THE PROPHECIES OF DE TOCQUEVILLE.*
A NEW and most readable edition of De Tocqueville's Democracy in America offers a temptation which it is hard indeed to resist. We should like once more to express our admiration of that curious felicity of style, to analyze that vigorous logic, to set out that stately and * Democracy in America. By N. de Tocqueville. Translated by H. Reeve, Esq. A new edition, with an Introductory Notice by the Tranalator. Longmans.
perfect argument, which, while it impresses all readers with its writer's conviction that democracy is as resistless as death, teaches them also that, like death, it is only formidable when its victims are unprepared. We should like again to consider how far that serene intellect was biased by French ideas, how far it was misled by the assumption that the end of society is the greatness of nations and not the well- being of men, and, above all, how far a secret distrust in the goodness of Providence availed to limit the insight no despondency seemed to de- stroy. Such a review, however, would be a waste of time. All who can appreciate De Tocqueville read him, and to criticize his writings is like criticizing some newly discovered physical law. You may account for it, or apply it, or test it, or explain that it is but part of some wider and more magnificent order, or even deny it, but there is no criticism wanted, except upon the merits of the discoverer. Be Toequeville's earlier writings are as scriptures to modern Whigs, and we are about to treat them after the fashion of Dr. Cumming, to put the broad argument in the background, thrust the wise teach- ing out of sight, and dwell for the moment on the American events of the day, and the predictions adventured by Be Tocqueville on the American future.
The present crisis, it must be allowed, the author did not predict. He held, indeed, that the existence of forty distinct nattons, and a hundred millions of men, "under one federal government, could be at best but a fortunate accident." He remarked, too, that a "certain uniformity of civilization was essential to such union," and predicted that as slavery produces a different civilization from freedom, slavery would ultimately break up the Union, through its influence upon manners. But he expected, in 1835, that the Union would last for at least a hundred years, and inclined to believe that even then it would perish through the incessant encroachments of the States upon the Fe- deral power. He did not take into account the passion for political grandeur which is the dominant sentiment of the North, and stands to the politicians in the place of a genuine patriotism. So, too, with slavery, as the cause of the war. De Tocqueville foresaw, we fear, only too truly the ultimate outtum of that bad system. He pre- dicted distinctly a struggle which must one day arise between the blacks and the whites, but overlooked the possibility of a struggle arising about the slaves, waged, not between them and their masters, but between those who dread and those who delight in the conse- quences of slave extension. But though he did not predict the im- mediate outburst, though, like a true son of the Old World, he allowed too much time for the development of American social facts, it is strange to observe how profoundly lie comprehended the circum- stances which would lead to disunion, and the modes in- which popular spirit, under the given circumstances, would inevitably display itself. With regard, for example, to the specialty of this rebellion, the fact it is an insurrection of Sovereign States, De Tocqueville pointed out alike the cause and the mode of disruption. The American Union, he said, was neither a nationality nor a federation. It was an "incomplete national Government ; " national, that is, for some purposes and not for others; and as the States in the great distri- bution of authority retained those powers which influence the private interests of the citizens, he predicted that in any conflict between them the Union would go down. "The public spirit of the Union," he said, "is, so to speak, nothing more than an abstract of the pa- triotic zeal of the provinces." The "Union is possessed of money and troops, but the affections and the prejudices of the people are in the bosom of the States." Consequently, he declared that when- ever any combination of States attempted to attack the Federal Government, it would yield. If, indeed, "among the States united by the Federal tie, there are some whose prosperity depends on the duration of that Union, it is unquestionable that they will be always ready to support the central Government in enforcing the 'obedi- ence of the others. But the Government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature." No description penned after the fact could more closely correspond with the truth. The Federal Government, so long as it stood alone, played with secession, or deprecated it, or denounced it, as different chiefs reached power, but it was not till the North saw its prosperity threatened, and itself insulted, and rose in arms, that the Federal Government ventured to declare war on it. And no Northern statesman alive could paint more strongly the reasons which induce the North to believe that her prosperity is seriously involved. "Notwithstanding their apparent • isolation, the Ameri- cans require a certain degree of strength, which they cannot retain otherwise than by remaining united to each other. If the States were to split, they would not only diminish the strength which they are now able to display towards foreign nations, but they would soon create foreign Powers upon their territory. A system of inland custom-houses would then be established; the valleys would be divided by imaginary boundary lines ; the courses of the rivers would be confined by territorial distinctions; and a multitude of hindrances would prevent the Americans from exploring the whole of that vast continent which Providence has allotted to them for a dominion. At present they have no invasion to fear, and consequently .no standing armies to maintain, no taxes to levy. If the Umon were dissolved, all these burdensome measures might ere long be required."
Again, Be Tocqueville pointed out, twenty-five years ago, the precise evils which would render it so difficult for the republic to act. "Even if the Government of the Union had any strength inherent in itself, the physical situation of the country would render the exercise of that strength very difficult. The United States cover an immenie territory; they are separated from each other by great distances and the population is disseminated over the surface of a country Which is still half a wilderness. If the Union were to un- dertake to enforce the allegiance of the Confederate States by mili- tary means, it would be in a position very analogous to that of Englaud at the time of the War of Independence." The Adminis- tration, too, must always in America be weak, because administrative science cannot advance, or indeed exist. The Union statesmen "simply possess those attainments which are most widely dissemi- nated in the community, and no experience peculiar to themselves." Is not that precisely Mr. Seward's position? He writes despatches, and issues decrees, which seem to his countrymen models of energy and sound judgment, simply because they are precisely what any man taken out of the crowd would have been inclined to write.
There is nothing peculiar to Mr. Seward in them, and consequently, as the average information of a crowd is not sufficient for governing men, they strike outsiders as futile, or even absurd. Again, says De Tocqueville, while the aristocracies corrupt the people, the leaders of a democracy are usually either corrupt, or suspected to be so, and either evil is almost ruinous. "The corruption of men who have casually risen to power has a coarse and vulgar infection in it, which renders it contagious to the multitude. On the contrary, there is a kind of aristocratic refinement, and an air of grandeur in the depravity of the great, which frequently prevents it from spread- ing abroad. The people can never penetrate into the perplexing labyrinth of court intrigue, and it will always have difficulty in detecting the turpitude which larks under elegant manners, refined tastes, and graceful language. But to pillage the public purse, and to vend the favours of the State, are arts which the meanest villain may comprehend, and hope to practise in his turn." Messrs. Cameron and Welles, and their followers, will doubtless endorse— some sorrowfully, for they are only accused; Some gleefully, for they are guilty—the truth of the critic who pitied and satirized them as statesmen when they were boys at school. And Mr. Lincoln may find his justification for high-handed acts of power in the following dangerous prophecy: "War must invariably and immeasurably in- crease the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the Administration. If it lead not to despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits.' This, say the democrats, is not a war but only a rebellion, and they will be delighted to find that De Tocqueville, the most prescient of Whigs, believed that civil wars would be exceedingly rare within democratic republics. Bat, having spent a whole chapter in the effort to demonstrate this theory, which is very possibly just, the far-sighted statesman added this extraordinary note : "It should be borne in mind that I speak here of sovereign and independent demo- cratic nations, not of confederate democracies; in confederacies, as the preponderating power always resides, in spite of all political fic- tions, in the state governments, and not in the federal government, civil wars are in fact nothing but foreign wars in disguise."
De Tocqueville's view of the military conduct of any great Ame- rican war was a general one, derived from his own convictions as to the permanent operation of the democratic forces. He thought all democracies weak for war, and federations specially weak ; and held that in a democratic army the conservative principle rested exclusively in the men. They reflect the ideas of the society from which they have sprung, while the officers, who find their grade gives them the social status democrats so eagerly crave, are always ready for war until they have reached the topmost round of the ladder. This feeling is strongest among non-commissioned officers, and induces them to prefer even revolutions to peace. This would be an ominous opinion for the States, but that De Tocqueville had evidently never contemplated a State raising an army so large that its permanent maintenance was an impossibility from the difficulty of paying the men.
On the future of slavery our author is exceedingly distinct, although his predictions still remain to be verified or disproved. He held that the popular solution of the difficulty was no solution at all ; that the black race, as it grew numerous and strong, must be thrown into a position of antagonism to the white—an antagonism which could end only in amalgamation or the forcible expulsion of one of the two breeds. Emancipation, so far from ending the contest, would only accelerate it, though the contest would be changed from a struggle.for freedom into a battle for equality. Amalgamation he held to be impossible, the American drawing apart from the negro in will to his freedom; so that while the Southern planter will share his bed with the quadroon who cannot become his wife, the Northern man recoils even from illicit connexion with the race which has social rights equal to his own. There remains only inter- necine strife, ending if the strife began before the dissolution of the Union, in the expulsion of the blacks ; if after it, in their victory. It is a saddening prospect, and M. de Tocqueville, perhaps, omitted one element in his calculation. It is not certain that the dark races ask equality with the whites. The natives of India, as jealous of their per- sonal freedom as Englishmen, feel no degradation in following the leadership of whites, promoted foreigners to be generals during their independent rule, and constantly in their faction fights yield the com- mand to uneducated Europeans. The negro, by nature placable, and by training inured to obey, may accept freedom without either political privileges, or with only. that moderate share which, for example, the peasants of Sweden retain. Adapted as they are to the climate, and willing to toil, they would undoubtedly by degrees monopolize pro- perty, and so gradually drive the whites back to lands better suited to their energy and their constitutions. That painless emigration would, however, be a settlement by natural causes—not by the sword,
and would still leave the South a dependency, to be governed from the United States as we govern India. It is vain, however, to predict, in circumstances so absolutely without precedent. De Tocqueville is often right, but it is where a vast mass offsets gives him the data on which to educe a law. Here there are no facts ; for no race on earth has ever yet held in bondage a race half its own in number, which could never from colour sink back into the ancient population, which the dominant class at once disliked and feared, and over which it had no religious controL Even Helotry had not the additional disadvan- tage of a permanent brand of race.
Previous page
