4. Chapter IV: Why The Americans Have Never Been So Eager As The
French For General Ideas In Political Matters
I observed in the last chapter, that the Americans show a
less decided taste for general ideas than the French; this is
more especially true in political matters. Although the
Americans infuse into their legislation infinitely more general
ideas than the English, and although they pay much more attention
than the latter people to the adjustment of the practice of
affairs to theory, no political bodies in the United States have
ever shown so warm an attachment to general ideas as the
Constituent Assembly and the Convention in France. At no time
has the American people laid hold on ideas of this kind with the
passionate energy of the French people in the eighteenth century,
or displayed the same blind confidence in the value and absolute
truth of any theory. This difference between the Americans and
the French originates in several causes, but principally in the
following one. The Americans form a democratic people, which has
always itself directed public affairs. The French are a
democratic people, who, for a long time, could only speculate on
the best manner of conducting them. The social condition of
France led that people to conceive very general ideas on the
subject of government, whilst its political constitution
prevented it from correcting those ideas by experiment,and from
gradually detecting their insufficiency; whereas in America the
two things constantly balance and correct each other.
It may seem, at first sight, that this is very much opposed
to what I have said before, that democratic nations derive their
love of theory from the excitement of their active life. A more
attentive examination will show that there is nothing
contradictory in the proposition. Men living in democratic
countries eagerly lay hold of general ideas because they have but
little leisure, and because these ideas spare them the trouble of
studying particulars. This is true; but it is only to be
understood to apply to those matters which are not the necessary
and habitual subjects of their thoughts. Mercantile men will take
up very eagerly, and without any very close scrutiny, all the
general ideas on philosophy, politics, science, or the arts,
which may be presented to them; but for such as relate to
commerce, they will not receive them without inquiry, or adopt
them without reserve. The same thing applies to statesmen with
regard to general ideas in politics. If, then, there be a subject
upon which a democratic people is peculiarly liable to abandon
itself, blindly and extravagantly, to general ideas, the best
corrective that can be used will be to make that subject a part
of the daily practical occupation of that people. The people
will then be compelled to enter upon its details, and the details
will teach them the weak points of the theory. This remedy may
frequently be a painful one, but its effect is certain.
Thus it happens, that the democratic institutions which
compel every citizen to take a practical part in the government,
moderate that excessive taste for general theories in politics
which the principle of equality suggests.