon so willing an obedience, and so warm an attachment to it, on the part of the people at large. And, lastly, as it works not only for the people, but, much more extensively than any other government, by means of the people, it has a tendency which no other government has in the same degree, to call forth and sharpen the intelligence of the mass.

The disadvantages which our author ascribes to democracy are chiefly two:—First, that its policy is much more hasty and short-sighted than that of aristocracy. In compensation, however, he adds, that it is more ready to correct its errors, when experience has made them apparent. The second is, that the interest of the majority is not always identical with the interest of all; and hence the sovereignty of the majority creates a tendency on their part to abuse their power over all minorities.

To commence with the unfavourable side: we may remark, that the evils which M. de Tocqueville represents as incident to democracy, can only exist in so far as the people entertain an erroneous idea of what democracy ought to be. If the people entertained the right idea of democracy, the mischief of hasty and unskilful legislation would not exist; and the omnipotence of the majority would not be attended with any evils.

The difference between the true and the false idea of a representative democracy, is a subject to which we have drawn attention in a recent Article.* and it cannot be too often recurred to. All the dangers of democracy, and all that gives any advantage to its enemies, turn upon confounding this distinction.

aThe idea of a rational democracy is, not that the people themselves govern, but that they have bsecurityb for good government. This security they cannot have, by any other means than by retaining in their own hands the ultimate control. If they renounce this, they give themselves up to tyranny. A governing class not accountable to the people are sure, in the main, to sacrifice the people to the pursuit of separate interests and inclinations of their own. Even their feelings of morality, even their ideas of excellence, have reference, not to the good of the people, but to their own good; their very virtues are class virtues—their noblest acts of patriotism and self-devotion are but the sacrifice of their private interests to the interests of their class. The heroic public virtue of a Leonidas was quite compatible with the existence Edition: current; Page: [72] of Helots. In no government will the interests of the people be the object, except where the people are able to dismiss their rulers as soon as the devotion of those rulers to the interests of the people becomes questionable. But this is the only cpurpose for which it is good to intrust power to the peoplec. Provided good intentions can be secured, the best government, (need it be said?) must be the government of the wisest, and these must always be a few. The people ought to be the masters, but they are masters who must employ servants more skilful than themselves: like a ministry when they employ a military commander, or the military commander when he employs an army-surgeon. When the minister ceases to confide in the commander, he dismisses him, and appoints another; but he does not dsend him instructions when and where to fight. He holds him responsible only for eresults. The people must do the same. This does not render the control of the people nugatory. The control of a government over the commander of fitsf army is not nugatory. A man’s control over his physician is not nugatory, galthoughg he does not direct his physician what medicine to administer. hHe either obeys the prescription of his physician, or, if dissatisfied with him, takes another. In that consists his security. In that consists also the people’s security; and with that it is their wisdom to be satisfied.h

But in government, as in everything else, the danger is, lest those who can do whatever they will, may will to do more than is for their ultimate interest. The interest of the people is, to choose for their rulers the most instructed and the ablest persons who can be found, and having done so, to allow them to exercise their knowledge and ability for the good of the people ifreely, or with the least possible controli—as long as it is the good of the people, and not some private end, that they are aiming at. A democracy thus administered, would unite all the good qualities ever possessed by any government. Not only would its ends be good, but its means would be as well chosen as the wisdom of the age would allow; and the omnipotence of the majority would be exercised through the agency and jat the discretionj of an enlightened minority, accountable to the majority in the last resort.

But it is not possible that the constitution of the democracy itself should provide adequate security for its being understood and administered in this spiritk, and not according to the erroneous notion of democracyk. This rests Edition: current; Page: [73] with the good sense of the people themselves. If the people can remove their rulers for one thing, they can for another. That ultimate control, without which they cannot have security for good government, may, if they please, be made the means of themselves interfering in the government, and making their legislators mere delegates for carrying into execution the preconceived judgment of the majority. If the people do this, they mistake their interest; and such a government, though better than most aristocracies, is not the kind of democracy which wise men desire.*

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The substitution of delegation for representation is therefore the one and only danger of democracy. What is the amount of this danger?

In America, according to M. de Tocqueville, it is not only a great but a growing danger. “A custom,” says he, “is spreading more and more in the United States, which tends ultimately to nullify the securities of representative government. It happens very frequently that the electors, in naming a representative, lay down a plan of conduct for him, and impose on him a certain number of positive injunctions, from which he is by no means to deviate. Tumult excepted, it is exactly as if the majority itself were to deliberate in general meeting.”*

The experience of America is, in our author’s opinion, equally unfavourable to the expectation that the people in a democracy are likely to select as their rulers the ablest men:

Considered as matter of evidence—as the testimony of a highly-qualified observer—these statements deserve the utmost attention. It is for that reason that we quote them. For ourselves, we see much to be said in qualification of them; and this, too, our author’s own pages in part supply. A little farther on, after remarking that in America, from the frequent changes in the persons raised to office by the elective principle, a public function cannot, as in Edition: current; Page: [76] Europe, be considered a provision for life, he adds, as a consequence of this fact—

The fact that the ablest men seldom offer themselves to the people’s suffrages, is still more strongly stated by our author in another place, and is a point on which there is a striking concurrence of testimony. It may be said that they do not present themselves because they know that they would not be chosen; but a reason less discreditable to the American people was given to our author’s fellow-traveller, M. de Beaumont,* by an American: “Comment voulez-vous qu’un médecin se montre habile, si vous mettez entre ses mains un homme bien portant?” The truth is that great talents are not needed for carrying on, in ordinary times, the government of an already well-ordered society. In a country like America little government is required: the people are prosperous, and the machinery of the state works so smoothly, by the agency of the people themselves, that there is next to nothing for the government to do. When no great public end is to be compassed; when no great abuse calls for remedy, no national danger for resistance, the mere everyday business of politics is an occupation little worthy of any mind of first-rate powers, and very little alluring to it. In a settled state of things, the commanding intellects will always prefer to govern mankind from their closets, by means of literature and science, leaving the mechanical details of government to mechanical minds.

In national emergencies, which call out the men of first-rate talents, such men always step into their proper place, M. de Tocqueville admits, that during the struggle for independence, and the scarcely less difficult struggle which succeeded it, to keep the confederacy together, the choice of the people fell almost invariably upon the first men in the country. Such a body of men as composed the assembly which framed the federal constitution, never were Edition: current; Page: [77] brought together at any period of history. No wonder that, when compared with them, the present generation of public men appear like dwarfs. But are they such when compared with the present race of English statesmen? Which of these could have drawn such a state paper as President Jackson’s address to the people of South Carolina, or framed Mr. Livingston’s Draught of a Penal Code?[*]

M. de Tocqueville also states that the tendency, which he deems inherent in democracy, to be satisfied with a bad choice, manifests itself in a very mitigated degree in the older and more civilized states:

In these important statements, our author bears testimony to the effects not merely of national education, but of mere lapse of time, and the growth of population and wealth, in correcting more and more the liability of the people to make a mistaken choice of representatives.

But put these evils at their worst: let them be as great as it is possible they should be in a tolerably educated nation: suppose that the people do not choose the fittest men, and that whenever they have an opinion of their own, they compel their representatives, without the exercise of any discretion, merely to give execution to that opinion—thus adopting the false idea of democracy propagated by its enemies, and by some of its injudicious friends—the consequence would no doubt be abundance of unskilful legislation. But would the abundance, after all, be so much greater than in most aristocracies? In the English aristocracy there has surely been, at all periods, Edition: current; Page: [78] vwcrude and ill-considered legislation enough. Thisw is the character of all governments whose laws are made, and acts of administration performed, impromptu, not in pursuance of a general design, but from the pressure of some present occasion: of all governments, in which the ruling power is to any great extent exercised by persons not trained to government as a business.v

In attributing, as general characteristics, prudence and steadiness to aristocratic governments, our author has, we think, generalized on an insufficient examination of the facts on which his conclusion is founded. The only steadiness which aristocracy never fails to manifest, is tenacity in clinging to its own privileges. Democracy is equally tenacious of the fundamental maxims of its own government. In all other matters, xythey opinion of a zruling class is as fluctuating, as liable to be wholly given up to immediate impulses, as the opinion of the people. Witness the whole course of English history. All our laws have been made upon temporary impulses. In awhat country has the course of legislation been less directed to any steady and consistent purpose?ax—except, indeed, that of perpetually adding to the power and privileges of the rich; and that, not because of the deep-laid schemes, but because of the passions, of the ruling class. And as for the talents and virtues of those whom aristocracy chooses for its leaders, read Horace Walpole or Bubb Doddington, that you may know what to think of them.

M. de Tocqueville has, we think, affirmed of aristocracy in general, what should have been predicated only of some particular aristocracies. bIt is true that the governments which have been celebrated for their profound policy have generally been aristocracies. But they have been very narrow aristocracies: consisting of so few members, that every member could personally participate in the business of administration. These are the governments which have a natural tendency to be administered steadily—that is, according to fixed principles. Every member of the governing body being trained to government as a profession, like other professions, they respect precedent, transmit their experience from generation to generation, acquire and preserve a set of traditions, and, all being competent judges of each other’s Edition: current; Page: [79] merits, the ablest easily rises to his proper level. The governments c(so unlike in other respects)c of ancient Rome, and modern Venice, were of this character; and, as all know, for ages conducted the affairs of those states with admirable constancy and skill, upon fixed principles, often unworthy enough, but always eminently adapted to the ends of dthesed governments.b

These aristocracies, however, which manifest the most skill in adapting their means to their ends, are distinguished even beyond other aristocracies in the badness of their ends. So narrow an aristocracy is cut off, even more completely than a more numerous one, from fellow-feeling with the people; and any other aristocracy, we conceive, has not the advantages ascribed to that government by M. de Tocqueville.

eWhen the governing body, whether it fconsistf of the many or of a privileged class, is so numerous, that the large majority of it do not and cannot make the practice of government the main occupation of their lives, it is gutterlyg impossible that there should be wisdom, foresight, and caution in the governing body itself. These qualities must be found, if found at all, not in the body, but in those whom the body trust.e If the people in America, or the higher classes in England or France, make a practice of themselves dictating and prescribing the measures of government, it is impossible that those countries should be otherwise than ill administered. There has been ample proof of this in the government of England, where we have had, at all times, the clumsiness of an ill-regulated democracy, with a very small portion indeed of her good intentions.

In a numerous aristocracy, as well as in a democracy, the sole chance for considerate and wise government lies not in the wisdom of the democracy or of the aristocracy themselves, but in their willingness to place themselves under the guidance of the wisest among them. And it would be difficult for democracy to exhibit less of this willingness than has been shown by the English aristocracy in all periods of their history, or less than is shown by them at this moment.

But, while we do not share all the apprehensions of M. de Tocqueville from the unwillingness of the people to be guided by superior wisdom, and while this source of evil tells for very little with us in the comparison between democracy and aristocracy, we consider our author entitled to applause and gratitude for having probed this subject so unsparingly, and given us so striking a picture of his own impressions; and we are clearly of opinion that his fears, whether excessive or not, are in the right place. If democracy should Edition: current; Page: [80] disappoint any of the expectations of its more enlightened partisans, it will be from the substitution of delegation for representation; of the crude and necessarily superficial judgment of the people themselves, for the judgment of those whom the people, having confidence in their honesty, have selected as the wisest guardians whose services they could command. All the chances unfavourable to democracy lie here; and whether the danger be much or little, all who see it ought to unite their efforts to reduce it to the minimum.

We have no space to follow M. de Tocqueville into the consideration of any of the palliatives which may be found for this evil tendency. We pass to that which he regards as the most serious of the inconveniences of democracy, and that to which, if the American republic should perish, it will owe its fall. This is, the omnipotence of the majority.

M. de Tocqueville’s fears from this source are not of the kind which haunt the imaginations of English alarmists. He finds, under the American democracy, no tendency on the part of the poor to oppress the rich—to molest them in their persons or in their property. That the security of person and property are the first social interests not only of the rich but of the poor, is obvious to common sense. And the degree of education which a well-constituted democracy ensures to all its citizens, renders common sense the general characteristic. Truths which are obvious, it may always be expected that the American democracy will see. It is true, no one need expect that, in a democracy, to keep up a class of rich people living in splendour and affluence will be treated as a national object, which legislation should be directed to promote, and which the rest of the community should be taxed for. But there has never been any complaint that property in general is not protected in America, or that large properties do not meet with every protection which is given to small ones. Not even in the mode of laying on taxes have we seen any complaint that favour is shown to the poor at the expense of the rich.

But when we put inequalities of property out of the question, it is not easy to see what sort of minority it can be, over which the majority can have any interest in tyrannizing. The only standing and organized minority which exists in any community, constituted as communities usually are, is the rich. All other minorities are fluctuating, and he who is in the majority to-day is in the minority to-morrow: each in his turn is liable to this kind of oppression; all, therefore, are interested in preventing it from having existence.

The only cases which we can think of, as forming possible exceptions to this rule, are cases of antipathy on the part of one portion of the people towards another: the antipathies of religion, for example, or of race. Where these exist, iniquity will be committed, under any form of government, aristocratic or democratic, unless in a higher state of moral and intellectual improvement than any community has hitherto attained.

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M. de Tocqueville’s fears, however, are not so much for the security and the ordinary worldly interests of individuals, as for the moral dignity and progressiveness of the race. It is a tyranny exercised over opinions, more than over persons, which he is apprehensive of. He dreads lest all individuality of character, and independence of thought and sentiment, should be prostrated under the despotic yoke of public opinion.

M. de Tocqueville complains that the courtier-spirit, which in other governments is confined to those who immediately surround the persons of the powerful, is universal in America, because there every one has access to the sovereign’s ear.

This picture, whether overcharged or not, exhibits evils, the liability to which is inherent in human nature itself. Whatever be the ruling power, whether the One, the Few, or the Many, to that power all who have private interests to serve, or who seek to rise by mean arts, will habitually address themselves. In a democracy, the natural resource of all such persons will be to flatter the inclination towards substituting delegation for representation. All who have a bad cause will be anxious to carry it before the least discerning tribunal which can be found. All individuals and all classes who are aiming at anything, which, in a government where the most instructed had the ascendancy, they would not be allowed to have, will of course in a democracy, as they do in the English aristocracy, endeavour to bring superior instruction into disrepute; and to persuade the many, that their own common sense is quite sufficient, and that the pretenders to superior wisdom are either dreamers or charlatans.

From this tendency it cannot be expected that, in any government, great evils should not arise. Mankind must be much improved before we obtain a democracy not characterised by the absence of enlarged and commanding views. But, without pretending ourselves competent to judge whether our author overstates the evils as they exist in America, we can see reasons for thinking that they would exist in a far inferior degree in Europe.

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America is not only destitute of the very equivocal advantage so strongly dwelt upon by our author, the existence of classes having a private interest in protecting opinions contrary to those of the majority; she labours, also, under a much more serious deficiency. In America there is no highly instructed class; no numerous body raised sufficiently above the common level, in education, knowledge, or refinement, to inspire the rest with any reverence for distinguished mental superiority, or any salutary sense of the insufficiency of their own wisdom. Our author himself was struck with the general equality of intelligence and mental cultivation in America. He has, moreover, fully accounted for the fact.

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When all are in nearly the same pecuniary circumstances, all educated nearly alike, and all employed nearly alike, it is no wonder if all think nearly alike; and where this is the case, it is but natural, that when here and there a solitary individual thinks differently, nobody minds him. These are exactly the circumstances in which public opinion is generally so unanimous, that it has most chance to be in reality, and is sure to be in appearance, intolerant of the few who happen to dissent from it.

M. de Tocqueville has himself told us, that there is no indisposition in the Many of the United States to pay deference to the opinions of an instructed class, where such a class exists, and where there are obvious signs by which it may be recognized. He tells us this, by what he says of the extraordinary influence of the lawyers—in his opinion one of the great causes which tend to restrain the abuse of the power of the majority. We recommend especial attention to the section devoted to this topic. (Tocqueville, Vol. II, p. 165.)

The faults incident to the character of a lawyer, in our author’s opinion, happily counterbalance those to which democracy is liable. The lawyer is naturally a lover of precedent; his respect for established rules and established formalities is apt to be unreasonable; the spirit of his profession is everywhere a stationary spirit. He usually has in excess the qualities in which democracy is apt to be deficient. His influence, therefore, is naturally exerted to correct that deficiency.

If the minds of lawyers were not, both in England and America, almost universally perverted by the barbarous system of technicalities—the opprobrium of human reason—which their youth is passed in committing to memory, and their manhood in administering,—we think with our author that they are the class in whom superiority of instruction, produced by superior study, would most easily obtain the stamp of general recognition; and that they would be the natural leaders of a people destitute of a leisured class.

But in countries which, if in some respects worse, are in the other respects far more happily situated than America; in countries where there exist endowed institutions for education, and a numerous class possessed of hereditary leisure, there is a security, far greater than has ever existed in America, against the tyranny of public opinion over the individual mind. Even if the profession of opinions different from those of the mass were an exclusion from public employment—to a leisured class offices moderately paid, and without a particle of irresponsible authority, hold out little allurement, and the diminution of their chance of obtaining them would not be severely felt. A leisured class would always possess a power sufficient not only to protect in themselves, but to encourage in others, the enjoyment of Edition: current; Page: [86] individuality of thought; and would keep before the eyes of the many, what is of so much importance to them, the spectacle of a standard of mental cultivation superior to their own. Such a class, too, would be able, by means of combination, to force upon the rest of the public attention to their opinions. In America, all large minorities exercise this power; even, as in the case of the tariff, to the extent of electing a convention, composed of representatives from all parts of the country, which deliberates in public, and issues manifestoes in the name of its party. A class composed of all the most cultivated intellects in the country; of those who, from their powers and their virtues, would command the respect of the people, even in combating their prejudices—such a class would be almost irresistible in its action on public opinion. In the existence of a leisured class, we see the great and salutary corrective of all the inconveniences to which democracy is liable. We cannot, under any modification of the laws of England, look forward to a period when this grand security for the progressiveness of the human species will not exist.

While, therefore, we see in democracy, as in every other state of society or form of government, possibilities of evil, which it would ill serve the cause of democracy itself to dissemble or overlook; while we think that the world owes a deep debt to M. de Tocqueville for having warned it of these, for having studied the failings and weaknesses of democracy with the anxious attention with which a parent watches the faults of a child, or a careful seaman those of the vessel in which he embarks his property and his life; we see nothing in any of these tendencies, from which any serious evil need be apprehended, if the superior spirits would but join with each other in considering the instruction of the democracy, and not the patching of the old worn-out machinery of aristocracy, the proper object henceforth of all rational exertion. No doubt, the government which will be achieved will long be extremely imperfect, for mankind are as yet in a very early stage of improvement. But if half the exertions were made to prepare the minds of the majority for the place they are about to take in their own government, which are made for the chimerical purpose of preventing them from assuming that place, mankind would purchase at a cheap price safety from incalculable evils, and the benefit of a government indefinitely improveable; the only possible government which, to ensure the greatest good of the community subject to it, has only to take an enlightened view of its own.

We shall conclude this article with some striking passages from M. de Tocqueville, illustrative of the collateral benefits of democracy, even in the imperfect form in which he states it to exist in America; where the people, not content with security for good government, are to a great degree the government itself.

After mankind have outgrown the child-like, unreflecting, and almost Edition: current; Page: [87] instinctive love of country, which distinguishes a rude age, patriotism and public spirit, as a sentiment diffused through the community, can only exist under a democracy:

In a democracy only can there ever again be, on the part of the community generally, a willing and conscientious obedience to the laws:

Of the general activity, and the diffusion of intelligence, which are the fruits of democracy,

We must here pause. We have left many interesting parts of the book altogether unnoticed; and among the rest two most instructive chapters—“On the Causes which maintain Democracy in America,” (among the foremost of these he places the religious spirit, and among the chief causes which maintain that spirit, the removal of religion from the field of politics by the entire separation of church and state,) and “On the Condition and Prospects of the three Races,” black, white, and red. We have preferred giving the reader a full idea of part of M. de Tocqueville’s work, rather than a mere abstract of the whole. But we earnestly recommend the study of the entire work, both to the philosophical statesman and to the general reader; and to facilitate its reaching the latter, we greatly rejoice at its appearance in an English dress.

State of Society in America

two sources of instruction, which, however highly appreciated in name, have remained, till near the present time, almost entirely useless in fact, are beginning at length to be turned to some account: we mean, history and travelling. Intelligent investigation into past ages, and intelligent study of foreign countries, have commenced: both processes being substantially the same—with only this difference, that for the latter we have more ample materials—it was natural that they should commence about the same time. Both are yet in their infancy. Neither historians nor travellers in any former age, and few even in the present, have had a glimmering of what it is to study a people.

We would not exaggerate the value of either of these sources of knowledge. They are useful in aid of a more searching and accurate experience, not in lieu of it. No one learns any thing very valuable either from history or from travelling, who does not come prepared with much that history and travelling can never teach. No one can know other people so well as he may know himself, nor other ages and countries so well as he may know his own age and country: and the wisdom acquired by the study of ourselves, and of the circumstances which surround us, can alone teach us to interpret the comparatively little which we know of other persons and other modes of existence; to make a faithful picture of them in our own minds, and to assign effects to their right causes. Even to the philosopher, the value both of history and of travelling is not so much positive as negative; they teach little, but they are a protection against much error. Nations, as well as individuals, until they have compared themselves with others, are apt to mistake their own idiosyncracies for laws of our common being, and the accidents of their position, for a part of the destiny of our race. The type of human nature and of human life with which they are familiar, is the only one which presents itself to their imagination; and their expectations and endeavours continually presupposes, as an immutable law, something which, perhaps, belongs only to the age and state of society through which they are rapidly passing.

The correction of narrowness is the main benefit derived from the study of various ages and nations: of narrowness, not only in our conceptions of what is, but in our standard of what ought to be. The individualities of nations Edition: current; Page: [94] are serviceable to the general improvement, in the same manner as the individualities of persons: since none is perfect, it is a beneficial arrangement that all are not imperfect in the same way. Each nation, and the same nation in every different age, exhibits a portion of mankind, under a set of influences, different from what have been in operation anywhere else: each, consequently, exemplifies a distinct phasis of humanity; in which the elements which meet and temper one another in a perfect human character are combined in a proportion more or less peculiar. If all nations resembled any one nation, improvement would be apt to take place only within the limits of the peculiar type of imperfection which that nation would be sure to exhibit. But when each nation beholds in some other a model of the excellencies corresponding to its own deficiencies; when all are admonished of what they want, by what others have (as well as made to feel the value of what they have by what others want), they no longer go on confirming themselves in their defects by the consciousness of their excellencies, but betake themselves, however tardily, to profiting by each other’s example.

Omitting former ages, there are in the present age four great nations, England, France, Germany, and the United States. Each of these possesses, either in its social condition, in its national character, or in both, some points of indisputable and pre-eminent superiority over all the others. Each again has some deep-seated and grievous defects from which the others are comparatively exempt. The state of society in each, and the type of human nature which it exhibits, are subjects of most instructive study to the others: and whoever, in the present age, makes up his system of opinions from the contemplation of only one of them, is in imminent danger of falling into narrow and one-sided views.

The tendency, therefore, now manifesting itself on the continent of Europe, towards the philosophic study of past and of foreign civilizations, is one of the encouraging features of the present time. It is a tendency not wholly imperceptible even in this country, the most insular of all the provinces of the republic of letters. In France and Germany it has become a characteristic of the national intellect; and such works as M. Guizot’s Lectures, reviewed in our present, and M. de Tocqueville’s America, in our last Number, are among its results.[*]

The four nations which we have named, have all contributed their part towards the collection of works on America, the titles of which stand prefixed to the present article. They comprise the testimony of one Frenchman, two Edition: current; Page: [95] Englishmen, and one German, respecting the United States, and the reply of an American to the hostile criticisms of another Englishman. All are interesting; and more than one, of distinguished merit.

The first on the list is the most attractive to the general reader. The author, M. Gustave de Beaumont, the friend and fellow-traveller of M. de Tocqueville, has thrown his impressions of America into a form which combines the authenticity of a book of travels with the attractions of a well-conceived and well-executed work of fiction. Out of a few incidents and characters, and those of the simplest description, he has constructed, without affectation or straining, one of the most pathetic stories of our time; which, as a mere novel, would have entitled the author to no small literary reputation, but which is also a highly impressive picture of American life; while the facts and remarks, which are partly interspersed through it, and partly appended in the form of notes and dissertations, superadd to its merits as a pictorial delineation, the value of a formal treatise.

M. de Beaumont is no aristocrat, but a warm friend to the American Government, and to popular institutions generally. Nevertheless, we have read no book which has represented American social life in such sombre colours, or which is more calculated to deter persons of highly-cultivated faculties and lofty aspirations, from making that country their abode. A part of this disagreeable impression is, no doubt, a consequence of the melancholy colouring given by that deplorable feature in American life on which the interest of the fictitious narrative chiefly turns—the inhuman antipathy against the negro race. The heroine of the story of Marie is a girl of colour—or at least is reputed such, for the brand of degradation attaches not to colour, but to pedigree. Undistinguishable by any outward mark from women of purely European descent—the daughter of a man of weight and consideration in the State to which he belongs—she grows up to womanhood in ignorance of the defect in her genealogy, and with the feelings of a highly-educated and sensitive girl. At this period, by the malice of an enemy, it is bruited abroad, that, two or three generations before, a drop of negro blood had mingled itself with that of one of her ancestors, and had been transmitted to her. The remainder of the story is occupied with the misery brought upon this unfortunate girl, upon her brave and high-spirited brother, her father, and her lover, by the effects of that direful prejudice, so lamentable that we hardly know how to call it detestable.

Even independently of this dark spot in the character and destiny of the Americans, M. de Beaumont’s representation of them is not flattering. There is, however, a caution to be observed by an English reader, lest he should draw from the terms in which M. de Beaumont expresses himself, inferences never intended by the author. M. de Beaumont’s is a picture of American life as it appears to a Frenchman. But to a Frenchman, English life would, as Edition: current; Page: [96] to many of its features, appear in a light very similar, and not much less unfavourable. In many things which strike M. de Beaumont with the force of novelty, and of which he speaks with strong, and possibly well-grounded, dislike, an Englishman would see merely the peculiarities of his own country and people a little heightened; but being probably unaware of the degree in which things so familiar to him may appear strange and repulsive to foreigners, he will be in danger of measuring the divergence of America from the English standard, by the strong terms in which M. de Beaumont expresses her distance from the French. The picture thus mentally heightened would become a ridiculous caricature. Even a work of a far higher order of philosophy than M. de Beaumont’s, the Democracy in America of M. de Tocqueville, will be apt, if read without this necessary caution, to convey a conception of America, in many respects very wide of the truth.

In Mr. Abdy’s, still more than in M. de Beaumont’s book, the main topic is the condition and treatment of the negro and mixed races; of whose cause Mr. Abdy is an enthusiastic advocate, and of whose wrongs even M. de Beaumont’s fiction scarcely gives so appalling a conception as Mr. Abdy’s accumulation of facts. But into this painful subject, which is almost wholly unconnected with any of the other features of society in America, we shall at this time refrain from entering; and the more willingly, as, in the present state of our knowledge, we are quite unable either to suggest a remedy, or even to hazard a conjecture as to the solution which fate has in reserve for that terrible problem.

Mr. Abdy, in respect of his political opinions, is an enlightened Radical; and in respect of understanding and acquirements, appears a very competent observer and witness, as to the state of things in America. Few books of travels in that country, which have fallen under our notice, have a greater number of useful and interesting facts and observations scattered through them. The real and great interest, however, in Mr. Abdy’s mind, is the condition of the coloured population; and his sympathy with them gives him, in spite of his radicalism, a decided bias against the Americans. The contrary is the case with Mr. Latrobe. This gentleman seems, with respect to his native country, England, to be a Tory, or at least a decided antireformer. But we are acquainted with no traveller whose sentiments as to home politics have less influenced his judgment or feelings respecting foreign countries. Being, as he evidently is, of an amiable and highly sociable disposition; meeting, like all other travellers, not merely with hospitality, but with the most remarkable kindness and sociability throughout the United States, and deriving the keenest enjoyment from the sublime natural objects which he witnessed, and of which he has furnished some of the most attractive descriptions we ever read; Mr. Latrobe has seen all objects illuminated by his own feelings of pleasure: and the impression which he communicates Edition: current; Page: [97] of America and the Americans is highly favourable. In this work, as in the others, we have found some judicious and valuable remarks; but its greatest merit lies in its pictures of scenery, in which department it ranks among the first productions of our day, and may probably engage some further share of our attention in another article.

Dr. Lieber’s work is the least valuable of the set. The author is a German, permanently settled in the United States, where he has acquired, we believe, a respectable position as a man of letters, and is the same who has recently published, in this country, his Reminiscences of Niebuhr the historian.[*] His book contains something about America, with which he is in the highest good humour, and something about every other subject whatsoever, especially about the author himself, of whose adventures in the campaign of Waterloo we have a long, and it must be admitted, interesting narrative, à propos of nothing at all. It is a book of lively and rather clever gossip, which adds something, though not much, to our knowledge of America; and has, for that reason, been deemed worthy of a place at the head of this article.

Our list is closed by a paper reprinted in this country from the North American Review, in which one of the most smooth-tongued of the detractors of America, the author of Cyril Thornton, is gently, but most effectually demolished.[†] The exposure of the incompetency and presumption of the travelling Tory is complete. As to the subject itself, the reviewer endeavours to make out, in behalf of his country, more points than, judging from other authorities, we incline to think he can succeed in; but he is well entitled to a hearing, and we eagerly expect the judgment of the same writer on M. de Tocqueville, and on the various authors reviewed in our present article.

For ourselves, we are less desirous of transferring to our pages (for which, indeed, we have not room) a selection of the most interesting passages from these various works, than of stating the opinion which, from these and from all other sources of information, we have formed as to the manner in which America has usually been judged.

Scarcely any one has looked at the United States with any other apparent purpose than to find arguments for and against popular government. America has been discussed, as if she were nothing but a democracy: a society, differing from other human societies in no essential point, except the popular character of her institutions. The friends or enemies of parliamentary reform have been more or less in the habit of ascribing to democracy whatever of Edition: current; Page: [98] good or evil they have found or dreamed of in the United States. One class of writers, indeed, the political economists, have taken notice of a second circumstance, namely, that population in America does not press upon the means of subsistence—and have traced the consequences of this as far as high wages, but seldom further; while the rest of the world, if their partialities happened to lie that way, have gone on ascribing even high wages to the government; which we are informed is the prevalent opinion among the Americans themselves, of all ranks and parties. But the Government is only one of a dozen causes which have made America what she is. The Americans are a democratic people: granted; but they are also a people without poor; without rich; with a “far west” behind them; so situated as to be in no danger of aggressions from without; sprung mostly from the Puritans; speaking the language of a foreign country; with no established church; with no endowments for the support of a learned class; with boundless facilities to all classes for “raising themselves in the world;” and where a large family is a fortune.

Without analysing minutely the effects of all these causes, let us glance at some few of the numerous considerations which they suggest.

America, then, is a country in which there are no poor. This is not the effect of the government. There are, indeed, governments in the world which would make any people poor; but to such governments, a people as civilized as the Americans never would submit. Where there is sufficient protection of property, and sufficient freedom from arbitrary exaction, to enable capital to accumulate with rapidity, and where population does not increase still more rapidly, no one who is willing to work can possibly be poor. Where there is no poverty, there will be a remarkable freedom from the vices and crimes which are the consequences of it. It is remarkable how much of those national characteristics which are supposed to be peculiarly the result of democracy, flow directly from the superior condition of the people—and would exist under any government, provided the competition of employers for labourers were greater than that of labourers for employment. The personal independence, for example, of the labouring classes; their distaste for menial occupations, and resolute taking of their own way in the manner of performing them, contrasted with that absolute and blind obedience to which European employers are accustomed: what are these but the result of a state of the labour-market, in which to consent to serve another is doing a sort of favour to him, and servants know that they, and not the masters, can dictate the conditions of the contract?* The unpleasant peculiarities which are complained of by travellers, in the manners of the most numerous class in America, along with the substantial kindness to which every traveller bears testimony, would be manifested by the English peasantry if they were in the same circumstances—satisfied with their condition, and therefore Edition: current; Page: [99] evincing the degree of social feeling and mutual good will which a prosperous people always exhibit; but freed from the necessity of servility for bread, and, consequently, at liberty to treat their superiors exactly as they treat one another.

If we add to this, that the original founders of the colonies, from whom the present race of Americans are descended, were of the middle class, were people who could read, and who valued reading as the means of being instructed in their religion, we shall not wonder that this well-paid people are also a reading people; and that this well-paid and reading people are a democratic people. High wages and universal reading are the two elements of democracy; where they co-exist, all government, except the government of public opinion, is impossible. While the thirteen states were dependent colonies of Great Britain, they were, as to internal government, nearly as complete democracies as they now are; and we know what was the consequence of attempting to impose burdens upon them without their own consent.

But, secondly, there are not only no poor, there are scarcely any rich—and no hereditary rich. Here again is a fact over which the government has some indirect influence, but of which it cannot be considered the cause. There are no laws to keep large fortunes together; but neither are there laws, as in France, to divide them. If the rich chose to leave all their property to their eldest sons, there is nothing in the institutions of any of the states of America to prevent them; it is only in case of intestacy that the law interferes, and in most of the states effects an equal distribution. Public opinion seems to enjoin, in most cases, equality of division; but it enforces its mandates only by a moral sanction.*

Here, then, is a circumstance of immense influence on the civilization of any country; an influence on which in our article on M. de Tocqueville’s America we have enlarged, and which is further dwelt upon in the first article of our present Number.[*] That important portion of a people, who are its natural leaders in the higher paths of social improvement—a leisured class, a class educated for leisure—is wanting in America. It is not necessary, it is not even desirable, that this class should possess enormous incomes. The Edition: current; Page: [100] class exists largely in France and Germany, where the standard of incomes is very low. But in America there is no class exempted from the necessity of bestowing the best years of life on the acquisition of a subsistence. To say nothing of the refinements and elegancies of social life—all distinguished eminence in philosophy, and in the nobler kinds of literature, is in a manner denied to America by this single circumstance. There may, indeed, be writers by profession, and these may drive a thriving trade; but, in no state of society ever known, could the writings which were addressed to the highest order of minds, and which were in advance of their age, have afforded a subsistence to their authors. These have been produced by persons who had at least the means of supporting life, independently of their literary labours; and even the few works of a high order, which have been written in the intervals of a life devoted to other business, have commonly been addressed to a leisured class.*

We do not remember to have seen it noticed by any writer except the author of England and America;[*] but it is a most significant fact, that a large majority of all the Americans who are known out of their own country, and five of her seven presidents, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, were from the slave states. The reason is manifest: there, and there alone, was there a leisured class.

To the absence of such a class must be added another circumstance, to which due weight has scarcely yet been assigned—this is, that, to all intents except government, the people of America are provincials. Politically, the United States are a great and independent nation; but in all matters social or literary, they are a province of the British empire. This peculiarity of position, to which even their descent contributes, is indissolubly fixed by the identity of language.

The characteristic of provincialism, in society and literature, is imitation: provincials dare not be themselves; they dare do nothing for which they have not, or think they have not, a warrant from the metropolis. In regard to society, this remark is too hacknied to need illustration. It is equally true in respect to literature. In the one, as in the other, the provinces take their tone from the capital. It rarely happens that a book has any success in the provinces, unless a reputation acquired in the capital has preceded its arrival. But, in regard to literature, Boston and New York are as much provincial cities as Norwich or Liverpool, and much more so than Edinburgh (which Edition: current; Page: [101] indeed is a kind of literary and social metropolis in itself, and partakes but partially of the provincial character). There has been a Franklin, and there has been a Burns: there will always be persons of extraordinary genius, or extraordinary energy, capable of making their way against one kind of obstacle as against another. But, of the illustrious men of letters in France and England, though a majority have been provincials by birth, nearly all have spent their best years in the capital, and their works have been written in and for London and Paris. The courage which has made them dare trust to their own inspirations, either in thought or in language, as well as the modesty which has saved them from (what stops the progress of most aspirants in a very early stage) the misfortune of being too easily pleased with their own performances—have been learned in the literary metropolis of the nation, and in contact with the direct influence of its leading minds.

Subtract from the British empire London and Edinburgh, and all or nearly all who are born to independence; leave at the summit of this frustum of the social pyramid the merchants of Liverpool, the manufacturers of Manchester, the bar of London spread over the whole of England, and the physicians, attorneys, and dissenting clergy: then raise the working classes to the enjoyment of ample wages—give them universally the habit of reading, and an active interest in public affairs; and you will have a society constituted almost identically with that of the United States, and the only standard with which this last can either be likened or contrasted.* The present government of France has been called la monarchie des épiciers; America is a republic peopled with a provincial middle class.

The virtues of a middle class are those which conduce to getting rich—integrity, economy, and enterprise—along with family affections, inoffensive conduct between man and man, and a disposition to assist one another, whenever no commercial rivalry intervenes. Of all these virtues the Americans appear to possess a large share.† And the qualities of a more questionable description, which there seems to be most ground for ascribing to them, are the same which are seen to be characteristic of a middle class in other countries: a general indifference to those kinds of knowledge and mental culture which cannot be immediately converted into pounds, shillings, and pence; very little perception or enjoyment of the beautiful, either in nature or in the productions of genius, along with great occasional affection of it; the predominant passion that of money—the passion of those who have Edition: current; Page: [102] no other; indifference to refinements and elegancies for their own sake, but a vehement desire to possess what are accounted such by others.

Another circumstance which has important consequences, both as to society and national character, is the unrivalled industrial prosperity of the United States. This circumstance enables the country to do with less government than any other country in existence. It is easy to keep the peace among a people all of whom are not only well off, but have unlimited means of making themselves still better off without injury to any one. The facilities of acquiring riches are such, that according to M. de Tocqueville, that is the career which engrosses all the ambitious spirits.[*] But this same industrial prosperity has some undesirable effects. Both wages and profits being higher than in any other part of the world, the temptation is strong to all classes (but especially to those who, as managers of their own capital, can unite both sources of emolument) to enter into life, as it is called, in other words, to plunge into money-getting, at the earliest possible age. It is affirmed that hardly any American remains at a place of general education beyond the age of fifteen. Here again we recognise the habits and ways of thinking of a middle class; the very causes which are accountable for the comparative failure of the London University. Further, the chances of rapid gain, combined with the facility of recovering after a fall, offer a temptation to hazardous speculations greater than in any other country. In Europe, a person who loses his all, falls into beggary; in America, only into a condition from whence, in a few years, he may emerge restored to affluence. A most adventurous spirit may, therefore, be expected to prevail in the conduct of business. Not only does this appear to be the fact, but the sympathy of the public generally with that adventurous spirit, seems to produce extraordinary indulgence even to its ill success. It is a remarkable circumstance, that although the power is expressly reserved to Congress, of framing a general law of bankruptcy for the United States, public opinion has never permitted any such law to be enacted. The laws of some of the states are lenient to excess towards even fraudulent bankruptcy;* and failures inflict no discredit in the opinion of society. One cause of this indulgence towards bankruptcies may be their extreme frequency. “A short time,” says M. de Beaumont (Vol. I, pp. 284-6),

M. de Beaumont adds, with discriminating candour. “Because the Americans are tolerant of bankruptcy, it does not follow that they approve of it. Self-interest, observes Chateaubriand, is the greatest vice of the Mussulmans,[*] and yet liberality is the virtue they hold in highest esteem. In like manner, these traders, who continually violate their engagements, applaud and honour good faith.”

It is, in fact, evident that in such bankruptcies the creditor has nothing to complain of; as he loses by others, so others are in constant danger of losing by him; and losses by bankruptcy are counted among the ordinary risks of trade. The proof is, that notwithstanding the frequency of failures, in no country is credit given more profusely and readily. “The system of trading upon credit,” says Mr. Abdy (Vol. II, p. 130), “has been carried to a ruinous extent. The facility with which bills are indorsed, and mutual accommodation procured, has exposed commerce to reverses and expedients unknown in the old world; and the tendency to erect mercantile enterprise on the basis of borrowing, is such as to present the spectacle of a nation, composed in a great degree of individuals who have mortgaged their bones and muscles to the exigencies and speculations of the moment.”*

Another circumstance in American society has been noticed by almost all travellers; and M. de Beaumont, Mr. Latrobe and Dr. Lieber bear strong Edition: current; Page: [104] testimony to it:—the uninfluential position of married women, their seclusion from society, and the housemaid-like drudgery which appears to fill up their lives. There have not been wanting persons who have seen, even in this, one of the “degrading influences of democracy.” It is, however, an obvious consequence of that state of the labour-market, which renders early marriages and numerous families universal. Such a state of society naturally produces what, by rather a pedantic use of the term, is called regularity of morals; but when the boundlessness of the field of employment, compared with the numbers to be employed, renders a large family a fortune instead of a burden, women are likely, in their present relation to men (and while in such matters they have as little of a will of their own as everywhere, except in France, they seem to have), to be little else than machines for bringing forth and nursing multitudes of children. And it is evident, that where such is their destiny as wives, and where they become wives almost before they are women, they are likely to be sufficiently inferior in mental endowments, fully to justify, in the eyes of men, the inferiority of their social position.*

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On looking back to the foregoing observations, some readers will perhaps be surprised to find, that nearly all which has ever been complained of as bad in America, and a great part of what is good, are accounted for independently of democracy. This would have been still more obvious, if, instead of confining our attention, as we have hitherto done, to the northern and eastern states, we had extended it to the whole Union. So far as the slave-states are concerned, it is a mere perversion of terms to call the government a democracy. The entire white population of these states are an aristocracy; and from all credible accounts, appear to have a large share of all the personal qualities which belong everywhere to those who rule by force, and are supported by the labour of others.* Little could probably be traced among them of the influences either of democracy or of any other of the general features of American society, were it not for that incessant and rapid communication, which brings into daily contact the inhabitants of all parts of the Union, and has helped to produce throughout its whole extent a similarity of personal character, not, indeed, so complete as is often supposed, but greater than could have been produced by any other circumstance among so diversified a population.

We have equally left out of our consideration the back-woods, and have not thought it necessary to justify democracy from being in any way accessary to “Lynch-law.” We have not forgotten Sir Robert Peel’s Tamworth speech;[*] but (we must say) we think that speech chiefly remarkable as a specimen of what the conservative baronet thought would go down with his Tamworth auditory, or, we may perhaps add, with his party. There are Tories enough, probably, who are ignorant of the difference between the state of Mississippi and the state of New York; but we much doubt his being one of them. Sir Robert Peel is not so ignorant as to suppose, Edition: current; Page: [106] that any government could establish good order and obedience to law, in countries which count nearly as many square miles as inhabitants. He must have read Mr. Crawford’s report;[*] from which he might have learnt that in the back settlements not more than one crime in a hundred either is, or possibly can be, made the subject of legal redress; and each person consequently retains the right of self-defence which belongs to man in a state of nature.* Least of all can Sir Robert Peel be sincere in laying the blame upon democracy, of lawless proceedings which are exclusively confined to the south-western states, where all the bad passions arising from slavery, are blended with the vices natural to a country colonized almost exclusively, as M. de Tocqueville says, by adventurers and speculators.[†] Even Lynch-law, which, though it occasionally sanctions its mandates by death, limits them in the first instance to removal from the neighbourhood, is probably a real improvement upon the state of society previously existing, in which every man’s rifle was his own protector and avenger.

Nothing is farther from our intention than to say that the experience of America throws no light upon principles of government, or that America is not a proper theatre in which to study the tendencies of democracy. Whoever has read our review of M. de Tocqueville’s book,[‡] knows that we think the contrary. Democracy may be studied in America—but studied it must be; its effects are not apparent on the mere surface of the facts; a greater power of discriminating essentials from non-essentials than travellers or politicians usually possess, is required for deducing from the phenomena of American society inferences of any kind with respect to democracy. The facts themselves must first be sifted, more carefully than they ever are by any but a most highly-qualified observer. Next, we have to strike off all such of the facts as, from the laws of human nature, democracy can have nothing to do with, and all those which are sufficiently accounted for by other causes. Edition: current; Page: [107] The residuum alone can, by even a plausible conjecture, be traced home to democracy.

One truth, at least, we think, sufficiently manifest. The Tory writers have said, and said truly, that tranquillity and prosperity, in a country placed in the peculiar physical circumstances of America, proves little for the safety of democratic institutions among the crowded population, the innumerable complications and causes of dissatisfaction, which exist in older countries. Had they stopped there, every rational person would have been of their opinion. But when they proceed to argue as if the experiment of democracy had been tried in America under circumstances wholly favourable, they are totally mistaken. America is, in many important points, nearly the most unfavourable field in which democracy could have been tried. With regard, indeed, to the vulgar apprehensions which haunt vulgar minds, of agrarian laws, and schemes of sweeping confiscation, the circumstances of the experiment are undoubtedly as favourable as could be desired. But these are the fears only of those to whom omne ignotum is terrible. In everything which concerns the influences of democracy on intellect and social life, its virtues could nowhere be put upon a harder trial than in America; for no civilized country is placed in circumstances tending more to produce mediocrity in the one, or dullness and inelegance in the other. Everything in the position of America tends to foster the spirit of trade, the passion of money-getting, and that almost alone.

We should not wonder if it were found that, in point of fact, the Americans exhibit, not more, but less, of these undesirable characteristics, than is the natural result of circumstances independent of their government: and that, instead of evidence against democracy, there is a balance to be set down in its favour, as an actual counteractive of many of the unfavourable influences to which some other circumstances in the position of America tend to subject her.

If so, unquestionably the condition of America must be regarded as highly promising and hopeful: for, of all the circumstances in her position which have appeared to us calculated to produce unfavourable effects upon her national character, there is not one which has not a tendency to disappear. Her greatest deficiency—the absence of a leisured class—the mere progress of accumulation must be gradually supplying. If indeed the deleterious influence in America were democracy, her case would be hopeless, for that is an influence which must be strengthened, and not weakened, by the natural course of events. But of every other element of evil she will in time get rid. Accordingly there is valuable testimony to the existence of a tendency to improvement in those very points in which it seems to be most needed. The North American Review, January, 1833, p. 47, a work attached to the federalist, not the democratic party, says, “We rejoice to have it in our power Edition: current; Page: [108] to assure the friends of liberty in England, that they have nothing to fear for the charities and ornaments of life in the progress of reform. Improvement was never in any country or age more active, more visibly diffusing itself, than in the United States at this time. Schools of all kinds are multiplying, sound learning in all its branches is more and more cultivated, the polite arts are in a state of creditable progress, and all these good influences are producing their natural good effects.”[*]

The same Review, in the article on Colonel Hamilton’s Men and Manners in America, contains the following passages, which it is but justice in us to insert, having so recently extracted from M. de Tocqueville the expression of opinions directly contrary on the points alluded to. Future observers must decide which statement is nearest to the truth.

This view of the matter receives confirmation from the hostile testimony of Colonel Hamilton himself. If the Americans are so vain of their distinguished intellectual characters, as that gentleman affirms, most assuredly they must be anything but indifferent to the value of intellect itself.

On the capacity and disposition of the people to make a good selection of persons to fill the highest offices, the American reviewer, though attached to what is esteemed the aristocratic party, is so far from agreeing with M. de Tocqueville, that he considers the experience of his country to be not only favourable, but decisively so.

There are two or three obvious mistakes in this reasoning. Athens and Rome were not democracies, but altogether, and exclusively, governments by a leisured class: their experience, therefore, though it throws light upon many of the effects of free institutions in general, cannot be quoted as evidence on the subject of democracy. The Presidents of America, too, should have been contrasted, not with the hereditary kings of the various countries of Europe, who generally have little to do in the government of those countries, but with the prime ministers. That comparison, however, is anything but unfavourable to America; and the reviewer is warranted in his triumphant appeal to the distinguished merit of the seven Presidents who have been elected by the people of the United States.

A question to which we should be more anxious to have the reviewer’s answer, would be, why the Washingtons and Jeffersons have left no successors? Why, in an age so far superior in intellectual facilities and resources to that in which those eminent men were educated, the man whom common opinion even now apparently places at the head of the public men of the Edition: current; Page: [111] United States, is the survivor of President Jefferson’s cabinet, Mr. Albert Gallatin?*

We are the more desirous to have this question answered by the reviewer, as we can ourselves suggest an answer for his consideration. The great men alluded to were sprung from a leisured class. The families which gave birth to Washington and Jefferson, and, we believe, to Madison and Monroe, belonged to a class of proprietors maintained by the labour of slaves, and enjoying hereditary landed possessions in the then flourishing and opulent state of Virginia. From causes not satisfactorily explained in any of the works before us, but which are apparently connected with vicissitudes of cultivation and markets, the prosperity of that state has greatly declined, and nearly the whole of these families are bankrupt.† We are much mistaken if this be not part of the solution of the mystery. The stream has ceased to flow, because its fountain is dried up. Why a corresponding number of examples of like excellence have not been produced in the other slave states we cannot pretend to say. Were we perfectly versed in the history and local circumstances of those states, the fact might admit of explanation. We do not affirm that wherever there is a leisured class there will be high mental culture. But we contend that the existence of such a class is a necessary condition of it.

As to the general standard of mental cultivation and acquirements in the United States, the testimony of all travellers confirms the assertion of M. de Tocqueville, that a certain “niveau mitoyen” has established itself, which few either fall below or soar above.[*] “It is probable,” says Mr. Abdy, (Vol. I, p. 13.) “that the average of literary accomplishments is higher among our brethren in the new world, than among ourselves, while the extremes at either end are less distant from the middle point of the scale.” “The instruction given to children,” says M. de Beaumont,

There is one topic on which we desire to say a few words, particularly as it is one on which the testimony of travellers is not uniform—the inordinate national vanity of which the Americans are accused, and their imputed excess of sensitiveness to criticism. On these points the testimony of M. de Tocqueville, M. de Beaumont, and Mr. Abdy, is extremely unfavourable. They all agree in representing the mass of Americans as not only offended by any disparagement of their country, even in the most unessential particular, but dissatisfied with any moderate praise; and as nourishing the most extravagant ideas of the superiority of their country over all others. All these authors agree also in ascribing this national weakness to the fulsome flattery heaped on the nation en masse by nearly all their politicians and writers: flattery, of which Mr. Abdy (who excels almost any traveller we remember in the abundance of specific facts with which he usually substantiates his general observations) produces a number of very ludicrous instances.

Mr. Latrobe does not appear to have seen these peculiarities (except, indeed, the sensitiveness) in quite so strong a light. The North American Review altogether denies them. “We aver upon our consciences,” says the reviewer of Mrs. Trollope,[*]

Dr. Lieber is of the same opinion.

This is the testimony of a trustworthy witness, who, during a far longer residence in the country than that of Mr. Abdy, or MM de Tocqueville and de Beaumont, has enjoyed ample opportunities of observation. The discrepancy may be easily reconciled. It is but natural to suppose that the Americans, like all other people, will bear more from one person than from another; and that so warm an admirer as Dr. Lieber may have met with a more good-humoured Edition: current; Page: [114] reception for his small criticisms, than is given to the strictures of men who, like the other three gentlemen, have opinions which place them at direct variance with some of the strongest prejudices and most prominent characteristics of the American people.

As for their inordinate conceit of the superiority of their country, all the nations of Europe had the like, until they began to know one another; and the cure for it, in America as elsewhere, is greater intercourse with foreigners. Nor must it be forgotten that, to a stranger, both the conceit and the sensitiveness to criticism are likely to appear greater than they are. He sees the Americans in their awkwardest aspect—when they are attempting to do the honours of their country to a foreigner. They are not at their ease with him. They have the feelings as a nation, which we usually see in an individual whose position in society is not fixed. Their place in the estimation of the civilized world is not yet settled. They have but recently come to their importance, and they cannot yet afford to despise affronts. On this subject the liberal remarks of Mr. Latrobe deserve attention. He says, (Vol. I, p. 68.)—

It must be said, to the honour of the Quarterly Review, that these and similar remarks of Mr. Latrobe have extorted from that journal (or perhaps only afforded it an opportunity for) an acknowledgment of error, accompanied with expressions of regret for the tone of former articles;[*] an example of candour which, though it does not cancel the turpitude of the previous offence, is highly laudable, and almost new in the morality of the periodical press.

Civilization

The word civilization, like many other terms of the philosophy of human nature, is a word of double meaning. It sometimes stands for ahuman improvementa in general, and sometimes for bcertain kindsb of improvement in particular.

We are accustomed to call a country more civilized if we think it more improved; more eminent in the best characteristics of Man and Society; cfartherc advanced in the road to perfection; happier, nobler, wiser. This is one sense of the word civilization. But in another sense it stands for that kind of improvement only, which distinguishes a wealthy and dpowerfuld nation from savages or barbarians. It is in this sense that we may speak of the vices or the miseries of civilization, and that the question has been seriously propounded, whether civilization is on the whole a good or an evil? Assuredly, we entertain no doubt on this point, we hold that civilization is a good, that it is the cause of much good, ande not incompatible with any, but we think there is other good, much even of the highest good, which civilization in this sense does not provide for, and some which it has a tendency (though that tendency may be counteracted) to impede.

The inquiry into which these considerations would leadf, is calculated to throw light upon many of the characteristic features of our time. The present era is pre-eminently the era of civilization in the narrow sense; whether we consider what has already been achieved, or the rapid advances making towards still greater achievements. We do not regard the age as either equally advanced or equally progressive in many of the other kinds of improvement. In some it appears to us stationary, in some even retrograde. Moreover,g the irresistible consequences of a state of advancing civilization; the new position in which that advance has placed, and is every day more and more placing, mankind, the entire inapplicability of old rules to this new position, and the necessity, if we would either realize the benefits of the new state or preserve those of the old, that we should adopt many new rules, and new courses of Edition: current; Page: [120] action; are topics which seem to require a more comprehensive examination than they have usually received.

We shall hon the present occasionh use the word civilization ionly in the restrictedi sense: not that in which it is synonymous with improvement, but that in which it is the direct converse or contrary of rudeness or barbarism. Whatever be the characteristics of what we call savage life, the contrary of these, orj the qualities which society puts on as it throws off these, constitute civilization. Thus, a savage tribe consists of a handful of individuals, wandering or thinly scattered over a vast tract of country: a dense population, therefore, dwelling in fixed habitations, and largely collected together in towns and villages, we term civilized. In savage life there is no commerce, no manufactures, no agriculture, or next to none: a country rich in the fruits of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, we call civilized. In savage communities each person shifts for himself; except in war (and even then very imperfectly), we seldom see any joint operations carried on by the union of many; nor do savagesk, in general,k find much pleasure in each other’s society. Wherever, therefore, we find human beings acting together for common purposes in large bodies, and enjoying the pleasures of social intercourse, we term them civilized. In savage life there is little or no law, or administration of justice; no systematic employment of the collective strength of society, to protect individuals against injury from one another; every one trusts to his own strength or cunning, and where that fails, he is lgenerallyl without resource. We accordingly call a people civilized, where the arrangements of society, for protecting the persons and property of its members, are sufficiently perfect to maintain peace among them; i.e. to induce the bulk of the community to rely for their security mainly uponm social arrangements, and renounce for the most part, and in ordinary circumstances, the vindication of their interests (whether in the way of aggression or of defence) by their individual strength or courage.

These ingredients of civilization are various, but consideration will satisfy us that they are not improperly classed together. History, and their own nature, alike show that they begin together, always co-exist, and accompany each other in their growth. Wherever there has narisenn sufficient knowledge of the arts of life, and sufficient security of property and person, to render the progressive increase of wealth and population possible, the community becomes and continues progressive in all the elements which we have just enumerated. oTheseo elements exist in modern Europe, and especially in Edition: current; Page: [121] Great Britain, in a more eminent degree, and in a state of more rapid progression, than at any other place or time. We ppropose to considerp some of the consequences which that high and progressive state of civilization has already produced, and of the further ones which it is hastening to produce.

The most remarkable of those consequences of advancing civilization, which the state of the world is now forcing upon the attention of thinking minds, is this: that power passes more and more from individuals, and small knots of individuals, to masses: that the importance of the masses becomes constantly greater, that of individuals less.

The causes, evidences, and consequences of this law of human affairs, well deserve attention.

There are two elements of importance and influence among mankind: the one is, property; the other, powers and acquirements of mind. Both of these, in an early stage of civilization, are confined to a few persons. In the beginnings of society, the power of the masses does not exist; because property and intelligence have no existence beyond a very small portion of the community, and even if they had, those who possessed the smaller portions would be, from their incapacity of co-operation, unable to cope with those who possessed the larger.

qIn the more backward countries of the present time, and in all Europe at no distant date, we see property entirely concentrated in a small number of hands; the remainder of the people being, with few exceptions, either the military retainers and dependents of the possessors of property, or serfs, stripped and tortured at pleasure by one master, and pillaged by a hundred. At no period could it be said that there was literally no middle class—but that class was extremely feeble, both in numbers and in power: while the labouring people, absorbed in manual toil, with difficulty earned, by the utmost excess of exertion, a more or less scanty and always precarious subsistence. The character of this state of society was the utmost excess of poverty and impotence in the masses; the most enormous importance and uncontrollable power of a small number of individuals, each of whom, within his own sphere, knew neither law nor superior.

We must leave to history to unfold the gradual rise of the trading and manufacturing classes, the gradual emancipation of the agricultural, the tumults and bouleversements which accompanied these changes in their course, and the extraordinary alterations in institutions, opinions, habits, and the whole of social life, which they brought in their train. We need only ask the reader to form a conceptionr of all that is implied in the words, growth of a middle class; and then stos reflect on the immense increase of Edition: current; Page: [122] the numbers and property of that class throughout Great Britain, France, Germany, and other countries, in every successive generation, and the novelty of a labouring class receiving such wages as are now commonly earned by nearly the whole of the manufacturing, that is, of the most numerous portion of the operative classes of this country—and ask himself whether, from causes so unheard-of, unheard-of effects ought not to be expected to flow. It must at least be evident, that if, as civilization advances, property and intelligence become thus widely diffused among the millions, it must also be an effect of civilization, that the portion of either of these which can belong to an individual must have a tendency to become less and less influential, and all results must more and more be decided by the movements of masses; provided that the power of combination among the masses keeps pace with the progress of their resources. And that it does so, who can doubt? There is not a more accurate test of the progress of civilization than the progress of the power of co-operation.

tConsidert the savage: he has bodily strength, he has courage, enterprise, and is often not without intelligence; what makes all savage communities poor and feeble? The same cause which prevented the lions and tigers from long ago extirpating the race of men—incapacity of co-operation. It is only civilized beings who can combine. All combination is compromise: it is the sacrifice of some portion of individual will, for a common purpose. The savage cannot bear to sacrifice, for any purpose, the satisfaction of his individual will. His usocial cannot even temporarily prevail over his selfish feelings, nor his impulsesu bend to his calculations. Look again at the slave: he is used indeed to make his will give way; but to the commands of a master, not to a superior purpose of his own. He is wanting in intelligence to form such a purpose; above all, he cannot frame to himself the conception of a fixed rule: nor if he could, has he the capacity to adhere to it; he is habituated to control, but not to self-control; when a driver is not standing over him with a vwhipv, he is found more incapable of withstanding any temptation, or wrestrainingw any inclination, than the savage himself.

We have taken extreme cases, that the fact we seek to illustrate might stand out more conspicuously. But the remark itself applies universally. As any people approach to the condition of savages or of slaves, so are they incapable of acting in concert. xConsider evenx war, the most serious business of a barbarous people; see what a figure rude nations, or semi-civilized and enslaved nations, have made against civilized ones, from Marathon downwards. Why? Because discipline is more powerful than numbers, and discipline, that is, perfect co-operation, is an attribute of civilization. To come to Edition: current; Page: [123] our own times, ythe whole history of the Peninsular War bears witness to the incapacity of an imperfectly civilized people fory co-operation. Amidst all the enthusiasm of the Spanish znationz struggling against Napoleon, no one leader, military or political, could act in concert with another; no one would sacrifice one iota of his consequence, his authority, or his opinion, to the most obvious demands of the common cause; neither generals nor soldiers could observe the simplest rules of the military art. If there be an interest which one might expect to act forcibly upon the minds even of savages, it is the desire of simultaneously crushing a formidable neighbour whom none of them are strong enough to resist single-handed; yet none but civilized nations have ever been capable of forming an alliance. The native states of India have been conquered by the English one by one; Turkey made peace with Russia in the very moment of her invasion by France; the nations of the world never could form a confederacy against the Romans, but were swallowed up in succession, some of them being always ready to aid in the subjugation of the rest. Enterprises requiring the voluntary co-operation of many persons independent of one another, in the hands of all but highly civilized nations, have always failed.

It is not difficult to see why this incapacity of organized combination characterizes savages, and disappears with the growth of civilization. Co-operation, like other difficult things, can be learnt only by practice: and to be capable of it in great things, a people must be gradually trained to it in small. Now, the whole course of advancing civilization is a series of such training. The labourer in a rude state of society works singly, or if several are brought to work together by the will of a master, they work side by side, but not in concert; one man digs his piece of ground, another digs a similar piece of ground close by him. In the situation of an ignorant labourer, tilling even his own field with his own ahandsa, and bassociating withb no one except his wife and his children, what is there that can teach him to co-operate? The division of employments—the accomplishment by the combined labour of several, of tasks which could not be achieved by any number of persons singly—is the great school of co-operation. What a lesson, for instance, is navigation, as soon as it passes out of its first simple stage; the safety of all, constantly depending upon the vigilant performance by each, of the part peculiarly allotted to him in the common task. Military operations, when not wholly undisciplined, are a similar school; so are all the operations of commerce and manufactures which require the employment of many hands upon Edition: current; Page: [124] the same thing at the same time. By these operations, mankind learn the value of combination; they see how much and with what ease it accomplishes, which never could be accomplished without it; they learn a practical lesson of submitting themselves to guidance, and subduing themselves to act as interdependent parts of a complex whole. A people thus progressively trained to combination by the business of their lives, become capable of carrying the same habits into new things. For it holds universally, that the one only mode of learning to do anything, is actually doing something of the same kind under easier circumstances. Habits of discipline once acquired, qualify human beings to accomplish all other things for which discipline is needed. No longer either spurning control, orc incapable of seeing its advantages; whenever any object presents itself which can be attained by co-operation, and which they see or believe to be beneficial, they are ripe for attaining it.

The characters, then, of a state of high civilization being the diffusion of property and intelligence, and the power of co-operation; the next thing to observe is the dunexampledd development which all these elements have assumed of late years.

The rapidity with which property has accumulated and is accumulating in the principal countries of Europe, but especially in this island, is obvious to every one. The capital of the industrious classes overflows into foreign countries, and into all kinds of wild speculations. The amount of capital annually exported from Great Britain alone, surpasses probably the whole wealth of the most flourishing commercial republics of antiquity. But ethise capital, collectively so vast, is fmainly composedf of small portions; very generally so small that the owners cannot, without other means of livelihood, subsist on the profits of them. While such is the growth of property in the hands of the mass, the circumstances of the higher classes have undergone nothing like a corresponding improvement. Many large fortunes have, it is true, been accumulated, but many others have been wholly or partially dissipated; for the inheritors of immense fortunes, as a class, always live at least up to their incomes when at the highest, and the unavoidable vicissitudes of those incomes are always sinking them deeper and deeper into debt. gA large proportion of theg English landlords, as they themselves are constantly telling us, are hso overwhelmed with mortgages, that they have ceased to be the real owners of the bulk of their estatesh. In other countries the large properties have very generally been broken down; in France, by revolution, Edition: current; Page: [125] and the revolutionary law of inheritance; in Prussia, by successive edicts of that substantially democratic, though iformallyi absolute government.

With respect to knowledge and intelligence, it is the truism of the age, that the masses, both of the middle and even of the working classes, are treading upon the heels of their superiors.

If we now consider the progress made by those same masses in the capacity and habit of co-operation, we find it equally surprising. At what period were the operations of productive industry carried on upon anything like their present scale? Were so many hands ever before employed at the same time upon the same work, as now in all the principal departments of manufactures and commerce? To how enormous an extent is business now carried on by joint-stock companies—in other words, by many small capitals thrown together to form one great one. The country is covered with associations. There are societies for political, societies for religious, societies for philanthropic purposes. But the greatest novelty of all is the spirit of combination which has jgrown upj among the working classes. The present age has seen the commencement of benefit societies, and they now, as well as the more questionable Trades Unions, overspread the whole country. A more powerful, though not so ostensible, instrument of combination than any of these, has but lately become universally accessible—the newspaper. The newspaper carries khome the voice of the manyk to every individual among them; by the newspaper each learns thatl others are feeling as he feels, and that if he is ready, he will find them also prepared to act upon what they feel. The newspaper is the telegraph which carries the signal throughout the country, and the flag round which it rallies. Hundreds of newspapers speaking in the same voice at once, and the rapidity of communication afforded by improved means of locomotion, were what enabled the whole country to combine in that simultaneous energetic demonstration of determined will which carried the Reform Act. Both these facilities are on the increase, every one may see how rapidly; and they will enable the people on all decisive occasions to form a collective will, and render that collective will irresistible.

To meet this wonderful development of physical and mmentalm power on the part of the masses, can it be said that there has been any corresponding quantity of intellectual power or moral energy unfolded among those individuals or classes who have enjoyed superior advantages? No one, we think, will affirm it. There is a great increase of humanity, a decline of bigotry, nas well as of arrogance and the conceit of casten, among our conspicuous classes, Edition: current; Page: [126] but there is, to say the least, no increase of shining ability, and a very marked decrease of vigour and energy. With all the advantages of this age, its facilities for mental cultivation, the incitements ando rewards which it holds out to exalted talents, there can scarcely be pointed out in the European annals any stirring times which have brought so little that is distinguished, either morally or intellectually, to the surface.

That this, too, is no more than was to be expected from the tendencies of civilization, when no attempt is made to correct them, we shall have occasion to show presently. But even if civilization did nothing to lower the eminences, it would produce an exactly similar effect by raising the plains. When the masses become powerful, an individual, or a small band of individuals, can paccomplish nothing considerablep except by influencing the masses; and to do this becomes daily more difficult,q from the constantly increasing number of those who are vying with one another to attract the public attention. Our position, therefore, is established, that by the natural growth of civilization, power passes from individuals to masses, and the weight and importance of an individual, as compared with the mass, sink into greater and greater insignificance.

The change which is thus in progress, and to a great extent consummated, is the greatest ever recorded in rsocialr affairs; the most complete, the most fruitful in consequences, and the most irrevocable. Whoever can meditate on it, and not see that so great a revolution vitiates all existing rules of government and policy, and renders all practice and all predictions grounded only on prior experience worthless, is wanting in the very first and most elementary principle of statesmanship in these times.

“Il faut,” as M. de Tocqueville has said, “une science politique nouvelle à un monde tout nouveau.”[*] The whole face of society is reversed—all the natural elements of power have definitively changed places, and there are people who talks of standing up for ancient institutions, and the duty of sticking to the British Constitution settled in 1688! What is still more extraordinary, these are the people who accuse others of disregarding variety of circumstances, and imposing their abstract theories upon all states of society without discrimination.

We put it to those who call themselves Conservatives, whether, when the tchieft power in society is passing into the hands of the masses, they really think it possible to prevent the masses from making that power predominant as well in the government as elsewhere? The triumph of democracy, or, in Edition: current; Page: [127] other words, of the government of public opinion, does not depend upon the opinion of any individual or set of individuals that it ought to triumph, but upon the natural laws of the progress of wealth, upon the diffusion of reading, and the increase of the facilities of human intercourse. If Lord Kenyon or the Duke of Newcastle could stop these, they might accomplish something. There is no danger of the prevalence of democracy in Syria or Timbuctoo. But he must be a poor politician who does not know, that whatever is the growing power in society will force its way into the government, by fair means or foul. The distribution of constitutional power cannot long continue very different from that of real power, without a convulsion. Nor, if the institutions which impede the progress of democracy could be by any miracle preserved, could even they do more than render that progress a little slower. Were the Constitution of Great Britain to remain henceforth unaltered, we are not the less under the dominion, becoming every day more irresistible, of public opinion.

With regard to the advance of democracy, there are two different positions which it is possible for a rational person to take up, according as he thinks the masses prepared, or unprepared, to exercise the control which they are acquiring over their destiny, in a manner which would be an improvement upon what now exists. If he thinks them prepared, he will aid the democratic movement: or if he deem it to be proceeding fast enough without him, he will at all events refrain from resisting it. If, on the contrary, he thinks the masses unprepared for complete control over their government—seeing at the same time that, prepared or not, they cannot ulongu be prevented from acquiring it—he will exert his utmost efforts in contributing to prepare them, using all means, on the one hand, for making the masses themselves wiser and better; on the other, for so rousing the slumbering energy of the opulent and lettered classes, so storing the youth of those classes with the profoundest and most valuable knowledge, so calling forth whatever of individual greatness exists or can be raised up in the country, as to create a power which might partially rival the mere power of the masses, and might exercise the most salutary influence over them for their own good. When engaged earnestly in works like these, one can understand how a rational person might think that in order to give more time for the performance of them, it were well if the current of democracy, which can in no sort be stayed, could be prevailed upon for a time to flow less impetuously. With Conservatives of this sort, all vdemocratsv of corresponding enlargement of waimsw could fraternize as frankly and cordially as with xmostx of their own friends; and we speak from an extensive knowledge of the wisest and most high-minded of that body, when we take upon ourselves to answer for them, that they Edition: current; Page: [128] would never push forward their own political projects in a spirit or with a violence which could tend to frustrate any rational endeavours towards the object nearest their hearts, the instruction of the understandings and the elevation of the characters of all classes of their countrymen.

But who is there among the political party calling themselves Conservatives, that professes to have any such object in view? yDo they seeky to employ the interval of respite which ztheyz might hope to gain by withstanding democracy, in qualifying the people to wield the democracy more wisely when it comes? aWould theya not far rather resist any such endeavour, on the principle that knowledge is power, and that its further diffusion would make the dreaded evil come sooner? bDo the leading Conservatives in either house of parliament feelb that the character of the higher classes needs renovating, to qualify them for a more arduous task and a keener strife than has yet fallen to their lot? Is not the character of a Tory lord or country gentleman, or a Church of England parson, perfectly satisfactory to them? Is not the existing constitution of the two Universities—those bodies whose especial duty it was to counteract the debilitating influence of the circumstances of the age upon individual character, and to send forth into society a succession of minds, not the creatures of their age, but capable of being its improvers and regenerators—the Universities, by whom this their especial duty has been basely neglected, until, as is usual withc neglected duties, the very consciousness of it as a duty has faded from their remembrance,—is not, we say, the existing constitution and the whole existing system of these Universities, down to the smallest of their abuses, the exclusion of Dissenters, a thing for which every Tory, though he may not, as he pretends, die in the last ditch, will at least vote in the last division? The Church, professedly the other great instrument of national culture, long since perverted (we speak of rules, not exceptions) into da grand instrument for discouraging all culture inconsistent with blindd obedience to established maxims and constituted authorities—what Tory has a scheme in view for any changes in this body, but such as may pacify assailants, and make the institution wear a less disgusting appearance to the eye? What political Tory will not resist to the very last moment any alteration in that Church, which ewoulde prevent its livings from being the provision for a family, its dignities the reward of political or of private services? The Tories, those at least connected with parliament or office, do not aim at having good institutions, or even at preserving the present ones: their object is to profit by them while they exist.

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We scruple not to express our belief that a truer spirit of fconservationf, as to everything good in the principles and professed objects of our old institutions, lives in many who are determined enemies of those institutions in their present state, than in most of those who call themselves Conservatives. But there are many well-meaning people who always confound attachment to an end, with gpertinaciousg adherence to any set of means by which it either is, or is pretended to be, already pursued; and have yet to learn, that bodies of men who live in honour and importance upon the pretence of fulfilling ends which they never honestly seek, are the great hindrance to the attainment of those ends; and hthath whoever has the attainment really at heart, must iexpect a war of extermination with all such confederaciesi.

Thus far as to the political effects of Civilization. Its moral effects, which as yet we have only glanced at, demand further elucidation. They may be considered under two heads: the direct influence of Civilization itself upon individual character, and the moral effects produced by the insignificance into which the individual falls in comparison with the masses.

One of the effects of a high state of civilization upon character, is a relaxation of individual energy: or rather, the concentration of it within the narrow sphere of the individual’s money-getting pursuits. As civilization advances, every person becomes dependent, for more and more of what most nearly concerns him, not upon his own exertions, but upon the general arrangements of society. In a rude state, each man’s personal security, the protection of his family, his property, his liberty itself, jdependj greatly upon his bodily strength and his mental energy or cunning: in a civilized state, all this is secured to him by causes extrinsic to himself. The growing mildness of manners is a protection to him against much that he was before exposed to, while for the remainder he may rely with constantly increasing assurance upon the soldier, the policeman, and the judge, and (where the efficiency or purity of those instruments, as is usually the case, lags behind the general march of civilization) upon the advancing strength of public opinion. There remain, as inducements to call forth energy of character, the desire of wealth or of personal aggrandizement, the passion of philanthropy, and the love of active virtue. But the objects to which these various feelings point are matters of choice, not of necessity, nor do the feelings act with anything like equal force upon all minds. The only one of them which can be considered as anything like universal, is the desire of wealth; and wealth being, in the case of the majority, the most accessible means of gratifying all their other desires, Edition: current; Page: [130] nearly the whole of the energy of character which exists in highly civilized societies concentrates itself on the pursuit of that object. In the case, however, of the most influential classes—those whose energies, if they had them, might be exercised on the greatest scale and with the most considerable result—the desire of wealth is already sufficiently satisfied, to render them averse to suffer pain or incur kmuchk voluntary labour for the sake of any further increase. The same classes also enjoy, from their station alone, a high degree of personal consideration. Except the high offices of the lStatel, there is hardly anything to tempt the ambition of men in their circumstances. Those offices, when a great nobleman could have them for asking for, and keep them with less trouble than he could manage his private estate, were, no doubt, desirable enough possessions for such persons; but when they become posts of labour, vexation, and anxiety, and besides cannot be had without paying the price of some previous toil, experience shows that among men unaccustomed to sacrifice their amusements and their case, the number upon whom these high offices operate as incentives to activity, or in whom they call forth any vigour of character, is extremely limited. Thus it happens that in highly civilized countries, and particularly among ourselves, the energies of the middle classes are almost confined to money-getting, and those of the higher classes are nearly extinct.

There is another circumstance to which we may trace much both of the good and of the bad qualities which distinguish our civilization from the rudeness of former times. One of the effects of civilization (not to say one of the ingredients in it) is, that the spectacle, and even the very idea, of pain, is kept more and more out of the sight of those classes who enjoy in their fulness the benefits of civilization. The state of perpetual personal conflict, rendered necessary by the circumstances ofm former times, and from which it was hardly possible for any person, in whatever rank of society, to be exempt, necessarily habituated every one to the spectacle of harshness, rudeness, and violence, to the struggle of one indomitable will against another, and to the alternate suffering and infliction of pain. These things, consequently, were not as revolting even to the best and most actively benevolent men of former days, as they are to our own; and we find the recorded conduct of those men frequently such as would be universally considered very unfeeling in a person of our own day. They, however, thought less of the infliction of pain, because they thought less of pain altogether. When we read of actions of the Greeks and Romans, or nofn our own ancestors, denoting callousness to human suffering, we must not think that those who committed these actions were as cruel as we must become before we could do the like. The pain which they inflicted, they were in the habit of voluntarily undergoing Edition: current; Page: [131] from slight causes; it did not appear to them as great an evil, as it appears, and as it really is, to us, nor did it in any way degrade their minds. In our own time the necessity of personal collision between one person and another is, comparatively speaking, almost at an end. All those necessary portions of the business of society which oblige any person to be the immediate agent or ocular witness of the infliction of pain, are delegated by common consent to peculiar and narrow classes; to the judge, the soldier, the surgeon, the butcher, and the executioner. To most people in easy circumstances, any pain, except that inflicted upon the body by accident or disease, and oupon the mind by the inevitable sorrows of lifeo, is rather a thing known of than actually experienced. This is much more emphatically true in the more refined classes, and as refinement advances; for it is in pavoiding the presence not only of actual pain, but of whatever suggests offensive or disagreeable ideas, that a great part ofp refinement consists. We may remark too, that this is possible only by a perfection of mechanical arrangements impracticable in any but a high state of civilization. Now, most kinds of pain and annoyance appear much more unendurable to those who have little experience of them, than to those who have much. The consequence is that, compared with former times, there is in the qmore opulentq classes of modern civilized communities much more of the amiable and humane, and much less of the heroic. The heroic essentially consists in being ready, for a worthy object, to do and to suffer, but especially to do, what is painful or disagreeable; and whoever does not early learn rto be capable ofr this, will never be a great character. There has crept over the refined classes, over the whole class of gentlemen in England, a moral effeminacy, an inaptitude for every kind of struggle. They shrink from all effort, from everything which is troublesome and disagreeable. sThe same causes which render them sluggish and unenterprising, make them, it is true, for the most part, stoical under inevitable evils.s But heroism is an active, not a passive quality; and when it is necessary not to bear pain but to seek it, little needs be expected from the men of the present day. They cannot undergo labour, they cannot tbrook ridicule, they cannot bravet evil tongues; they have not hardihood to say an unpleasant thing to any one whom they are in the habit of seeing, or to face, even with a nation at their back, the coldness of some little ucoterieu which Edition: current; Page: [132] surrounds them. This torpidity and cowardice, as a general characteristic, is new in the world; but (modified by the different temperaments of different nations) it is a natural consequence of the progress of civilization, and will continue until met by a system of cultivation adapted to counteract it.

If the source of great virtues thus dries up, great vices are placed, no doubt, under considerable restraint. The régime of public opinion is adverse to at least the indecorous vices; and as that restraining power gains strength, and certain classes or individuals cease to possess a virtual exemption from it, the change is highly favourable to the outward decencies of life. Nor can it be denied that the diffusion of even such knowledge as civilization naturally brings, has no slight tendency to rectify, though it be but partially, the standard of public opinion; to undermine many of those prejudices and superstitions which vmadev mankind hate each other for things not really odious; to make them take a juster measure of the tendencies of actions, and weigh more correctly the evidence on which they condemn or applaud their fellow-creatures; to make, in short, their approbation direct itself more correctly to good actions, and their disapprobation to bad. What are the limits to this natural improvement in public opinion, when there is no other sort of cultivation going on than that which is the accompaniment of civilization, we need not at present inquire. It is enough that within those limits there is an extensive range; that as muchw improvement in the general understanding, softening of the feelings, and decay of pernicious errors, as naturally attends the progress of wealth and the spread of reading, suffices to render the judgment of the public upon actions and persons, so far as evidence is before them, much more discriminating and correct.

But here presents itself another ramification of the effects of civilization, which it has often surprised us to find so little attended to. The individual becomes so lost in the crowd, that though he depends more and more upon opinion, he is apt to depend less and less upon well-grounded opinion; upon the opinion of those who know him. An established character becomes at once more difficult to gain, and more easily to be dispensed with.

It is in a small society, where everybody knows everybody, that public opinion, xso far asx well directed, exercises its most salutary influence. Take the case of a tradesman in a small country town: to every one of his customers he is long and yaccuratelyy known; their opinion of him has been formed after repeated trials; if he could deceive them once, he cannot hope to go on deceiving them in the quality of his goods; he has no other customers to look zforz if he loses these, while, if his goods are really what they aprofessa to be, he may hope, among so few competitors, that this also will be known Edition: current; Page: [133] and recognised, and that he will acquire the character, bindividually and professionallyb, which his conduct entitles him to. Far different is the case of a man setting up in business in the crowded streets of a great city. If he trust solely to the quality of his goods, to the honesty and faithfulness with which he performs what he undertakes, he may remain ten years without a customer; be he ever so honest, he is driven to cry out on the housetops that his wares are the best of wares, past, present, and to come; while, if he proclaim this, choweverc false, with sufficient loudness to excite the curiosity of passers by, and can give his commodities d“a gloss, a saleable look,”d not easily to be seen through at a superficial glance, he may drive a thriving trade though no customer ever enter his shop twice. There has been much complaint of late years, of the growth, both in the world of trade and in that of intellect, of quackery, and especially of puffing; but nobody seems to have remarked, that these are the inevitable efruitse of immense competition; of a state of society where any voice, not pitched in an exaggerated key, is lost in the hubbub. Success, in so crowded a field, depends not upon what a person is, but upon what he seems: mere marketable qualities become the object instead of substantial ones, and a man’s labour and capital are expended less in fdoingf anything, than in persuading other people that he has done it. Our own age has seen this evil brought to its consummation. Quackery there always was, but it once was a test of the absence of sterling qualities: there was a proverb that good wine needed no bush. It is our own age which has seen the honest dealer driven to quackery, by hard necessity, and the certainty of being undersold by the dishonest. For the first time, arts for attracting public attention form a necessary part of the qualifications even of the deserving: and skill in these goes farther than any other quality towards ensuring success. The same intensity of competition drives the trading public more and more to play high for success, to throw for all or nothing; and this, together with the difficulty of sure calculations in a field of commerce so widely extended, renders bankruptcy no longer disgraceful, because no longer gan almost certain presumption of eitherg dishonesty or imprudence: the discredit which it still incurs belongs to it, alas! mainly as an indication of poverty. Thus public opinion loses another of those simple criteria of desert, which, and which alone, it is capable of correctly applying; and the very cause which has rendered it omnipotent in the gross, weakens the precision and force with which its judgment is brought home to individuals.

It is not solely on the private virtues, that this growing insignificance of the individual in the mass is productive of mischief. It corrupts the very fountain of the improvement of public opinion itself; it corrupts public Edition: current; Page: [134] teaching; it weakens the influence of the more cultivated few over the many. Literature has suffered more than any other human production by the common disease. When there were few books, and when few read at all save those who had been accustomed to read the best authors, books were written with the well-grounded expectation that they would be read carefully, and if they deserved it, would be read often. A book of sterling merit, when it came out, was sure to be heard of, and might hope to be read, by the whole reading class; it might succeed by its real hexcellences, thoughh not got up to strike at once; and even if so got up, unless it had the support of genuine merit, it fell into oblivion. The rewards were then for him who wrote well, not much; for the laborious and learned, not the crude and ill-informed writer. But now the case is reversed.

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Hence we see that literature is becoming more and more ephemeral: books, of any solidity, are malmostm gone by; even reviews are not now considered sufficiently light; the attention cannot sustain itself on any serious subject, even for the space of a review-article. In the more attractive kinds of literature, nnovels and magazines, thoughn the demand has so greatly increased, the supply has so outstripped it, that even a novel is seldom a lucrative speculation. It is only under circumstances of rare attraction that a bookseller will now give anything to an author for copyright. As the difficulties of success thus progressively increase, all other ends are more and more sacrificed for the attainment of it: literature becomes more and more a mere reflection of the current sentiments, and has almost entirely abandoned its mission as an enlightener and improver of them.

There are now in this country, we may say, but two modes left in which an individual mind can hope to produce much direct effect upon the minds and destinies of his countrymen generally; as a member of parliament, or an editor of a London newspaper. In both these capacities much may still be done by an individual, because, while the power of the collective body is very great, the number of participants in it does not admit of much increase. One of these monopolies will be opened to competition when the newspaper stamp is taken off;[*] whereby the importance of the newspaper press in the aggregate, considered as the voice of public opinion, will beo increased, and the influence of any one writer in helping to form that opinion pnecessarilyp diminished. This we might regret, did we not remember to what ends that influence is now used, and is sure to be so while newspapers are a mere investment of capital for the sake of mercantile profit.

Is there, then, no remedy? Are the decay of individual energy, the weakening of the influence of superior minds over the multitude, the growth of qcharlatanerieq, and the diminished efficacy of public opinion as a restraining power,—are these the price we necessarily pay for the benefits of civilization; and can they only be avoided by checking the diffusion of knowledge, discouraging the spirit of combination, prohibiting improvements in the arts of life, and repressing the further increase of wealth and of production? Assuredly not. Those advantages which civilization cannot give—which in its uncorrected influence it has even a tendency to destroy—may yet coexist with civilization; and it is only when joined to civilization that they can produce Edition: current; Page: [136] their fairest fruits. All that we are in danger of losing we may preserve, all that we have lost we may regain, and bring to a perfection hitherto unknown; but not by slumbering, and leaving things to themselves, no more than by ridiculously trying our strength against their irresistible tendencies: only by establishing counter-tendencies, which may combine with those tendencies, and modify them.

The evils are, that the individual is lost and becomes impotent in the crowd, and that individual character itself becomes relaxed and enervated. For the first evil, the remedy is, greater and more perfect combination among individuals; for the second, national institutions of education, and forms of polity, calculated to invigorate the individual character.

The former of these rdesideratar, as its attainment depends upon a change in the habits of society itself, can only be realized by degrees, as the necessity becomes felt; but circumstances are even now to a certain extent forcing it on. In Great Britain especially (which so far surpasses the rest of the solds world in the extent and rapidity of the accumulation of wealth) the fall of profits, consequent upon the vast increase of population and capital, is rapidly extinguishing the class of small dealers and small producers, from the impossibility of living on their diminished profits, and is throwing business of all kinds more and more into the hands of large capitalists—whether these be rich individuals, or joint-stock companies formed by the aggregation of many small capitals. We are not among those who believe that this progress is tending to the complete extinction oft competition, or that the entire productive resources of the country will within any assignable number of ages, if ever, be administered by, and for the benefit of, a general association of the whole community. But we believe that the multiplication of competitors in all branches of business and in all professions—which renders it more and more difficult to obtain success by merit alone, more and more easy to obtain it by plausible pretence—will find a limiting principle in the progress of the spirit of co-operation; that in every overcrowded department there will arise a tendency among individuals so to unite their ulabour or their capitalu, that the purchaser or employer will have to choose, not among innumerable individuals, but among a few groups. Competition will be as active as ever, but the number of competitors will be brought within manageable bounds.

Such a spirit of co-operation is most of all wanted among the intellectual classes and professions. The amount of human labour, and labour of the most precious kind, now wasted, and wasted too in the cruelest manner, for want of combination, is incalculable. What a spectacle, for instance, does the medical profession present! One successful practitioner burthened with Edition: current; Page: [137] more work than mortal man can perform, and which he performs so summarily that it were often better let alone;—in the surrounding streets twenty unhappy men, each of whom has been as laboriously and expensively trained as he has to do the very same thing, and is possibly as well qualified, wasting their capabilities and starving for want of work. Under better arrangements these twenty would form a corps of subalterns marshalled under their more successful leader; who (granting him to be really the ablest physician of the set, and not merely the most successful imposter) is wasting time in physicking people for headaches and heartburns, which he might with better economy of mankind’s resources turn over to his subordinates, while he employed his maturer powers and greater experience in studying and treating those more obscure and difficult cases upon which science has not yet thrown sufficient light, and to which ordinary knowledge and abilities would not be adequate. By such means every person’s capacities would be turned to account, and the highest minds being kept for the highest things, these would make progress, while ordinary occasions would be no losers.

But it is in literature, above all, that a change of this sort is of most pressing urgency. There the system of individual competition has fairly worked itself out, and things vcan hardlyv continue much longer as they are, Literature is a province of exertion upon which more, of the first value to human nature, depends, than upon any other; a province in which the highest and most valuable order of works, those which most contribute to form the opinions and shape the characters of subsequent ages, are, more than in any other class of productions, placed beyond the possibility of appreciation by those who form the bulk of the purchasers in the book-market; insomuch that, even in ages when these were a far less numerous and more select class than now, it was an admitted point that the only success which writers of the first order could look to was the verdict of posterity. That verdict could, in those times, be confidently expected by whoever was worthy of it; for the good judges, though few in number, were sure to read every work of merit which appeared; and as the recollection of one book was not in those days immediately obliterated by a hundred others, they remembered it, and kept alive the knowledge of it to subsequent ages. But in our day, from the immense multitude of writers (which is now not less remarkable than the multitude of readers), and from the manner in which the people of this age are obliged to read, it is difficult for what does not strike during its novelty, to strike at all: a book either misses fire altogether, or is so read as to make no permanent impression; and the wgood equally with the worthlessw are forgotten by the next day.

For this there is no remedy, while the public have no guidance beyond Edition: current; Page: [138] booksellers’ advertisements, and the xill-considered and hasty criticismsx of newspapers and small periodicals, to direct them in distinguishing what is not worth reading from what is. The resource must in time be, some organized co-operation among the leading intellects of the age, whereby works of first-rate merit, of whatever class, and of whatever tendency in point of opinion, might come forth with the stamp on them, from the first, of the approval of those whose ynamesy would carry authority. There are many causes why we must wait long for such a combination; but (with enormous defects, both in plan and in execution) the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was as considerable a step towards it, as could be expected in the present state of men’s minds, and in a first attempt. Literature has had in this country two ages; it must now have a third. The age of patronage, as Johnson a century ago proclaimed, is gone. The age of booksellers, it has been proclaimed zby Mr. Carlyle, hasz well nigh died out.[*] In the first there was nothing intrinsically base, nor in the second anything inherently independent and liberal. Each has done great things; both have had their day. The time is aperhapsa coming when authors, as a collective guild, bwillb be their own patrons and their own booksellers.

These things must bide their time. But the other of the two great cdesideratac, the regeneration of individual character among our lettered and opulent classes, by the adaptation to that purpose of our institutions, and, above all, of our educational institutions, is an object of more urgency, and for which more might be immediately accomplished, if the will and the understanding were not alike wanting.

This, unfortunately, is a subject on which, for the inculcation of rational views, everything is yet to be done; for, all that we would inculcate, all that we deem of vital importance, all upon which we conceive the salvation of the next and all future ages to rest, has the misfortune to be almost equally opposed to the most popular doctrines of our own time, and to the prejudices of those who cherish the empty husk of what has descended from ancient times. We are at issue equally with the admirers of Oxford and Cambridge. Eton and Westminster, and with the generality of their professed reformers. We regard the system of those institutions, as dadministered for two centuries Edition: current; Page: [139] pastd, with sentiments little short of utter abhorrence. But we do not conceive that their vices would be cured by bringing their studies into a closer connexion with what it is the fashion to term “the business of the world;” by dismissing the logic and classics which are still eprofessedlye taught, to substitute modern languages and experimental physics. We would have classics and logic taught far more really and deeply than at present, and we would add to them other studies more alien than any which yet exist to the “business of the world,” but more germane to the great business of every rational being—the strengthening and enlarging of his own intellect and character. The empirical knowledge which the world demands, which is the stock in trade of money-getting-life, we would leave the world to provide for itself; content with infusing into the youth of our country a spirit, and training them to habits, which would ensure their acquiring such knowledge easily, and using it well. These, we know, are not the sentiments of the vulgar; but we believe them to be those of the best and wisest of all parties: and we are glad to corroborate our opinion by a quotation from a work written by a friend to the Universities, and by one whose tendencies are rather Conservative than Liberal; a book which, though really, and not in form merely, one of fiction, contains much subtle and ingenious thought, and the results of much psychological experience, combined, we are compelled to say, with much caricature, and very provoking (though we are convinced unintentional) distortion and misinterpretation of the opinions of some of those with whose philosophy that of the author does not agree.

Nothing can be more just or more forcible than the description here given of the objects which University education should aim at: we are at issue with the writer, only on the proposition that these objects ever were attained, or ever could be so, consistently with the principle which has always been the foundation of the English Universities; a principle, unfortunately, by no means confined to them. The difficultyg which continues to oppose either such reform of our old academical institutions, or the establishment of such new ones, as shall give us an education capable of forming great minds, is, that in order to do so it is necessary to begin by eradicating the idea which nearly all the upholders and nearly all the impugners of the Universities rootedly entertain, as to the objects not merely of academical education, but of education itself. What is this idea? That the object of education is, not to qualify the pupil for judging what is true or what is right, but to provide that he shall think true what we think true, and right what we think right—that hto teach, means to inculcate our own opinions, and that our business is not to make thinkers or inquirers, but disciplesh. This is the deep-seated error, the inveterate prejudice, which the real reformer of English education has to struggle against. Is it astonishing that great minds are not produced, in a country where the test of a great mind is, agreeing in the opinions of the small minds? where every institution for spiritual culture which the country has—the Church, the Universities, and almost every dissenting community—are Edition: current; Page: [141] constituted on the following as their avowed principle: that the object is, not that the individual should go forth determined and qualified to seek truth ardently, vigorously, and disinterestedly; not that he be furnished at setting out with the needful aids and facilities, the needful materials and instruments for that search, and then left to the unshackled use of them; not that, by a free communion with the thoughts and deeds of the great minds which preceded him, he be inspired at once with the courage to dare all which truth andi conscience require, and the modesty to weigh well the grounds of what others think, before adopting contrary opinions of his own: not this—no; but that the triumph of the system, the merit, the excellence in the sight of God which it possesses, or which it can impart to its pupil, is, that his speculations shall terminate in the adoption, in words, of a particular set of opinions. That provided he adhere to these opinions, it matters little whether he receive them from authority or from examination; and worse, that it matters little by what temptations of interest or vanity, by what voluntary or involuntary sophistication with his intellect, and deadening of his noblest feelings, that result is arrived at; that it even matters comparatively little whether to his mind the words are mere words, or the representatives of realities—in what sense he receives the favoured set of propositions, or whether he attaches to them any sense at all. Were ever great minds thus formed? jNever.j The few great minds which this country has produced have been formed in spite of nearly everything which could be done to stifle their growth. And all thinkers, much above the common order, who have grown up in the Church of England, or in any other Church, have been produced in latitudinarian epochs, or while the impulse of intellectual emancipation which gave existence to the Church had not quite spent itself. The flood of burning metal which issued from the furnace, flowed on a few paces before it congealed.

That the English Universities have, throughout, proceeded on the principle, that the intellectual association of mankind must be founded upon articles, i.e. upon a promise of belief in certain opinions; that the scope of all they do is to prevail upon their pupils, by fair means or foul, to acquiesce in the opinions which are set down for them; that the abuse of the human faculties so forcibly denounced by Locke under the name of “principling” their pupils,[*] is their sole method in religion, politics, morality, or philosophy—is vicious indeed, but the vice is equally prevalent without and within their pale, and is no farther disgraceful to them than inasmuch as a better doctrine has been taught for a century past by the superior spirits, Edition: current; Page: [142] with whom in point of intelligence it was their duty to maintain themselves on a level. But, that when this object was attained they cared for no other; that if they could make churchmen, they cared not to make religious men; that if they could make Tories, whether they made patriots was indifferent to them; that if they could prevent heresy, they cared not if the price paid were stupidity—this constitutes the peculiar baseness of those bodies. Look at them. While their sectarian character, while the exclusion of all who will not sign away their freedom of thought, is contended for as if life depended upon it, there is khardlyk a trace in the system of the Universities that any other object whatever is seriously cared for. Nearly all the professorships have degenerated into sinecures. Few of the professors ever deliver a lecture. One of the few great scholars who have issued from either University for a century (and he was such before he went thither), the Rev. Connop Thirlwall, has published to the world that in his University at least, even ltheology—even Church of England theologyl—is not taught;[*] and his dismissal, for this piece of honesty, from the tutorship of his college, is one among the daily proofs how much safer it is for twenty men to neglect their duty, than for one man to impeach them of the neglect. The only studies really encouraged are classics and mathematics; mboth of them highly valuable studiesm, though the last, as an nexclusiven instrument for fashioning the mental powers, greatly overrated; but Mr. Whewell, a high authority against his own University, haso published a pamphlet,[†] chiefly to prove that the kind of mathematical attainment by which Cambridge honours are gained, expertness in the use of the calculus, is not that kind which has any tendency to produce superiority of intellect.* The mere shell and husk of the syllogistic Edition: current; Page: [143] logic at the one University, the wretchedest smattering of Locke and Paley at the other, are all of moral or psychological science that is taught at either.* As a means of educating the many, the Universities are absolutely null. The youth of England are not educated. The attainments rof any kindr required for taking all the degreess conferred by these bodies are, at Cambridge, utterly contemptible; at Oxford, we believe, of late years, somewhat higher, but still very low. Honours, indeed, are not gained but by a severe struggle; tand if even the candidates for honours were mentally benefited, the systemt would not be worthless. But what have the senior wranglers done, even in mathematics? Has Cambridge producedu, since Newton, one great mathematical geniusu? vWe do not say an Euler, a Laplace, or a Lagrange, but such as France has produced a score of during the same period.v How many books which have thrown light upon the history, antiquities, philosophy, art, or literature of the ancients, have the two Universities sent forth since the Reformation? Compare them not merely with Germany, but even with Italy or France. When a man is pronounced by them to have excelled in their studies, what do the Universities do? They give him an income, not for continuing to learn, but for having learnt, not for doing anything, but for what he has already done: on condition solely of living like a monk, and putting on the livery of the Church at the end of seven years. They bribe men by high rewards to get their arms ready, but do not require them to fight.†

Are these the places xof educationx which are to send forth minds capable of maintaining a victorious struggle with the debilitating influences of the age, and strengthening the yweakery side of Civilization by the support of a higher Cultivation? This, however, is what we require from these institutions; or, in their default, from others which zshouldz take their place. And Edition: current; Page: [144] the very first step towards their reform ashoulda be to unsectarianize them wholly—not by the paltry measure of allowing Dissenters to come and be taught orthodox sectarianism, but by putting an end to sectarian teaching altogether. The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.

The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers. We say this, not because we think opinions unimportant, butb because of the immense importance which we attach to them; for in proportion to the degree of intellectual power and love of truth which we succeed in creating, is the certainty that (whatever may happen in any one particular instance) in the aggregate of instances true opinions will be the result; and intellectual power and practical love of truth are alike impossible where the reasoner is shown his conclusions, and informed beforehand that he is expected to arrive at them.

We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not cset forthc his own opinions as the true ones, and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in anything. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether dhis own opinionsd are the true ones, but whether he eis well instructed in those of other peoplee, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly. In this spirit it is that all the great subjects are taught from the chairs of the German and French Universities. fAs a general rule, thef most distinguished teacher is selected, whatever be his particular views, and he consequently teaches in the spirit of free inquiry, not of dogmatic imposition.g

Such is the principle of all academical instruction which aims at forming great minds. The details hcannot be too various and comprehensive.h Ancient Edition: current; Page: [145] literature would fill a large place in such a course of instruction; because it ibringsi before us the thoughts and actions of many great minds, minds of many various orders of greatness, and these related and exhibited in a manner tenfold more impressive, tenfold more calculated to call forth jhighj aspirations, than in any modern literature. Imperfectly as these impressions are made by the current modes of classical teaching, it is incalculable what we owe to this, the sole ennobling feature in the slavish, mechanical thing which the moderns call education. Nor is it to be forgotten among the benefits of familiarity with the monuments of antiquity, and especially those of Greece, that we are taught by it to appreciate and to admire intrinsic greatness, amidst opinions, habits, and institutions most remote from ours; and are thus trained to that large and catholic toleration, which is founded on understanding, not on indifference—and to a habit of free, open sympathy with powers of mind and nobleness of character, howsoever exemplified. Were but the languages and literature of antiquity so taught that the glorious images they present might stand before the student’s eyes as living and glowing realities—that, instead of lying a caput mortuum at the bottom of his mind, like some foreign substance in no way influencing the current of his thoughts or the tone of his feelings, they might circulate through it, and become assimilated, and be part and parcel of himself!—then should we see how little these studies have yet done for us, compared with what they have yet to do.

An important place in the system of education which we contemplate would be occupied by history:k because it is the record of alll great things which have been achieved by mankind, andm because when philosophically studied it gives a certain largeness of conception to the student, and familiarizes him with the action of great causes. In no other way can he so completely realize in his own mind (howsoever he may be satisfied with the proof of them as abstract propositions) the great principles by which the progress of man and the condition of society are governed. Nowhere else will the infinite varieties of human nature be so vividly brought home to him, and anything cramped or one-sided in his own standard of it so effectually corrected; and nowhere else will he behold so strongly exemplified the astonishing pliability of our nature,[*] and the vast effects which may under good guidance be produced upon it by honest endeavour. The literature of our own and other modern nations should be studied along with the history, or rather asn part of the history.

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In the department of pure intellect, the highest place will belong to logic and the philosophy of mind: the one, the instrument for the cultivation of all sciences; the other, the root from which they all grow. It scarcely needs be said that the former oought not too be taught as a mere system of technical rules, nor the latter as a set of concatenated abstract propositions. The tendency, so strong everywhere, is strongest of all here, to receive opinions into the mind without any real understanding of them, merely because they seem to follow from certain admitted premises, and to let them lie there as forms of words, lifeless and void of meaning. The pupil must be led to interrogate his own consciousness, to observe and experiment upon himself: of the mind, by any other process, little will he ever know.

With these should be joined all those sciences, in which great and certain results are arrived at by mental processes of some length or nicety: not that all persons should study all these sciences, but that some should study all, and all some. These may be divided into sciences of mere ratiocination, as mathematics; and sciences partly of ratiocination, and partly of what is far more difficult, comprehensive observation and analysis. Such are, in their rationale, even the sciences to which pmathematical processes are applicable:p and such are all those which relate to human nature. The philosophy of morals, of government, of law, of political economy, of poetry and art, should form subjects of systematic instruction, under the most eminent professors who could be found; these being chosen, not for the particular doctrines they might happen to profess, but as being those who were most likely to send forth pupils qualified in point of disposition and attainments to choose doctrines for themselves. And why should not religion be taught in the same manner? Not quntil then will one step be made towards the healing of religious differences: not untilq then will the spirit of English religion become catholic instead of sectarian, favourable instead of hostile to freedom of thought and the progress of the human mind.

rWith regard to the changes, in forms of polity and social arrangements, which in addition to reforms in education, we conceive to be required for regenerating the character of the higher classes; to express them even summarily would require a long discourse. But the general idea from which they all emanate, may be stated briefly.r Civilization has brought about a degree of security and fixity in the possession of all advantages once acquired, which Edition: current; Page: [147] has rendered its possible for a rich man to lead the life of a Sybarite, and nevertheless enjoy throughout life a degree of power and consideration which could formerly be earned or retained only by personal activity. We cannot undo what civilization has done, and again stimulate the energy of the higher classes by insecurity of property, or danger of life or limb. The only adventitious motive it is in the power of society to hold out, is reputation and consequence; and of this as much use as possible should be made for the encouragement of desert. The main thing which social changes can do for the improvement of the higher classes—and it is what the progress of democracy is insensibly but certainly accomplishing—is gradually to put an end to every kind of unearned distinction, and let the only road open to honour and ascendancy be that of personal qualities.

Essays on Government

this little volume is unquestionably the production of a thinker, though of one who has not yet thought with much originality or depth. It is, however, interesting, as indicative of the ideas which thinkers of a numerous and increasing class are now becoming possessed of, and eagerly turning to use.

For instance, the author’s first fundamental principle is, that the successive changes which take place in human affairs are no more left to chance “in the moral than in the physical world, but that the progress of society, social, moral, and political, together with the whole train of events which compose the history of the human race, are as much the effect of certain fixed laws as the motions of the planets or the rotation of the seasons.” [P. 2] His second principle is, that the changes in political institutions are the effects of previous changes in the condition of society and of the human mind. It may truly be said, that whoever knows these two principles, possesses more of the science of politics than was known even to eminent thinkers fifty years ago.

Setting out from this starting point, our author ends his inquiries in the common conclusions of radicalism; but shows less acquaintance than might be wished with the real difficulties of the subject, and with the point which the discussion has now reached among political philosophers. He lays it down as a maxim that there is everywhere a natural aristocracy, that is, a class who are looked up to by the community generally; that, in a rude age, nobles, or priests, or persons of large property, form this class; in an enlightened period, it consists of the persons most distinguished for wisdom and virtue. In every age, unless the natural aristocracy be the power which governs, there will be growing disaffection to the government, and at length either a peaceable or a violent change. Having established that the natural aristocracy in a highly civilised society is the aristocracy of personal qualities, he affirms, and has little difficulty in showing, that neither an aristocracy of birth nor one of wealth affords any guarantee for the existence of these qualities. He therefore recommends, wherever the community is sufficiently advanced to admit of it, a republican government by universal suffrage and ballot, as a means of selecting and installing the natural aristocracy. But this part of his doctrine, which is the part most likely to be assailed with objections, Edition: current; Page: [152] is unfortunately that which he has taken least pains to fortify against them. That the people in a democracy would know where to find the natural aristocracy, or would wish to be governed by them, is the point to be proved, not assumed. We cannot find that anything is said to prove it by our author. He thinks, indeed, that the people cannot themselves govern, but can only choose their governors, and will prefer, as they must choose somebody, to choose those to whom they already look up. “Democracy may cause its feelings and opinions to be attended to and respected, but it can never govern.” [P. 169.] We think that democracy can govern: it can make its legislators its mere delegates, to carry into effect its preconceived opinions. We do not say that it will do so. Whether it will, appears to us the great question which futurity has to resolve; and on the solution of which it depends whether democracy will be that social regeneration which its partisans expect, or merely a new form of bad government, perhaps somewhat better, perhaps somewhat worse, than those which preceded it.

There seems to be something wavering and undecided in our author’s conception of what constitutes the test of good government. He continually enumerates among the requisites of government that it should be conformable to the opinions of the governed. He insists, as often, upon another requisite, that the governors shall be the wisest and best persons in the community. But the wisest and best members of the community very often would not consent to govern in conformity with the opinions of the less wise portion: our author must elect, therefore, which of the two requisites he will in that case dispense with. Perhaps he will say that, by a government in conformity to the opinions of the people, he does not mean one which implicitly obeys public opinion, but one which pays that degree of regard to it as an existing fact, which the best and wisest government must pay, and which would be paid to any other fact of equal importance. If so, the test is unexceptionable; but then, he is on the other horn of the dilemma: is this that kind and degree of deference to their opinions which a democratic people, electing their rulers by universal suffrage, will be likely to be content with?

After all, our author’s practical conclusions fall short of what his speculative principles would seem to warrant, since he is for constituting the legislative body of two elective chambers, the one representative of numbers, the other of property. We believe that this would be theoretically the best form of government for a state of society like that of modern Europe; subject to the two conditions, that it were possible to introduce it, and that, if introduced, it would work without a civil war between the two houses. Perhaps when the two great classes, the propertied and non-propertied, shall have tried their strength and found their inability to conquer one another, this, as a possible mode of peaceable compromise, may in time suggest itself to the wiser leaders of both.

De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II]

it has been the rare fortune of M. de Tocqueville’s book to have achieved an easy triumph, both over the indifference of our at once busy and indolent public to profound speculation, and over the particular obstacles which oppose the reception of speculations from a foreign, and above all from a French source. There is some ground for the remark often made upon us by foreigners, that the character of our national intellect is insular. The general movement of the European mind sweeps past us without our being drawn into it, or even looking sufficiently at it to discover in what direction it is tending; and if we had not a tolerably rapid original movement of our own, we should long since have been left in the distance. The French language is almost universally cultivated on this side of the Channel; a flood of human beings perpetually ebbs and flows between London and Paris; national prejudices and animosities are becoming numbered among the things that were; yet the revolution which has taken place in the tendencies of French thought, which has changed the character of the higher literature of France, and almost that of the French language, seems hitherto, as far as the English public are concerned, to have taken place in vain. At a time when the prevailing tone of French speculation is one of exaggerated reaction against the doctrines of the eighteenth century, French philosophy, with us, is still synonymous with Encyclopedism. The Englishmen may almost be numbered who are aware that France has produced any great names in prose literature since Voltaire and Rousseau; and while modern history has been receiving a new aspect from the labours of men who are not only among the profoundest thinkers, but the clearest and most popular writers of their age, even those of their works which are expressly dedicated to the history of our own country remain mostly untranslated, and in almost all cases unread.

To this general neglect M. de Tocqueville’s book forms, however, as we have already said, a brilliant exception. Its reputation was as sudden, and is as extensive, in this country as in France, and in that large part of Europe which receives its opinions from France. The progress of political dissatisfaction, and the comparisons made between the fruits of a popular constitution on one side of the Atlantic, and of a mixed government with a preponderating aristocratic element on the other, had made the working of Edition: current; Page: [156] American institutions a party question. For many years, every book of travels in America had been a party pamphlet, or had at least fallen among partisans, and been pressed into the service of one party or of the other. When, therefore, a new book, of a grave and imposing character, on Democracy in America, made its appearance even on the other side of the British Channel, it was not likely to be overlooked, or to escape an attempt to convert it to party purposes. If ever political writer had reason to believe that he had laboured successfully to render his book incapable of such a use, M. de Tocqueville was entitled to think so. But though his theories are of an impartiality without example, and his practical conclusions lean towards Radicalism, some of his phrases are susceptible of a Tory application. One of these is “the tyranny of the majority.”[*] This phrase was forthwith adopted into the Conservative dialect, and trumpeted by Sir Robert Peel in his Tamworth oration, when, as booksellers’ advertisements have since frequently reminded us, he “earnestly requested the perusal” of the book by all and each of his audience.[†] And we believe it has since been the opinion of the country gentlemen that M. de Tocqueville is one of the pillars of Conservatism, and his book a definitive demolition of America and of Democracy. The error has done more good than the truth would perhaps have done; since the result is, that the English public now know and read the first philosophical book ever written on Democracy, as it manifests itself in modern society; a book, the essential doctrines of which it is not likely that any future speculations will subvert, to whatever degree they may modify them; while its spirit, and the general mode in which it treats its subject, constitute it the beginning of a new era in the scientific study of politics.

The importance of M. de Tocqueville’s speculations is not to be estimated by the opinions which he has adopted, be these true or false. The value of his work is less in the conclusions, than in the mode of arriving at them. He has applied to the greatest question in the art and science of government, those principles and methods of philosophizing to which mankind are indebted for all the advances made by modern times in the other branches of the study of nature. It is not risking too much to affirm of these volumes, that they contain the first analytical inquiry into the ainfluences of Democracya. For the first time, that phenomenon is treated of as something which, being a reality in nature, and no mere mathematical or metaphysical abstraction, manifests itself by innumerable properties, not by some one only; and must be looked at in many aspects before it can be made the subject Edition: current; Page: [157] even of that modest and conjectural judgment, which is alone attainable respecting a fact at once so great and so new. Its consequences are by no means to be comprehended in one single description, nor in one summary verdict of approval or condemnation. So complicated and endless are their ramifications, that he who sees furthest into them willb, in general,b longest hesitate before finally pronouncing whether the good or the evil of its influence, on the whole, preponderates.

M. de Tocqueville has endeavoured to ascertain and discriminate the various properties and tendencies of Democracy, the separate relations in which it stands towards the different interests of society, and the different moral and social requisites of human nature. In the investigation he has cof necessity left much undone,c and much which will be better done by those who come after him, and build upon his foundations. But he has earned the double honour of being the first to make the attempt, and of having done more towards the success of it than probably will ever again be done by any one individual. His method is, as that of a philosopher on such a subject must be—a combination of deduction with induction: his evidences are, laws of human nature, on the one hand; the example of America, and France, and other modern nations, so far as applicable, on the other. His conclusions never rest on either species of evidence alone, whatever he classes as an effect of Democracy, he has both ascertained to exist in those countries in which the state of society is democratic, and has also succeeded in connecting with Democracy by deductions à priori, dtending to showd that such would naturally be its influences upon beings constituted as mankind are, and placed in a world such as we know ours to be. If this be not the true Baconian and Newtonian method applied to society and government; if any better, or even any other be possible, M. de Tocqueville would be the first to say, candidus imperti: if not, he is entitled to say to political theorists, whether calling themselves philosophers or practical men, his utere mecum.[*]

That part of Democracy in America which was first published, professes to treat of the political effects of Democracy: the seconde is devoted to its influence on society in the widest sense; on the relations of private life, on intellect, morals, and the habits and modes of feeling which constitute national character. The last is both a newer and a more difficult subject of inquiry than the first; there are fewer who are competent, or who will even think themselves competent, to judge M. de Tocqueville’s conclusions. But, Edition: current; Page: [158] we believe, no one, in the least entitled to an opinion, will refuse to him the praise of having probed the subject to a depth which had never before been sounded; of having carried forward the controversy into a wider and a loftier region of thought; and pointed out many questions essential to the subject which had not been before attended to: questions which he may or may not have solved, but of which, in any case, he has greatly facilitated the solution.

The comprehensiveness of M. de Tocqueville’s views, and the impartiality of his feelings, have not led him into the common infirmity of those who see too many sides to a question—that of thinking them all equally important. He is able to arrive at a decided opinion. Nor has the more extensive range of considerations embraced in his Second Part, affected practically the general conclusions which resulted from his First. They may be stated as follows:—That Democracy, in the modern world, is inevitable; and that it is on the whole desirable; but desirable only under certain conditions, and those conditions capable, by human care and foresight, of being realized, but capable also of being missed. The progress and ultimate ascendancy of the democratic principle has in his eyes the character of a law of nature. He thinks it an inevitable result of the tendencies of a progressive civilization; by which expressions he by no means intends to imply either praise or censure. No human effort, no accident even, unless one which should throw back civilization itself, can avail, in his opinion, to defeat, or even very considerably to retard, this progress. But though the fact itself appears to him removed from human control, its salutary or baneful consequences do not. Like other great powers of nature, the tendency, though it cannot be counteracted, may be guided to good. Man cannot turn back the rivers to their source;[*] but it rests with himself whether they shall fertilize or lay waste his fields. Left to its spontaneous course, with nothing done to prepare before it that set of circumstances under which it can exist with safety, and to fight against its worse by an apt employment of its better peculiarities, the probable effects of Democracy upon human well-being, and upon whatever is best and noblest in human character, appear to M. de Tocqueville extremely formidable. But with as much of wise effort devoted to the purpose as it is not irrational to hope for, most of what is mischievous in its tendencies may, in his opinion, be corrected, and its natural capacities of good so far strengthened and made use of, as to leave no cause for regret in the old state of society, and enable the new one to be contemplated with calm contentment, if without exultation.

It is necessary to observe that by Democracy M. de Tocqueville does not in general mean any particular form of government. He can conceive a Democracy under an absolute monarch. Nay, he entertains no small dread Edition: current; Page: [159] lest in some countries it should actually appear in that form. By Democracy, M. de Tocqueville understands equality of conditions; the absence of all aristocracy, whether constituted by political privileges, or by superiority in individual importance and social power. It is towards Democracy in this sense, towards equality between man and man, that he conceives society to be irresistibly tending. fTowardsf Democracy in the other, and more common sense, it may or may not be travelling. Equality of conditions tends naturally to produce a popular government, but not necessarily. Equality may be equal freedom, or equal servitude. America is the type of the first; France, he thinks, is in danger of falling into the second. The latter country is in the condition which, of all that civilized societies are liable to, he regards with the greatest alarm—a democratic state of society without democratic institutions. For, in democratic institutions, M. de Tocqueville sees not an aggravation, but a corrective, of the most serious evils incident to a democratic state of society. No one is more opposed than he is to that species of democratic radicalism, which would admit at once to the highest of political franchises, untaught masses who have not yet been experimentally proved fit even for the lowest. But the ever-increasing intervention of the people, and of all classes of the people, in their own affairs, he regards as a cardinal maxim in the modern art of government: and he believes that the nations of civilized Europe, though not all equally advanced, are all advancing, towards a condition in which there will be no distinctions of political rights, no great or very permanent distinctions of hereditary wealth; when, as there will remain no classes nor individuals capable of making head against the government, unless all are, and are fit to be, alike citizens, all will ere long be equally slaves.

The opinion that there is this irresistible tendency to equality of conditions, is, perhaps, of all the leading doctrines of the book, that which most stands in need of confirmation to English readers. M. de Tocqueville devotes but little space to the elucidation of it. To French readers, the historical retrospect upon which it rests is familiar; and facts known to every one establish its truth, so far as relates to that country. But to the English public, who have less faith in irresistible tendencies, and who, while they require for every political theory an historical basis, are far less accustomed to link together the events of history in a connected chain, the proposition will hardly seem to be sufficiently made out. Our author’s historical argument is, however, deserving of their attention.

That such has been the actual course of events in modern history, nobody can doubt, and as truly in England as in France. Of old, every proprietor of land was sovereign over its inhabitants, while the cultivators could not call even their bodily powers their own. It was by degrees only, and in a succession of ages, that their personal emancipation was effected, and their labour became theirs, to sell for whatever they could obtain for it. They became the rich men’s equals in the eye of the law; but the rich had still the making of the law, and the administering of it; and the equality was at first little more than nominal. The poor, however, could now acquire property; the path was open to them to quit their own class for a higher; their rise even to a considerable station, gradually became a common occurrence; and to those who acquired a large fortune, the other powers and privileges of aristocracy were successively opened, until hereditary honours have become less a power in themselves, than a symbol and ornament of great riches. While individuals thus continually rose from the mass, the mass itself multiplied and strengthened; the towns obtained a voice in public affairs; the many, in the aggregate, became even in property more and more a match for the few; and the nation became a power, distinct from the small number of individuals who once disposed even of the crown, and determined all public affairs at their pleasure. The Reformation was the dawn of the government of public opinion. Even at that early period, opinion was not formed by the higher classes exclusively; and while the publicity of all rStater transactions, the liberty of petition and public discussion, the press—and of late, above all, the periodical press—have rendered public opinion more and more the supreme power, the same causes have rendered the formation of it less and less dependent upon the initiative of the higher ranks. Even the direct participation of the people at large in the government had, in various ways, been greatly extended, before the political events of the last few years, when democracy has given so signal a proof of its progress in society, by the inroads it has been able to make into the political constitution. And in spite of the alarm which has been taken by the possessors of large property, who are far more generally opposed than they had been within the present generation to any additional strengthening of the popular element in the House of Commons, there is at this moment a much stronger party for a further parliamentary reform, than many good observers thought there was, twelve years ago, for that which has already taken place.

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But there is a surer mode of deciding the point than any historical retrospect. Let us look at the powers which are even now at work in society itself.

To a superficial glance at the condition of our own country, nothing can seem more unlike any tendency to equality of condition. The inequalities of property are apparently greater than in any former period of history. Nearly all the land is parcelled out in great estates, among comparatively few families; and it is not the large, but the small properties, which are in process of extinction. A hereditary and titled nobility, more potent by their vast possessions than by their social precedency, are constitutionally and really one of the great powers in the state. To form part of their order is sthat whichs every ambitious man aspires ttot, as the crowning glory of a successful career. The passion for equality of which M. de Tocqueville speaks almost as if it were the great moral lever of modern times, is hardly known in this country even by name. On the contrary, all ranks seem to have a passion for inequality. The hopes of every person are directed to rising in the world, not to pulling the world down to him. The greatest enemy of the political conduct of the House of Lords, submits to their superiority of rank as he would to the ordinances of nature; and often thinks any amount of toil and watching repaid by a nod of recognition from one of their number.

We have put the case as strongly as it could be put by an adversary, and have stated as facts some things which, if they have been facts, are giving visible signs that they will not always be so. If we look back even twenty years, we shall find that the popular respect for the higher classes is by no means the thing it was; and uthoughu all who are rising wish for the continuance of advantages which they themselves hope to share, there are among those who do not expect to rise, increasing indications that a levelling spirit is abroad, and political discontents, in whatever manner originating, show an increasing tendency to take that shape. But it is the less necessary to dwell upon these things, as well shall be satisfied with making out, in respect to the tendency to equality in England, much less than M. de Tocqueville contends for. We do not maintain that the time is drawing near when there will be no distinction of classes; but we do contend that the power of the higher classes, both in government and in society, is diminishing; while that of the middle and even the lower classes is increasing, and likely to increase.

The constituent elements of political importance are property, intelligence, and the power of combination. In every one of these elements, is it the higher classes, or the other vportionsv of society, that have lately made and are continuing to make the most rapid advances?

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Even with regard to the element of property, there cannot be room for more than a momentary doubt. The class who are rich by inheritance, are so far from augmenting their fortunes, that it is much if they can be said to keep them up. A territorial aristocracy always live up to their means—generally beyond them. Our own is no exception to the rule; and as their control over the taxes becomes every day more restricted, and the liberal professions more overcrowded, they are condemned more and more to bear the burden of their own large families; which wit is not easy to do, compatibly with leavingw to the heir the means of keeping up, without becoming embarrassed, the old family establishments. It is matter of notoriety how severely the difficulty of providing for younger sons is felt even in the highest rank; and that, as a provision for daughters, alliances are now courted which would not have been endured a generation ago. The additions to the “money-power” of the higher ranks, consist of the riches of the novi homines[*] who are continually aggregated to that class from among the merchants and manufacturers, and occasionally from the professions. But many of these are merely successors to the impoverished owners of the land they buy; and the fortunes of others are taken, in the way of marriage, to pay off the mortgages of older families. Even with these allowances, no doubt the number of wealthy persons is steadily on the increase; but what is this to the accumulation of capitals and growth of incomes in the hands of the middle class? It is that class which furnishes all the accessions to the aristocracy of wealth; and for one who makes a large fortune, fifty acquire, without exceeding, a moderate competency, and leave their children to work, like themselves, at the labouring oar.

In point of intelligence, it can still less be affirmed that the higher classes maintain the same proportional ascendancy as of old. They have shared with the rest of the world in the diffusion of information. They have improved, like all other classes, in the decorous virtues. Their humane feelings and refined tastes form in general a striking contrast to the coarse habits of the same class a few generations ago. But it would be difficult to point out what new idea in speculation, what invention or discovery in the practical arts, what useful institution, or what permanently valuable book. Great Britain has owed for the last hundred years to her hereditary aristocracy, titled or untitled;*—what great public enterprise, what important national movement in religion or politics, those classes have originated, or xhave so much as Edition: current; Page: [165] taken in itx the principal share. Considered in respect to active energies and laborious habits, to the stirring qualities which fit men for playing a considerable part in the affairs of mankind, few will say that our aristocracy have not deteriorated. It is, on the other hand, one of the commonplaces of the age, that knowledge and intelligence are spreading, in a degree which was formerly thought impossible, to the lower, and down even to the lowest rank. And this is a fact, not accomplished, but in the mere dawn of its accomplishment, and which has shown hitherto but a slight promise of its future fruits. It is easy to scoff at the kind of intelligence which is thus diffusing itself; but it is intelligence still. The knowledge which is power, is not the highest description of knowledge only: any knowledge which gives the habit of forming an opinion, and the capacity of expressing that opinion, constitutes a political power; and if combined with the capacity and habit of acting in concert, a formidable one.

It is in this last element, the power of combined action, that the progress of the Democracy has been the most gigantic. What combination can do has been shown by an experiment, of now many years duration, among a people the most backward in civilization (thanks to English misgovernment) between the Vistula and the Pyrenees. Even on this side of the Irish Channel we have seen something of what could be done by Political Unions, Anti-Slavery Societies, and the like; to say nothing of the less advanced, but already powerful organization of the working classes, the progress of which has been suspended only by the temporary failure arising from the manifest impracticability of its present objects. And these various associations are not the machinery of democratic combination, but the occasional weapons which that spirit forges as it needs them. The real Political Unions of England are the Newspapers. It is these which tell every person what all other persons are feeling, and in what manner they are ready to act: it is by these that the people learn, it may truly be said, their own wishes, and through these that they declare them. The newspapers and the railroads are solving the problem of bringing the democracy of England to vote, like that of Athens, simultaneously in one agora; and the same agencies are rapidly effacing those local distinctions which rendered one part of our population strangers to another; and are making us more than ever (what is the first condition of a powerful public opinion) a homogeneous people. If America has been said to prove that in an extensive country a popular government may exist, England seems destined to afford the proof that after a certain stage in civilization it must; for as soon as the numerically stronger have the same advantages, in means of combination and celerity of movement, as the smaller number, they are the masters; and, except by their permission, no government can any longer exist.

It may be said, doubtless, that though the aristocratic class may be no longer in the ascendant, the power by which it is succeeded is not that of the Edition: current; Page: [166] numerical majority; that the middle class in this country is as little in danger of being outstripped by the democracy below, as of being kept down by the aristocracy above; and that there can be no difficulty for that class, aided as it would be by the rich, in making head by its property, intelligence, and power of combination, against any possible growth of those elements of importance in the inferior classes; and in excluding the mass of mere manual labourers from any share in political rights, unless such a restricted and subordinate one as may be found compatible with the complete ascendancy of property.

We are disposed partially to agree in this opinion. Universal suffrage is never likely to exist yand maintain itselfy where the majority are prolétaires; and we are not unwilling to believe that a labouring class in abject poverty, like za greatz part of our rural population, or which expends its surplus earnings in gin or in waste, like so much of the better paid population of the towns, may be kept politically in subjection, and that the middle classes are safe from the permanent rule of such a body, though perhaps not from its Swing outrages, or Wat Tyler insurrections. But this admission leaves the fact of a tendency towards democracy practically untouched. There is a democracy short of pauper suffrage; the working classes themselves contain a middle as well as a lowest class. Not to meddle with the vexata quæstio, whether the lowest class is or is not improving in condition, it is certain that a larger and larger body of manual labourers are rising above that class, and acquiring at once decent wages and decent habits of conduct. A rapidly increasing multitude of our working people are becoming, in point of condition and habits, whata the American working people are. And if our boasted improvements are of any worth, there must be a growing tendency in society and government to make this condition of the labouring classes the general one. The nation must be most slenderly supplied with wisdom and virtue, if it cannot do something to improve its own physical condition, to say nothing of its moral. It is something gained, that well-meaning persons of all parties now at length profess to have this end in view. But in proportion as it is approached to—in proportion as the working class becomes, what all proclaim their desire that it should be—well paid, well taught, and well conducted; in the same proportion will the opinions of that class tell, according to its numbers, upon the affairs of the country. Whatever portion of the class succeeds in thus raising itself, becomes a part of the ruling body; and if the suffrage be necessary to make it so, it will not be long without the suffrage.

Meanwhile, we are satisfied if it be admitted, that the government of Edition: current; Page: [167] England is progressively changing from the government of a few, to the government, not indeed of the many, but of many;—from an aristocracy with a popular infusion, to the régime of the middle class. To most purposes, in the constitution of modern society, the government of a numerous middle class is democracy. Nay, it not merely is democracy, but the only democracy of which there is yet any example; what is called universal suffrage in America arising from the fact that America is all middle class; the whole people being in a condition, both as to education and pecuniary means, corresponding to the middle class here. The consequences which we would deduce from this fact will appear presently, when we examine M. de Tocqueville’s view of the moral, social, and intellectual influences of democracy. This cannot be done until we have briefly stated his opinions on the purely political branch of the question. To this part of our task we shall now proceed; with as much conciseness as is permitted by the number and importance of the ideas which, holding an essential place among the grounds of his general conclusions, have a claim not to be omitted even from the most rapid summary.

We have already intimated that M. de Tocqueville recognises such a thing as a democratic state of society without a democratic government; a state in which the people are all equal, and subjected to one common master, who selects indiscriminately from all of them the instruments of his government. In this sense, as he remarks, the government of the Pasha of Egypt is a specimen of democracy; and to this type (with allowance for difference of civilization and manners) he thinks that all nations are in danger of approximating, in which the equalization of conditions has made greater progress than the spirit of liberty.[*] Now, this he holds to be the condition of France. The kings of France have always been the greatest of levellers; Louis XI, Richelieu, Louis XIV, alike laboured to break the power of the noblesse, and reduce all intermediate classes and bodies to the general level. After them came the Revolution, bringing with it the abolition of hereditary privileges, the emigration and dispossession of half the great landed proprietors, and the subdivision of large fortunes by the revolutionary law of inheritance. While the equalization of conditions was thus rapidly reaching its extreme limits, no corresponding progress of public spirit was taking place in the people at large. No institutions capable of fostering an interest in the details of public affairs were created by the Revolution: it swept away even those which despotism had spared; and if it admitted a portion of the population to a voice in the government, gave it them only on the greatest but rarest occasion—the election of the great council of the state. A political act, to be done only once in a few years, and for which nothing in the daily habits of the citizen has prepared him, leaves his intellect and moral dispositions very Edition: current; Page: [168] much as it found them; and the citizens not being encouraged to take upon themselves collectively that portion of the business of society which had been performed by the privileged classes, the central government easily drew to itself not only the whole local administration, but much of what, in countries like ours, is performed by associations of individuals. Whether the government was revolutionary or counter-revolutionary made no difference; under the one and the other, everything was done for the people, and nothing by the people. In France, consequently, the arbitrary power of the magistrate in detail is almost without limit. And when of late some attempts have been made to associate a portion of the citizens in the management of local affairs, comparatively few have been found, even among those in good circumstances, (anywhere but in the large towns,) who could be induced willingly to take any part in that management; who, when they had no personal object to gain, felt the public interest sufficiently their own interest, not to grudge every moment which they withdrew from their occupations or pleasures to bestow upon it. With all the eagerness and violence of party contests in France, a nation more passive in the hands of any one who is uppermost does not exist. M. de Tocqueville has no faith in the virtues, nor even in the prolonged existence, of a superficial love of freedom, in the face of a practical habit of slavery; and the question whether the French are to be a free people, depends, in his opinion, upon the possibility of creating a spirit and a habit of local self-government.

M. de Tocqueville sees the principal source and security of American freedom, not so much in the election of btheb President and Congress by popular suffrage, as in the administration of nearly all the business of society by the people themselves. This it is which, according to him, keeps up the habit of attending to the public interest, not in the gross merely, or on a few momentous occasions, but in its dry and troublesome details. This, too, it is which enlightens the people; which teaches them by experience how public affairs must be carried on. The dissemination of public business as widely as possible among the people, is, in his opinion, the only means by which they can be fitted for the exercise of any share of power over the legislature; and generally also the only means by which they can be led to desire it.

For the particulars of this education of the American people by means of political institutions, we must refer to the work itself; of which it is one of the minor recommendations, that it has never been equalled even as a mere statement and explanation of the institutions of the United States. The general principle to which M. de Tocqueville has given the sanction of his authority, merits more consideration than it has yet received from the professed labourers in the cause of national education. It has often been said, and requires to be repeated still oftener, that books and discourses alone are Edition: current; Page: [169] not education; that life is a problem, not a theorem: that action can only be learnt in action. A child learns to write its name only by a succession of trials; and is a man to be taught to use his mind and guide his conduct by mere precept? What can be learnt in schools is important, but not all-important. The main branch of the education of human beings is their habitual employment; which must be either their individual vocation, or some matter of general concern, in which they are called to take a part. The private money-getting occupation of almost every one is more or less a mechanical routine; it brings but few of his faculties into action, while its exclusive pursuit tends to fasten his attention and interest exclusively upon himself, and upon his family as an appendage of himself; making him indifferent to the public, to the more generous objects and the nobler interests, and, in his inordinate regard for his personal comforts, selfish and cowardly. Balance these tendencies by contrary ones; give him something to do for the public, whether as a vestryman, a juryman, or an elector; and, in that degree, his ideas and feelings are taken out of this narrow circle. He becomes acquainted with more varied business, and a larger range of considerations. He is made to feel that besides the interests which separate him from his fellow-citizens, he has interests which connect him with them, that not only the common weal is his weal, but that it partly depends upon his exertions. Whatever might be the case in some other constitutions of society, the spirit of a commercial people will be, we are persuaded, essentially mean and slavish, wherever public spirit is not cultivated by an extensive participation of the people in the business of government in detail; nor will the desideratum of a general diffusion of intelligence among either the middle or lower classes be realized, but by a corresponding dissemination of public functions and a voice in public affairs.

Nor is this inconsistent with obtaining a considerable share of the benefits (and they are great) of what is called centralization. The principle of local self-government has been undeservedly discredited, by being associated with the agitation against the new poor-law.[*] The most active agency of a central authority in collecting and communicating information, giving advice to the local bodies, and even framing general rules for their observance, is no hindrance, but an aid, to making the local liberties an instrument of educating the people. The existence of such a central agency allows of intrusting to the people themselves, or to local bodies representative of them, many things of too great national importance to be committed unreservedly to the localities; and completes the efficacy of local self-government as a means of instruction, by accustoming the people not only to judge of particular facts, but to understand, and apply, and feel practically the value of, principles. The mode of administration provided for the English poor-laws by Edition: current; Page: [170] the late Act seems to us to be in its general conception almost theoretically perfect. And the extension of a similar mixture of central and local management to several other branches of administration, thereby combining the best fruits of popular intervention with much of the advantage of skilled supervision and traditional experience, would, we believe, be entitled to no mean rank in M. de Tocqueville’s list of correctives to the inconveniences of cDemocracyc.

In estimating the effects of ddemocratic governmentd as distinguished from a edemocratic condition of societye. M. de Tocqueville assumes the state of circumstances which exists in America—a popular government in the fStatef, combined with popular local institutions. In such a government he sees great advantages, balanced by no inconsiderable evils.

Among the advantages, one which figures in the foremost rank is that of which we have just spoken, the diffusion of intelligence; the remarkable impulse given by democratic institutions to the active faculties of that portion of the community who in other circumstances are the most ignorant, passive, and apathetic. These are characteristics of America which strike all travellers. Activity, enterprise, and a respectable amount of information, are not the qualities of a few among the American citizens, nor even of many, but of all. There is no class of persons who are the slaves of habit and routine. Every American will carry on his manufacture, or cultivate his farm, by the newest and best methods applicable to the circumstances of the case. The poorest American understands and can explain the most intricate parts of his country’s institutions; can discuss her interests, internal and foreign. Much of this may justly be attributed to the universality of easy circumstances, and to the education and habits which the first settlers in America brought with them; but our author is certainly not wrong in ascribing a certain portion of it to the perpetual exercise of the faculties of every man among the people, through the universal practice of submitting all public questions to his judgment.

The other great political advantage which our author ascribes to Democracy, requires less illustration, because it is more obvious, and has been oftener treated of; that the course of legislation and administration tends always in the direction of the interest of the lgreatestl number. Although M. de Tocqueville is far from considering this quality of Democracy as the mpanaceam in politics which it has sometimes been supposed to be, he expresses his sense of its importance, if in measured, in no undecided terms. America does not exhibit to us what we see in the best mixed constitutions—the class interests of small minorities wielding the powers of legislation, in Edition: current; Page: [172] opposition both to the general interest and to the general opinion of the community; still less does she exhibit what has been characteristic of most representative governments, and is only gradually ceasing to characterize our own—a standing league of class interests—a tacit compact among the various knots of men who profit by abuses, to stand by one another in resisting reform. Nothing can subsist in America that is not recommended by arguments which, in appearance at least, address themselves to the interest of the many. However frequently, therefore, that interest may be mistaken, the direction of legislation towards it is maintained in the midst of the mistakes; and if a community is so situated or so ordered that it can “support the transitory action of bad laws, and can await without destruction the result of the general tendency of the laws,” that country, in the opinion of M. de Tocqueville, will prosper more under a democratic government than under any other.[*] But in aristocratic governments, the interest, or at best the honour and glory, of the ruling class, is considered as the public interest; and all that is most valuable to the individuals composing the subordinate classes, is apt to be immolated to that public interest with all the rigour of antique patriotism.

These, then, are the advantages ascribed by our author to a democratic government. We are now to speak of its disadvantages.

According to the opinion which is prevalent among the more cultivated advocates of democracy, one of its greatest recommendations is that by means of it the wisest and worthiest are brought to the head of affairs. The people, it is said, have the strongest interest in selecting the right men. It is presumed that they will be sensible of that interest; and, subject to more or less liability of error, will in the main succeed in placing a high, if not the highest, degree of worth and talent in the highest situations.

M. de Tocqueville is of another opinion. He was forcibly struck with the general want of merit in the members of the American legislatures, and other public functionaries. He accounts for this, not solely by the people’s incapacity to discriminate merit, but partly also by their indifference to it. He thinks there is little preference for men of superior intellect, little desire to obtain their services for the public; occasionally even a jealousy of them, especially if they be also rich. They, on their part, have still less inclination to seek any such employment. Public offices are little lucrative, confer little power, and offer no guarantee of permanency: almost any other career holds out better pecuniary prospects to a man of ability and enterprise; nor will instructed men stoop to those mean arts, and those compromises of their private opinions, to which their less distinguished competitors willingly resort. The depositaries of power, after being chosen with little regard to merit, are, partly perhaps for that very reason, frequently changed. The rapid return of elections, and even a taste for variety, M. de Tocqueville thinks, on the part of electors (a taste not unnatural wherever little regard is paid to qualifications), produces a rapid succession of new men in the rlegislaturer, and Edition: current; Page: [174] in all public posts. Hence, on the one hand, great instability in the laws—every new comer desiring to do something in the short time she has before hims; while, on the other hand, there is no political carrière—statesmanship is not a profession. There is no body of persons educated for public business, pursuing it as their occupation, and who transmit from one to another the results of their experience. There are no traditions, no science or art of public affairs. A functionary knows little, and cares less, about the principles on which his predecessor has acted; and his successor thinks as little about his. Public transactions are therefore conducted with a reasonable share indeed of the common sense and common information which are general in a democratic community, but with little benefit from specific study and experience; without consistent system, long-sighted views, or persevering pursuit of distant objects.

This is likely enough to be a true picture of the American Government, but can scarcely be said to be peculiar to it: there are now few governments remaining, whether representative or absolute, of which something of the same sort might not be said. In no country where the real government resides in the minister, and where there are frequent changes of ministry, are far-sighted views of policy likely to be acted upon; whether the country be England or France, in the eighteenth century or in the nineteenth.* tuvCrude and ill-considered legislationv is the character of all governments whose laws are made and acts of administration performed impromptu, not in pursuance of a general design, but from the pressure of some present occasion; of all governments in which the ruling power is to any great extent exercised by persons not trained to government as a business.u w It is true that the governments which have been celebrated for their profound policy, have generally been aristocracies. But they have been very narrow aristocracies, consisting of so few members, that every member could personally participate in the business of administration. These are the governments which have a natural tendency to be administered steadily—that is, according to fixed principles. Every member of the governing body being trained to government as a profession, like other professions they respect precedent, transmit their experience Edition: current; Page: [175] from generation to generation, acquire and preserve a set of traditions, and all being competent judges of each other’s merits, the ablest easily rises to his proper level. The governmentsx of ancient Rome and modern Venice were of this character; and as all know, for ages conducted the affairs of those states with admirable constancy and skill, on fixed principles, often unworthy enough, but always eminently adapted to the ends of ythosey governments.w zWhen the governing body, whether it aconsistsa of the many or of a privileged class, is so numerous, that the large majority of it do not and cannot make the practice of government the main occupation of their lives, it isb impossible that there should be wisdom, foresight, and caution in the governing body itself. These qualities must be found, if found at all, not in the body, but in those whom the body trust.z cdThed opinion of a enumerouse ruling class is as fluctuating, as liable to be wholly given up to immediate impulses, as the opinion of the people. Witness the whole course of English history. All our laws have been made on temporary impulses. In fno country has the course of legislation been less directed to any steady and consistent purpose.fct

gIn so far as it is true that there is a deficiency of remarkable merit in hAmerican public men (and our author allows that there is a large number of exceptions), the fact may perhaps admit of a less discreditable explanation. America needs very little government. She has no wars, no neighbours, no complicated international relations; no old society with its thousand abuses to reform; no half-fed and untaught millions iin want ofi food and guidance. Society in America requires little but to be let alone. The current affairs which her jgovernmentj has to transact can seldom demand much more than average capacity; and it may be in the Americans a wise economy, not to pay the price of great talents when common ones will serve their purpose. We make these remarks by way of caution, not of controversy. Like many other parts of our author’s doctrines, that of which we are now speaking affords work for a succession of thinkers and of accurate observers, and must in the main depend on future experience to confirm or refute it.

We now come to that one among the dangers of Democracy, respecting which so much has been said, and which our author designates as “the despotism of the majority.”

It is perhaps the greatest defect of M. de Tocqueville’s book, that from the scarcity of examples, his propositions, even when derived from observation, Edition: current; Page: [176] have the air of mere abstract speculations. He speaks of the tyranny of the majority in general phrases, but gives hardly any instances of it, nor much information as to the mode in which it is practically exemplified. The omission was in the present instance the more excusable, as the despotism complained of was, at that time, politically at least, an evil in apprehension more than in sufferance; and he was uneasy rather at the total absence of security against the tyranny of the majority, than at the frequency of its actual exertion.

Events, however, which have occurred since the publication of the First Part of M. de Tocqueville’s work, give indication of the shape which tyranny is most likely to assume when exercised by a majority.

It is not easy to surmise any inducements of interest, by which, in a country like America, the greater number could be led to oppress the smaller. When the majority and the minority are spoken of as conflicting interests, the rich and the poor are generally meant; but where the rich are content with being rich, and do not claim as such any political privileges, their interest and that of the poor are kgenerallyk the same: complete protection to property, and freedom in the disposal of it, are alike important to both. When, indeed, the poor are so poor that they can scarcely be worse off, respect on their part for rights of property which they cannot hope to share, is never safely to be calculated upon. But where all have property, either in enjoyment or in reasonable hope, and an appreciable chance of acquiring a large fortune; and where every man’s way of life proceeds on the confident assurance that, by superior exertion, he will obtain a superior reward; the importance of inviolability of property is not likely to be lost sight of. It is not affirmed of the Americans that they make laws against the rich, or unduly press upon them in the imposition of taxes. If a labouring class, less happily circumstanced, could prematurely force themselves into influence over our own legislature, there might then be danger, not so much of violations of property, as of undue interference with contracts; unenlightened legislation for the supposed interest of the many; laws founded on mistakes in political economy. A minimum of wages, or a tax on machinery, might be attempted: as silly and as inefficacious attempts might be made to keep up wages by law, as were so long made by the British legislature to keep them down by the same means. We have no wish to see the experiment tried, but we are fully convinced that experience would correct the one error as it has corrected the other, and in the same way; namely, by lcompletel practical failure.

It is not from the separate interests, real or imaginary, of the majority, that minorities are in danger: but from its antipathies of religion, political Edition: current; Page: [177] party, or race; and experience in America seems to confirm what theory rendered probable, that the tyranny of the majority would not take the shape of tyrannical laws, but that of a dispensing power over all laws. The people of Massachusetts passed no law prohibiting Roman Catholic schools, or exempting Protestants from the penalties of incendiarism; they contented themselves with burning the Ursuline convent to the ground, aware that no jury would be found to redress the injury. In the same reliance the people of New York and Philadelphia sacked and destroyed the houses of the Abolitionists, and the schools and churches of their black fellow-citizens, while numbers who took no share in the outrage amused themselves with the sight. The laws of Maryland still prohibit murder and burglary; but in 1812, a Baltimore mob, after destroying the printing office of a newspaper which had opposed the war with England, broke into the prison to which the editors had been conveyed for safety, murdered one of them, left the others for dead; and the criminals were tried and acquitted. In the same city, in 1835, a riot which lasted four days, and the foolish history of which is related in M. Chevalier’s Letters,[*] was occasioned by the fraudulent bankruptcy of the Maryland Bank. It is not so much the riots, in such instances, that are deplorable; these might have occurred in any country: it is the impossibility of obtaining aid from an executive dependent on the mob, or justice from juries which formed part of it: it is the apathetic cowardly truckling of disapproving lookers-on; almost a parallel to the passive imbecility of the people of Paris, when a handful of hired assassins perpetrated the massacres of September. For where the majority is the sole power, and a power issuing its mandates in the form of riots, it inspires a terror which the most arbitrary monarch often fails to excite. The silent sympathy of the majority may support on the scaffold the martyr of one man’s tyranny; but if we would imagine the situation of a victim of the majority itself, we must look to the annals of religious persecution for a parallel.

Yet, neither ought we to forget that even this lawless violence is not so great, because not so lasting, an evil, as tyranny through the medium of the law. A tyrannical law remains; because, so long as it is submitted to, its existence does not weaken the general authority of the laws. But in America, tyranny will seldom use the instrument of law, because mthere is in generalm no permanent class to be tyrannized over. The subjects of oppression are casual objects of popular resentment, who cannot be reached by law, but only by occasional acts of lawless power; and to tolerate these, if they ever became frequent, would be consenting to live without law. Already, in the United States, the spirit of outrage has raised a spirit of resistance to outrage; Edition: current; Page: [178] of moral resistance first, as was to be wished and expected: if that fail, physical resistance will follow. The majority, like other despotic powers, will be taught by experience that it cannot enjoy both the advantages of civilized society, and the barbarian liberty of taking men’s lives and property at its discretion. Let it once be generally understood that minorities will fight, and majorities will be shy of provoking them. The bad government of which there is any permanent danger under modern civilization, is in the form of bad laws and bad tribunals: government by the sic volo either of a king or a mob belongs to past ages, and can no more existn, for long together,n out of the pale of Asiatic barbarism.

The despotism, therefore, of the majority within the limits of civil life, though a real evil, does not appear to us to be a formidable one. The tyranny which we fear, and which M. de Tocqueville principally dreads, is of another kind—a tyranny not over the body, but over the mind.

It is the complaint of M. de Tocqueville, as well as of other travellers in America, that in no country does there exist less independence of thought. In religion, indeed, the varieties of opinion which fortunately prevailed among those by whom the colonies were settled, ohaveo produced a toleration in law and in fact extending to the limits of Christianity. If by ill fortune there had happened to be a religion of the majority, the case would probably have been different. On every other subject, when the opinion of the majority is made up, hardly any one, it is affirmed, dares to be of any other opinion, or at least to profess it. The statements are not clear as to the nature or amount of the inconvenience that would be suffered by any one who presumed to question a received opinion. It seems certain, however, that scarcely any person has that courage; that when public opinion considers a question as settled, no further discussion of it takes place; and that not only nobody dares (what everybody may venture upon in Europe) to say anything disrespectful to the public, or derogatory to its opinions, but that its wisdom and virtue are perpetually celebrated with the most servile adulation and sycophancy.

These considerations, which were much dwelt on in the author’s First Part, are intimately connected with the views promulgated in his Second, respecting the influence of Democracy on pintellectp.

The Americans, according to M. de Tocqueville, not only profess, but carry into practice, on all subjects except the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and Christian ethics, the habit of mind which has been so often inculcated as the one sufficient security against mental slavery—the rejection of authority, and the assertion of the right of private judgment. They regard Edition: current; Page: [179] the traditions of the past merely in the light of materials, and as “a useful study for doing otherwise and better.”[*] They are not accustomed to look for guidance either to the wisdom of ancestors, or to eminent qcotemporaryq wisdom, but require that the grounds on which they act shall be made level to their own comprehension. And, as is natural to those who govern themselves by common-sense rather than by science, their cast of mind is altogether unpedantic and practical; they go straight to the end, without favour or prejudice towards any set of means, and aim at the substance of things, with something like a contempt for form.

From such habits and ways of thinking, the consequence which would be apprehended by some would be a most licentious abuse of individual independence of thought. The fact risr the reverse. It is impossible, as our author truly remarks, that mankind in general should form all their opinions for themselves: an authority from which they mostly derive them may be rejected in theory, but it always exists in fact. That law above them, which older societies have found in the traditions of antiquity, or in the dogmas of priests or philosophers, the Americans find in the opinions of one another. All being nearly equal in circumstances, and all nearly alike in intelligence and knowledge, the only authority which commands an involuntary deference is that of numbers. The more perfectly each knows himself the equal of every single individual, the more insignificant and helpless he feels against the aggregate mass, and the more incredible it appears to him that the opinion of all the world can possibly be erroneous. “Faith in public opinion,” says M. de Tocqueville, “becomes in such countries a species of religion, and the majority its prophet.”[†] The idea that the things which the multitude believe are still disputable, is no longer kept alive by dissentient voices; the right of private judgment, by being extended to the incompetent, ceases to be exercised even by the competent, and speculation becomes possible only within the limits traced, not as of old by the infallibility of Aristotle, but by that of “our free and enlightened citizens,” or “our free and enlightened age.”

On the influence of Democracy upon the cultivation of science and art, the opinions of M. de Tocqueville are highly worthy of attention. There are many who, partly from theoretic considerations, and partly from the marked absence in America of original efforts in literature, philosophy, or the fine arts, incline to believe that modern democracy is fatal to them, and that wherever its spirit spreads they will take flight. M. de Tocqueville is not of this opinion. The example of America, as he observes, is not to the purpose, because America is, intellectually speaking, a province of England: a province Edition: current; Page: [180] in which the great occupation of the inhabitants is making money, because for that they have peculiar facilities, and are therefore, like the people of Manchester or Birmingham, for the most part contented to receive the higher branches of knowledge ready-made from the capital. In a democratic nation, which is also free, and generally educated, our author is far from thinking that there will be no public to relish or remunerate the works of science and genius. Although there will bes great shifting of fortunes, and no hereditary body of wealthy persons sufficient to form a class, there will be, he thinks, from the general activity and the absence of artificial barriers, combined with the inequality of human intelligence, a far greater number of rich individuals (infiniment plus nombreux) than in an aristocratic society.[*] There will be, therefore, though not so complete a leisure, yet a leisure extending perhaps to more persons; while from the closer contact and greater mutual intercourse between classes, the love of intellectual pleasures and occupations will spread downward very widely among those who have not the same advantages of leisure. Moreover, ttalentst and knowledge being in a democratic society the only means of rapid improvement in fortune, they will be, in the abstract at least, by no means undervalued; whatever measure of them any person is capable of appreciating, he will also be desirous of possessing. Instead, therefore, of any neglect of science and literature, the eager ambition which is universal in such a state of society takes that direction as well as others, and the number of those who cultivate these pursuits becomes “immense.”[†]

It is from this fact—from the more active competition in the products of intellect, and the more numerous public to which they are addressed—that M. de Tocqueville deduces the defects with which the products themselves will be chargeable. In the multiplication of their quantity he sees the deterioration of their quality. Distracted by so great a multitude, the public can bestow but a moment’s attention on each; they will be adapted, therefore, chiefly for striking at the moment. Deliberate approval, and a duration beyond the hour, become more and more difficult of attainment. What is written for the ujudgmentu of a highly instructed few, amidst the abundance of writings may very probably never reach them; and their suffrage, which never gave riches, does not now confer even glory. But the multitude of buyers affords the possibility of great pecuniary success and momentary notoriety, for the work which is made up to please at once, and to please the many. Literature thus becomes not only a trade, but is carried on by the Edition: current; Page: [181] maxims usually adopted by other trades which live by the number, rather than by the quality, of their customers; that much pains need not be bestowed on commodities intended for the general market, and that what is saved in the workmanship may be more profitably expended in self-advertisement. There will thus be an immense mass of third and fourth-rate productions, and very few first-rate. Even the turmoil and bustle of a society in which every one is striving to get on, is in itself, our author observes, not favourable to meditation. “Il règne dans le sein de ces nations un petit mouvement incommode, une sorte de roulement incessant des hommes les uns sur les autres, qui trouble et distrait l’esprit sans l’animer et l’élever.”[*] Not to mention that the universal tendency to action, and to rapid action, directs the taste to applications rather than principles, and hasty approximations to truth rather than scientific accuracy in it.

Passing now from the province of intellect to that of vsentiments and moralsv, M. de Tocqueville is of opinion that the general softening of manners, and the remarkable growth, in modern times, of humanity and philanthropy, are in great part the effect of the gradual progress of social equality. Where the different classes of mankind are divided by impassable barriers, each may have intense sympathies with his own class, more intense than it is almost possible to have with mankind in general; but those who are far below him in condition are so unlike himself, that he hardly considers them as human beings; and if they are refractory and troublesome, will be unable to feel for them even that kindly interest which he experiences for his more unresisting domestic cattle. Our author cites a well-known passage of Madame de Sévigné’s Letters, in exemplification of the want of feeling exhibited even by good sort of persons towards those with whom they have no fellow-feeling.[†] In America, except towards the slaves (an exception which proves the rule,) he finds the sentiments of philanthropy and compassion almost universal, accompanied by a general kindness of manner and obligingness of disposition, without much of ceremony and punctilio. As all feel that they are not above the possible need of the good-will and good offices of others, every one is ready to afford his own. The general equality penetrates also into the family relations: there is more intimacy, he thinks, than in Europe, between parents and children, but less, except in the earliest years, of paternal authority, and the filial respect which is founded on it. wThis, however, isw among the topics which we must omit, as well as the connexion which our author attempts to trace between equality of conditions Edition: current; Page: [182] and strictness of domestic morals, and some other remarks on domestic society in America, which do not appear to us to be of any considerable value.

M. de Tocqueville is of opinion, that one of the tendencies of a democratic state of society is to make every one, in a manner, retire within himself, and concentrate his interests, wishes, and pursuits within his own business and household.

The members of a democratic community are like the sands of the seashore, each very minute, and no one adhering to any other. There are no permanent classes, and therefore no esprit de corps; few hereditary fortunes, and therefore few local attachments, or outward objects consecrated by family feeling. A man feels little connexion with his neighbours, little with his ancestors, little with his posterity. There are scarcely any ties to connect any two men together, except the common one of country. Now, the love of country is not, in large communities, a passion of spontaneous growth. When a man’s country is his town, where his ancestors have lived for generations, of which he knows every inhabitant, and has recollections associated with every street and building—in which alone, of all places on the earth, he is not a stranger—which he is perpetually called upon to defend in the field, and in whose glory or shame he has an appreciable share, made sensible by the constant presence and rivalry of foreigners; in such a state of things patriotism is easy. It was easy in the ancient republics, or in modern Switzerland. But in great communities an intense interest in public affairs is scarcely natural, except to a member of an aristocracy, who alone has so conspicuous a position, and is so personally identified with the conduct of the government, that his credit and consequence are essentially connected with the glory and power of the nation he belongs to; its glory and power (observe,) not the well-being of the bulk of its inhabitants. It is difficult for an obscure person like the citizen of a xdemocracyx, who is in no way involved in the responsibility of public affairs, and cannot hope to exercise more than the minutest influence over them, to have the sentiment of patriotism as a living and earnest feeling. There beingy no intermediate objects for his attachments to fix upon, they fasten themselves on his own private affairs; and, according to national character and circumstances, it becomes his ruling passion either to improve his condition in life, or to take his ease and pleasure by the means which it already affords him.

As, therefore, the state of society becomes more democratic, it is more and more necessary to nourish patriotism by artificial means; and of these none are so efficacious as free institutions—a large and frequent intervention of the citizens in the management of public business. Nor does the love of Edition: current; Page: [183] country alone require this encouragement, but every feeling which connects men either by interest or sympathy with their neighbours and fellow-citizens. Popular institutions are the great means of rendering general in a people, and especially among the richer classes, the desire of being useful in their generation; useful to the public, or to their neighbours without distinction of rank; as well as courteous and unassuming in their habitual intercourse.

With regard to the tone of moral sentiment characteristic of democracy, M. de Tocqueville holds an opinion which we think deserves the attention of moralists. Among a class composed of persons who have been born into a distinguished position, the habitual springs of action will be very different from those of a democratic community. Speaking generally, (and making abstraction both of individual peculiarities, and of the influence of moral culture,) it may be said of the first, that their feelings and actions will be mainly under the influence of pride; of the latter, under that of interest. Now, as in an aristocratic society the elevated class, though small in number, sets the fashion in opinion and feeling, even virtue will, in that state of society, seem to be most strongly recommended by arguments addressing themselves to pride; in a democracy, by those which address themselves to self-interest. In the one, we hear chiefly of the beauty and dignity of virtue, Edition: current; Page: [185] the grandeur of self-sacrifice; in the other, of honesty the best policy, the value of character, and the common interest of every individual in the good of the whole.

Neither the one nor the other of these modes of feeling, our author is well aware, constitutes moral excellence; which must have a deeper foundation than either the calculations of self-interest, or the emotions of self-flattery. But as an auxiliary to that higher principle, and as far as possible a substitute for it when it is absent, the latter of the two, in his opinion, though the least sentimental, will stand the most wear.

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M. de Tocqueville considers a democratic state of society as eminently tending to give the strongest impulse to the fdesire off physical well-being. He ascribes this, not so much to the equality of conditions as to their mobility. In a country like America every one may acquire riches; no one, at least, is artificially impeded in acquiring them; and hardly any one is born to them. Now, these are the conditions under which the passions which attach themselves to wealth, and to what wealth can purchase, are the strongest. Those who are born in the midst of affluence are generally more or less gblasésg to its enjoyments. They take the comfort or luxury to which they have always been accustomed, as they do the air they hbreathe. Ith is not le but de la vie, but une manière de vivre. An aristocracy, when put to the proof, has in general showni wonderful facility in enduring the loss of riches and of physical comforts. The very pride, nourished by the elevation which they owed to wealth, supports them under the privation of it. But to those who have chased riches laboriously for half their lives, to lose it is the loss of all; une vie manquée; a disappointment greater than can be endured. In a democracy, again, there is no contented poverty. No one being forced to remain poor; many who were poor daily becoming rich, and the comforts of life being apparently within the reach of all, the desire to appropriate them descends to the very lowest rank. Thus,

A regulated sensuality thus lestablishedl itself—the parent of effeminacy rather than of debauchery; paying respect to the social rights of other people and to the opinion of the world; not “leading men away in search of forbidden enjoyments, but absorbing them in the pursuit of permitted ones. This spirit is frequently combined with a species of religious morality; men wish to be as well off as they can in this world, without foregoing their chance of another.”[*]

From the preternatural stimulus given to the desire of acquiring and of enjoying wealth, by the intense competition which necessarily exists where an entire population are the competitors, arises the restlessness so characteristic of American life.

And hence, according to M. de Tocqueville,o while every one is devoured by ambition, hardly any one is ambitious on a large scale. Among so many competitors for but a few great prizes, none of the candidates starting from the vantage ground of an elevated social position, very few can hope to gain those prizes, and they not until late in life. Men in general, therefore, do not look so high. A vast energy of passion in a whole community is developed and squandered in the petty pursuit of petty advancements in fortune, and the hurried snatching of petty pleasures.

To sum up our author’s opinion of the dangers to which mankind are liable as they advance towards equality of condition; his fear, both in government and in intellect and morals, is not of too great liberty, but of too ready submission; not of anarchy, but of servility, not of too rapid change, but of Chinese stationariness. As democracy advances, the opinions of mankind on most subjects of general interest will become, he believes, as compared with any former period, more rooted and more difficult to change; and mankind are more and more in danger of losing the moral courage and pride of independence, which make them deviate from the beaten path, either in speculation or in conduct. Even in politics, it is to be apprehended plestp, feeling their personal insignificance, and conceiving a proportionally vast idea of the importance of society at large, being jealous, moreover, of one another, but not jealous of the central power which derives its origin from the majority, or which at least is the faithful representative of its desire to annihilate every intermediate power—they should allow that central government to assume more and more control, engross more and more of the business of society; and, on condition of making itself the organ of the general mode of feeling and thinking, should suffer it to relieve mankind from the care of their own interests, and keep them under a kind of tutelage; trampling meanwhile with considerable recklessness, as often as convenient, upon the rights of individuals, in the name of society and the public good.

Against these political evils the corrective to which our author looks is popular education, and, above all, the spirit of liberty, fostered by the extension and dissemination of political rights. Democratic institutions, therefore, Edition: current; Page: [189] are his remedy for the worst mischiefs to which a democratic state of society is exposed. As for those to which democratic institutions are themselves liable, these, he holds, society must struggle with, and bear with so much of them as it cannot find the means of conquering. For M. de Tocqueville is no believer in the reality of mixed governments. There is, he says, always and everywhere, a strongest power: in every government either the king, the aristocracy, or the people, have an effective predominance, and can carry any point on which they set their heart. “When a community really comes to have a mixed government, that is, to be equally divided between two adverse principles, it is either falling into a revolutionary state or into dissolution.”[*] M. de Tocqueville believes that the preponderant power, which must exist everywhere, is most rightly placed in the body of the people. But he thinks it most pernicious that this power, whether residing in the people or elsewhere, should be “checked by no obstacles which may retard its course, and force it to moderate its own vehemence.”[†] The difference, in his eyes, is great between one sort of democratic institutions and another. That form of democracy should be sought out and devised, and in every way endeavoured to be carried into practice, which, on the one hand, most exercises and cultivates the intelligence and mental activity of the majority; and, on the other, breaks the headlong impulses of popular opinion, by delay, rigour of forms, and adverse discussion. “The organization and the establishment of democracy” on these principles “is the great political problem of our time.”[‡]

And when this problem is solved, there remains an equally serious one; to make head against the tendency of democracy towards bearing down individuality, and circumscribing the exercise of the human faculties within narrow limits. To sustain the higher pursuits of philosophy and art; to vindicate and protect the unfettered exercise of reason, and the moral freedom of the individual—these are purposes to which, under a democracy, the superior spirits, and the government so far as it is permitted, should devote their utmost energies.

If we were here to close this article, and leave these noble speculations to produce their effect without further comment, the reader probably would not blame us. Our recommendation is not needed in their behalf. That nothing on the whole comparable in profundity to them thast yet been written on uDemocracyu, will scarcely be disputed by any one who has read even our hasty abridgment of them. We must guard, at the same time, against attaching to these conclusions, or to any others that can result from such inquiries, a character of scientific certainty that can never belong to them. Democracy is too recent a phenomenon, and of too great magnitude, for any one who now lives to comprehend its consequences. A few of its more immediate tendencies may be perceived or surmised; what other tendencies, destined to overrule or to combine with these, lie behind, there are not grounds even to conjecture. If we revert to any similar fact in past history, any change in human affairs approaching in greatness to what is passing before our eyes, we shall find that no prediction which could have been made at the time, or for many generations afterwards, would have borne Edition: current; Page: [191] any resemblance to what has actually been the course of events. When the Greek commonwealths were crushed, and liberty in the civilized world apparently extinguished by the Macedonian invaders; when a rude unlettered people of Italy stretched their conquests and their dominion from one end to the other of the known world; when that people in turn lost its freedom and its old institutions, and fell under the military despotism of one of its own citizens;—what similarity is there between the effects we now know to have been produced by these causes, and anything which the wisest person could then have anticipated from them? When the Roman empire, containing all the art, science, literature, and industry of the world, was overrun, ravaged, and dismembered by hordes of barbarians, everybody lamented the destruction of civilization, in an event which is now admitted to have been the necessary condition of its renovation. When the Christian religion had existed but for two centuries—when the Pope was only beginning to assert his ascendancy—what philosopher or statesman could have foreseen the destinies of Christianity, or the part which has been acted in history by the Catholic Church? It is thus with all other really great historical facts—the invention of gunpowder for instance, or of the printing-press: even when their direct operation is as exactly measurable, because as strictly mechanical, as these were, the mere scale on which they operate gives birth to endless consequences, of a kind which would have appeared visionary to the most far-seeing vcotemporaryv wisdom.

It is not, therefore, without a deep sense of the uncertainty attaching to such predictions, that the wise would hazard an opinion as to the fate of mankind under the new democratic dispensation. But without pretending to judge confidently of remote tendencies, those immediate ones which are already developing themselves require to be dealt with as we treat any of the other circumstances in which we are placed;—by encouraging those which are salutary, and working out the means by which such as are hurtful may be counteracted. To exhort men to this, and to aid them in doing it, is the end for which M. de Tocqueville has written; and in the same spirit we will now venture to make one criticism upon him;—to point out one correction, of which we think his views stand in need; and for want of which they have occasionally an air of over-subtlety and false refinement, exciting the distrust of common readers, and making the opinions themselves appear less true, and less practically important, than, it seems to us, they really are.

M. de Tocqueville, then, has, at least apparently, confounded the effects of Democracy with the effects of Civilization. He has bound up in one abstract idea the whole of the tendencies of modern commercial society, and given them one name—Democracy; thereby letting it be supposed that he ascribes to equality of conditions, several of the effects naturally arising Edition: current; Page: [192] from the mere progress of national prosperity, in the form in which that progress manifests itself in modern times.

It is no doubt true, that among the tendencies of commercial civilization, a tendency to the equalization of conditions is one, and not the least conspicuous. When a nation is advancing in prosperity—when its industry is expanding, and its capital rapidly augmenting—the number also of those who possess capital increases in at least as great a proportion: and though the distance between the two extremes of society may not be much diminished, there is a rapid multiplication of those who occupy the intermediate positions. There may be princes at one end of the scale and paupers at the other; but between them there will be a respectable and well-paid class of artisans, and a middle class who combine property and industry. This may be called, and is, a tendency to equalization. But this growing equality is only one of the features of progressive civilization; one of the incidental effects of the progress of industry and wealth: a most important effect, and one which, as our author shows, re-acts in a hundred ways upon the other effects, but not therefore to be confounded with the cause.

So far is it, indeed, from being admissible, that mere equality of conditions is the mainspring of those moral and social phenomena which M. de Tocqueville has characterized, that when some unusual chance exhibits to us equality of conditions by itself, severed from that commercial state of society and that progress of industry of which it is the natural concomitant, it produces few or none of the moral effects ascribed to it. Consider, for instance, the French of Lower Canada. Equality of conditions is more universal there than in the United States; for the whole people, without exception, are in easy circumstances, and there are not even that considerable number of rich individuals who are to be found in all the great towns of the American Republic. Yet do we find in Canada that wgo-ahead spiritw—that restless, impatient eagerness xforx improvement in circumstances—that mobility, that shifting and fluctuating, now up now down, now here now there—that absence of classes and class-spirit—that jealousy of superior attainments—that want of deference for authority and leadership—that habit of bringing things to the rule and square of each man’s own understanding—which M. de Tocqueville imputes to the same cause in the United States? In all these respects the very contrary qualities prevail. We by no means deny that where the other circumstances which determine these effects exist, equality of conditions has a very perceptible effect in corroborating them. We think M. de Tocqueville has shown that it has. But that it is the exclusive, or even the principal cause, we think the example of Canada goes far to disprove.

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For the reverse of this experiment, we have only to look at home. Of all countries in a state of progressive commercial civilization, Great Britain is that in which the equalization of conditions has made least progress. The extremes of wealth and poverty are wider apart, and there is a more numerous body of persons at each extreme, than in any other commercial community. From the habits of the population in regard to marriage, the poor have remained poor; from the laws which tend to keep large masses of property together, the rich have remained rich: and often, when they have lost the substance of riches, have retained its social advantages and outward trappings. Great fortunes are continually accumulated, and seldom redistributed. In this respect, therefore, England is the most complete contrast to the United States. But in commercial prosperity, in the rapid growth of industry and wealth, she is the next after America, and not very much inferior to her. Accordingly we appeal to all competent observers, whether, in nearly all the moral and intellectual features of American society, as represented by M. de Tocqueville, this country does not stand next to America? whether, with the single difference of our remaining respect for aristocracy, the American people, both in their good qualities and in their defects, resemble anything so much as an exaggeration of our own middle class? whether the spirit, which is gaining more and more the ascendant with us, is not in a very great degree American? and whether all the moral elements of an American state of society are not most rapidly growing up?

For example, that entire unfixedness in the social position of individuals—that treading upon the heels of one another—that habitual dissatisfaction of each with the position he occupies, and eager desire to push himself into the next above it—has not this become, and is it not becoming more and more, an English characteristic? In England, as well as in America, it appears to foreigners, and even to Englishmen recently returned from a foreign country, as if everybody had but one wish—to improve his condition, never to enjoy it, as if no Englishman cared to cultivate either the pleasures or the virtues corresponding to his station in society, but solely to get out of it as quickly as possible, or if that cannot be done, and until it is done, to yseemy to have got out of it. “The hypocrisy of luxury,” as M. de Tocqueville calls the maintaining an appearance beyond one’s real expenditure, he considers as a democratic peculiarity.[*] It is surely an English one. The highest class of all, indeed, is, as might be expected, comparatively exempt from these bad peculiarities. But the very existence of such a class, whose immunities and political privileges are attainable by wealth, tends to aggravate the struggle of the other classes for the possession of that passport to all other importance; Edition: current; Page: [194] and it perhaps required the example of America to prove that the “sabbathless pursuit of wealth”[*] could be as intensely prevalent, where there were no aristocratic distinctions to tempt to it.

Again, the mobility and fluctuating nature of individual relations—the absence of permanent ties, local or personal; how often has this been commented on as one of the organic changes by which the ancient structure of English society is becoming dissolved? Without reverting to the days of clanship, or to those in which the gentry led a patriarchal life among their tenantry and neighbours, the memory of man extends to a time when the same tenants remained attached to the same landlords, the same servants to the same zhousehold. Butz this, with other old customs, after progressively retiring to the remote corners of our island, has nearly taken flight altogether; and it may now be said that in all the relations of life, except those to which law and religion have given apermanencea, change has become the general rule, and constancy the exception.

The remainder of the tendencies which M. de Tocqueville has delineated, may mostly be brought under one general agency as their immediate cause; the growing insignificance of individuals in comparison with the mass. Now, it would be difficult to show any country in which this insignificance is more marked and conspicuous than in England, or any incompatibility between that tendency and aristocratic institutions. It is not because the individuals composing the mass are all equal, but because the mass itself has grown to so immense a size, that individuals are powerless in the face of it; and because the mass, having, by mechanical improvements, become capable of acting simultaneously, can compel not merely any individual, but any number of individuals, to bend before it. The House of Lords is the richest and most powerful collection of persons in Europe, yet they not only could not prevent, but were themselves compelled to pass, the Reform Bill. The daily actions of every peer and peeress are falling more and more under the yoke of bourgeois opinion; they feel every day a stronger necessity of showing an immaculate front to the world. When they do venture to disregard common opinion, it is in a body, and when supported by one another; whereas formerly every nobleman acted on his own notions, and dared be as eccentric as he pleased. No rank in society is now exempt from the fear of being peculiar, the unwillingness to be, or to be thought, in any respect original. Hardly anything now depends upon individuals, but all upon classes, and among classes mainly upon the middle class. That class is now the power in society, the arbiter of fortune and success. Ten times more money is made Edition: current; Page: [195] by supplying the wants, even the superfluous wants, of the middle, nay of the lower classes, than those of the higher. It is the middle class that now rewards even literature and art; the books by which most money is made are the cheap books; the greatest part of the profit of a picture is the profit of the engraving from it. Accordingly, all the intellectual effects which M. de Tocqueville ascribes to Democracy, are taking place under the bdemocracyb of the middle class. There is a greatly augmented number of moderate successes, fewer great literary and scientific reputations. Elementary and popular treatises are immensely multiplied, superficial information far more widely diffused; but there are fewer who devote themselves to thought for its own sake, and pursue in retirement those profounder researches, the cresultsc of which can only be appreciated by a few. Literary productions are seldom highly finished—they are got up to be read by many, and to be read but once. If the work sells for a day, the author’s time and pains will be better laid out in writing a second, than in improving the first. And this is not because books are no longer written for the aristocracy: they never were so. The aristocracy (saving individual exceptions) never were a reading class. It is because books are now written for a numerous, and therefore an unlearned public; no longer principally for scholars and men of science, who have knowledge of their own, and are not imposed upon by half-knowledge—who have studied the great works of genius, and can make comparisons.*

As for the decay of authority, and diminution of respect for traditional opinions, this could not well be so far advanced among an ancient people—all whose political notions rest on an historical basis, and whose institutions themselves are built on prescription, and not on ideas of expediency—as in America, where the whole edifice of government was constructed within Edition: current; Page: [196] the memory of man upon abstract principles. But surely this change also is taking place as fast as could be expected under the circumstances. And even this effect, though it has a more direct connexion with Democracy, has not an exclusive one. Respect for old opinions must diminish wherever science and knowledge are rapidly progressive. As the people in general become aware of the recent date of the most important physical discoveries, they are liable to form a rather contemptuous opinion of their ancestors. The mere visible fruits of scientific progress in a wealthy society, the mechanical improvements, the steam-engines, the railroads, carry the feeling of admiration for modern and disrespect for ancient times down even to the wholly uneducated classes. For that other mental characteristic which M. de Tocqueville finds in America—a positive, matter-of-fact spirit—a demand that all things shall be made clear to each man’s understanding—an indifference to the subtler proofs which address themselves to more cultivated and systematically exercised intellects; for what may be called, in short, the dogmatism of common sense—we need not look beyond our own country. There needs no Democracy to account for this; there needs only the habit of energetic action, without a proportional development of the taste for speculation. Bonaparte was one of the most remarkable examples of it; and the diffusion of half-instruction, without any sufficient provision made by society for sustaining the higher cultivation, tends greatly to encourage its excess.

Nearly all those moral and social influences, therefore, which are the subject of M. de Tocqueville’s second part, are shown to be in full operation in aristocratic England. What connexion they have with equality is with the growth of the middle class, not with the annihilation of the extremes. They are quite compatible with the existence of peers and prolétaires; nay, with the most abundant provision of both those varieties of human nature. If we were sure of gretainingg for ever our aristocratic institutions, society would no less have to struggle against all these tendencies; and perhaps even the loss of those institutions would not have so much effect as is supposed in accelerating theirh triumph.

The evil is not in the preponderance of a democratic class, but of any class. The defects which M. de Tocqueville points out in the American, and which we see in the modern English mind, are the ordinary ones of a commercial class. The portion of society which is predominant in America, and that which is attaining predominance here, the American Many, and our middle class, agree in being commercial classes. The one country is affording a complete, and the other a progressive exemplification, that whenever any variety of human nature becomes preponderant in a community, it imposes upon all the rest of society its own type; forcing all, either to submit to it or to imitate it.

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It is not in China only that a homogeneous community is naturally a stationary community. The unlikeness of one ipersoni to another is not only a principle of improvement, but would seem almost to be the only principle. It is profoundly remarked by M. Guizot, that the short duration or stunted growth of the earlier civilizations arose from this, that in each of them some one element of human improvement existed exclusively, or so preponderatingly as to overpower all the others, whereby the community, after accomplishing rapidly all which that one element could do, either perished for want of what it could not do, or came to a halt, and became immoveable.[*] It would be an error to suppose that such could not possibly be our fate. In the generalization which pronounces the “law of progress” to be an inherent attribute of human nature, it is forgotten that, among the inhabitants of our earth, the European family of nations is the only one which has ever jyetj shown any capability of spontaneous improvement, beyond a certain low level. Let us beware of supposing that we owe this peculiarity to any ksuperiorityk of nature, and not rather to combinations of circumstances, which have existed nowhere else, and may not exist for ever among ourselves. The spirit of commerce and industry is one of the greatest instruments not only of civilization in the narrowest, but of improvement and culture in the widest sense: to it, or to its consequences, we owe nearly all that advantageously distinguishes the present period from the middle ages. So long as other coordinate elements of improvement existed beside it, doing what it left undone, and keeping its exclusive tendencies in equipoise by an opposite order of sentiments, principles of action, and modes of thought—so long the benefits which it conferred on humanity were unqualified. But example and theory alike justify the expectation, that with its complete preponderance would commence an era either of stationariness or of decline.

If to avert this consummation it were necessary that the class which wields the strongest power in society should be prevented from exercising its strength, or that those who are powerful enough to overthrow the government should not claim a paramount control over it, the case of civilized nations would be almost hopeless. But human affairs are not entirely governed by mechanical laws, nor men’s characters wholly and irrevocably formed by their situation in life. Economical and social changes, though among the greatest, are not the only forces which shape the course of our species; ideas are not always the mere signs and effects of social circumstances, Edition: current; Page: [198] they are themselves a power in history. Let the idea take hold of the more generous and cultivated minds, that the most serious danger to the future prospects of mankind is in the unbalanced influence of the commercial spirit—let the wiser and better-hearted politicians and public teachers look upon it as their most pressing duty, to protect and strengthen whatever, in the heart of man or in his outward life, can form a salutary check to the exclusive tendencies of that spirit—and we should not only have individual testimonies against it, in all the forms of genius, from those who have the privilege of speaking not to their own age merely, but to all time; there would also gradually shape itself forth a national education, which, without overlooking any other of the requisites of human well-being, would be adapted to this purpose in particular.

What is requisite in politics for the same end, is not that public opinion should not be, what it is and must be, the ruling power; but that, in order to the formation of the best public opinion, there should exist somewhere a great social support for opinions and sentiments different from those of the mass. The shape which that support may best assume is a question of time, place, and circumstance; but (in a commercial country, and an age when, happily for mankind, the military spirit is gone by) there can be no doubt about the elements which must compose it: they are, an agricultural class, a leisured class, and a learned class.

The natural tendencies of an agricultural class are in many respects the reverse of those of a manufacturing and commercial. In the first place, from their more scattered position, and less exercised activity of mind, they have usually a greater willingness to look up to, and accept of, guidance. In the next place, they are the class who have local attachments; and it is astonishing how much of character depends upon this one circumstance. If the agricultural spirit is not felt in America as a counterpoise to the commercial, it is because American agriculturists have no local attachments; they range from place to place, and are to all intents and purposes a commercial class. But in an old country, where the same family has long occupied the same land, the case will naturally be different. From attachment to places, follows attachment to persons who are associated with those places. Though no longer the permanent tie which it once was, the connexion between tenants and landlords is one not llightlyl broken off;—one which both parties, when they enter into it, desire and hope mwillm be permanent. Again, with attachment to the place comes generally attachment to the occupation: a farmer seldom becomes anything but a farmer. The rage of money-getting can scarcely, in agricultural occupations, reach any dangerous height: except where bad laws have aggravated the natural fluctuations of price, there is Edition: current; Page: [199] little room for gambling; the rewards of industry and skill are nsuren but moderate; an agriculturist can rarely make a large fortune. A manufacturer or merchant, unless he can outstrip others, knows that others will outstrip him, and ruin him, while, in the irksome drudgery to which he subjects himself as a means, there is nothing agreeable to dwell on except the ultimate end. But agriculture is in itself an interesting occupation, which few wish to retire from, and which men of property and education often pursue merely for their amusement. Men so occupied are satisfied with less gain, and are less impatient to realize it. Our town population, it has long been remarked, is becoming almost as mobile ando uneasy as the American. It ought not to be so with our agriculturists; they ought to be the counterbalancing element in our national character; they should represent the type opposite to the commercial,—that of moderate wishes, tranquil tastes, cultivation of the excitements and enjoyments near at hand, and compatible with their existing position.

To attain this object, how much alteration may be requisite in the system of rack-renting and tenancy at will, we cannot undertake to show in this place. It is sufficiently obvious also that the corn-laws[*] must disappear: there must be no feud raging between the commercial class and that by whose influence and example its excesses are to be tempered: men are not prone to adopt the characteristics of their enemies. Nor is this all. In order that the agricultural population should count for anything in politics, or contribute its part to the formation of the national character, it is absolutely necessary that it should be educated. And let it be remembered that, in an agricultural people, the diffusion of information and intelligence must necessarily be artificial;—the work of government, or of the superior classes. In populous towns, the mere collision of man with man, the keenness of competition, the habits of society and discussion, the easy access to reading—even the dulness of the ordinary occupations, which drives men to other excitements—produce of themselves a certain development of intelligence. The least favoured class of a town population are seldom actually stupid, and have often in some directions a morbid keenness and acuteness. It is otherwise with the peasantry. Whatever it is desired that they should know, they must be taught, whatever intelligence is expected to grow up among them, must first be implanted, and sedulously nursed.

It is not needful to go into a similar analysis of the tendencies of the other two classes—a leisured, and a learned class. The capabilities which they possess for controlling the excess of the commercial spirit by a contrary spirit, are at once apparent. We regard it as one of the greatest advantages Edition: current; Page: [200] of this country over America, that it possesses both these classes; and we believe that the interests of the time to come are greatly dependent upon preserving them; and upon their being rendered, as they much require to be, better and better qualified for their important functions.

If we believed that the national character of England, instead of reacting upon the American character and raising it, was gradually assimilating itself to those points of it which the best and wisest Americans see with most uneasiness, it would be no consolation to us to think that we might possibly avoid pthe institutions of Americap; for we should have all the effects of her institutions, except those which are beneficial. The American Many are not essentially a different class from our ten-pound householders; and if the middle class are left to the mere habits and instincts of a commercial community, we shall have a “tyranny of the majority,” not the less irksome because most of the tyrants may not be manual labourers. For it is a chimerical hope to overbear or outnumber the middle class; whatever modes of voting, whatever redistribution of the constituencies, are really necessary for placing the government in their hands, those, whether we like it or not, they will assuredly obtain.

The ascendancy of the commercial class in modern society and politics is inevitable, and, under due limitations, ought not to be regarded as an evil. That class is the most powerful: but it needs not therefore be all-powerful. Now, as ever, the great problem in government is to prevent the strongest from becoming the only power; and repress the natural tendency of the instincts and passions of the ruling body, to sweep away all barriers which are capable of resisting, even for a moment, their own tendencies. Any counterbalancing power can henceforth exist only by the sufferance of the commercial class; but that it should tolerate some such limitation, we deem as important as that it should not itself be held in vassalage.

Reform of the Civil Service

the proposal to select candidates for the Civil Service of Government by a competitive examination[*] appears to me to be one of those great public improvements the adoption of which would form an era in history. The effects which it is calculated to produce in raising the character both of the public administration and of the people can scarcely be over-estimated.

It has equal claims to support from the disinterested and impartial among conservatives and among reformers. For its adoption would be the best vindication which could be made of existing political institutions, by showing that the classes who under the present constitution have the greatest influence in the government, do not desire any greater share of the profits derivable from it than their merits entitle them to, but are willing to take the chances of competition with ability in all ranks: while the plan offers to liberals, so far as the plan extends, the realization of the principal object which any honest reformer desires to effect by political changes, namely, that the administration of public affairs should be in the most competent hands, which, as regards the permanent part of the administrative body, would be ensured by the proposed plan, so far as it is possible for any human contrivance to secure it.

When we add to this consideration the extraordinary stimulus which would be given to mental cultivation in its most important branches, not solely by the hope of prizes to be obtained by means of it, but by the effect of the national recognition of it as the exclusive title to participation in the conduct of so large and conspicuous a portion of the national affairs, and when we further think of the great and salutary moral revolution, descending to the minds of almost the lowest classes, which would follow the knowledge that Government (to people in general the most trusted exponent of the ways of the world) would henceforth bestow its gifts according to merit, and not to favour; it is difficult to express in any language which would not appear exaggerated, the benefits which, as it appears to me, would ultimately be the consequences of the successful execution of the scheme.

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The objections usually heard, or seen in print, against this great improvement, are either grounded on imperfect apprehension, or, when examined, are found to bear involuntary testimony to the existing need of such a change.

For example, it has been called, in Parliament and elsewhere, a scheme for taking patronage from the Crown and its officers, and giving it to a body of examiners.[*] This objection ignores the whole essence of the plan. As at present conducted, the bestowal of appointments is patronage. But the conferring of certificates of eligibility by the Board of Examiners would not be patronage, but a judicial act. The examiners for honours at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or London, have not the patronage of honours; nor has the Lord Chancellor, when he decrees an estate to one person instead of another, the patronage of the estate. If it be meant that the examiners would not be capable and impartial, the objection is intelligible. But capable and impartial examiners are found for university purposes, and for the purposes of the educational department of the Privy Council; and they will be found for the present purpose, supposing that there is a sincere desire to find them. The idea that an examination test is likely to be merely nominal, is grounded on the experience of a different kind of examination from that proposed. It is derived from examinations without competition. When the only object is to ascertain whether the candidate possesses a certain minimum of acquirement, it is usually thought that this minimum should be placed low enough to give a chance to all; and however low it may be placed, good nature interferes to prevent it from being rigidly enforced against any but absolute dunces, whilst the other candidates are willing to encourage and applaud this relaxation of duty, and even to connive at frauds on the part of the incompetent. The feelings of all concerned are very different, when the question to be resolved is, who among the candidates that present themselves are the most qualified. Indulgence to one, is then injustice to others, and wears a very different aspect to the conscience from that, falsely thought more venial, laxity, by which the public alone is damaged. In this case, too, the interests and feelings of the other competitors are enlisted in favour of preventing and detecting fraud. With a honest choice of examiners, a competitive examination is as unlikely to fail, as a mere test is unlikely to succeed.

Another objection is, that if appointments are given to talent, the Public Offices will be filled with low people, without the breeding or the feelings of gentlemen. If, as this objection supposes, the sons of gentlemen cannot be expected to have as much ability and instruction as the sons of low people, it would make a strong case for social changes of a more extensive character. If the sons of gentlemen would not, even under the stimulus of competition, maintain themselves on an equality of intellect and attainments with youths Edition: current; Page: [209] of a lower rank, how much more below the mark must they be with their present monopoly; and to how much greater an extent than the friends of the measure allege, must the efficiency of the Public Service be at present sacrificed to their incompetency. And more: if, with advantages and opportunities so vastly superior, the youth of the higher classes have not honour enough, or energy enough, or public spirit enough, to make themselves as well qualified as others for the station which they desire to maintain, they are not fit for that station, and cannot too soon step out of it and give place to better people. I have not this unfavourable opinion of them: I believe that they will fairly earn their full share of every kind of distinction, when they are no longer able to obtain it unearned.

Another objection is, that no examination can test more than a part of the qualities required in a Public Servant; that it is a test of book knowledge, but neither of moral qualities, nor of those which form the foundation of ability in the practical conduct of life. And it is added, that the proposed examination would have excluded Wellington, Nelson, and many more of those who have most distinguished themselves in public functions.

With regard to practical talents, it may be very true that Nelson or Wellington could not have passed a literary examination. But if such an examination had been required in their day for entering the army or navy, can any one suppose that young men of their energy and capacity would not have qualified themselves for it; or that even they would have derived no benefit from it? The assumption, besides, is gratuitous, that the examination would be solely literary. It is proposed that it should be also scientific; and this should include the practical applications of science: and there would be great propriety in allowing persons to offer themselves for a competitive examination in any kind of knowledge which can be useful in any department whatever of the Public Service, such number of marks being assigned to each of these special acquirements, compared with the more general ones, as in the judgment of the Examining Board might correspond to their value. Above all, however, it ought to be remembered, that the worth of the examination is as a test of powers and habits of mind, still more than of acquirements; for talent and application will be sure to acquire the positive knowledge found necessary for their profession, but acquirements may be little more than a dead weight if there is not ability to turn them to use.

With regard to moral qualities, undoubtedly no examination can directly test them; but indirectly it must do so in no inconsiderable degree; for it is idleness, and not application, which is “the mother of vice;” and a well cultivated intellect will seldom be found unaccompanied by prudence, temperance, and justice, and generally by the virtues which are of importance in our intercourse with others. Whatever means of judging of the moral character of the applicants may be adopted, I will venture to express a hope that Edition: current; Page: [210] they may be of a different kind from those suggested by Mr. Jowett;[*] who would demand from every candidate for examination a certificate of baptism [Jowett, p. 24; pp. 654-5 below], thus excluding even the Christian sects which do not practise that rite, and would require, among other references, one to a clergyman or a dissenting minister [Jowett, p. 25; p. 655 below]; which, as they would of course give their recommendations only to those whose religious character they approved of, would amount to the severest penalty for non-attendance on some church or minister of religion, and would be in fact a religious test, excluding many highly qualified candidates. If by requiring a statement of the “school or college” where the young man has been educated [Jowett, p. 24; p. 655 below], it be meant that he must have been educated at a school or college, this is another unjust and injudicious limitation (by which, among others, the writer of this letter would have been excluded, having never been at either school or college). Above all, I would point out the terrible principle brought in by the truly inquisitor-like proceeding recommended by Mr. Jowett, of “confidential” inquiries, and rejection “absolute and without reasons.” [Jowett, p. 25; p. 655 below.] A youth who has passed all the previous years of his life in fitting himself for examination, is, according to Mr. Jowett’s notions of justice, to find himself, in consequence of a secret accusation, rejected, he knows not why, and without the possibility of clearing his character from the unknown imputation! If any young man is rejected on moral grounds, it ought, I conceive, to be on a definite charge, which he has had a full opportunity of answering.[†] I would also suggest reconsideration of the (as it appears to me) very questionable principle of excluding youths otherwise qualified, by requiring a medical examination.[‡] It would be easy to find other means of preventing a public appointment from being made a means of obtaining a provision in the form of a pension without having rendered service sufficient to earn it.

In the preceding observations I have assumed, as requiring no proof, that the object proposed is in itself desirable; that it would be a public benefit if the Public Service, or all that part of it the duties of which are of an intellectual character, were composed of the most intelligent and instructed persons who could be attracted to it. If there be any who maintain a contrary doctrine, and say that the world is not made only for persons of ability, and that mediocrity also ought to have a share in it; I answer, certainly, but not in managing the affairs of the State. Mediocrity should betake itself to those things in which few besides itself will be imperilled by its deficiences,—to Edition: current; Page: [211] mechanical labour, or the mechanical superintendence of labour, occupations as necessary as any others, and which no person of sense considers disparaging. There will be, assuredly, ample space for the mediocrities, in employments which require only mediocrity, when all who are beyond mediocrity have found the employment in which their talents can be of most use.

I do not overlook the fact that the great majority, numerically speaking, of public employments, can be adequately filled by a very moderate amount of ability and knowledge; and I assume, that a proper distinction is made between these and the others. It would be absurd to subject a tide-waiter, a letter-carrier, or a simple copyist, to the same test as the confidential adviser of a Secretary of State; nor would the former situation be an object to any one capable of competing for the latter. The competition for the inferior posts must be practically limited to acquirements which are attainable by the persons who seek such employments; but it is by no means a consequence that it should be confined to such things as have a direct connexion with their duties. The classes which supply these branches of the Public Service are among those on whom it is most important to inculcate the lesson, that mental cultivation is desirable on its own account, and not solely as a means of livelihood or worldly advancement; that whatever tends to enlarge or elevate their minds, adds to their worth as human beings, and that the Government considers the most valuable human being as the worthiest to be a Public Servant, and is guided by that consideration in its choice, even when it does not require his particular attainments or accomplishments for its own use. A man may not be a much better postman for being able to draw, or being acquainted with natural history; but he who in that rank possesses these acquirements, has given evidence of qualities which it is important for the general cultivation of the mass that the State should take every fair opportunity of stamping with its approbation.

“The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”

Wilhelm von Humboldt, Sphere and Duties of Government.

[Trans. Joseph Coulthard (London: Chapman, 1854), p. 65.]

To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings—the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward—I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.