5. Chapter V: That Amongst The European Nations Of Our Time The
Power Of Governments Is Increasing, Although The Persons Who
Govern Are Less Stable
On reflecting upon what has already been said, the reader
will be startled and alarmed to find that in Europe everything
seems to conduce to the indefinite extension of the prerogatives
of government, and to render all that enjoyed the rights of
private independence more weak, more subordinate, and more
precarious. The democratic nations of Europe have all the
general and permanent tendencies which urge the Americans to the
centralization of government, and they are moreover exposed to a
number of secondary and incidental causes with which the
Americans are unacquainted. It would seem as if every step they
make towards equality brings them nearer to despotism. And indeed
if we do but cast our looks around, we shall be convinced that
such is the fact. During the aristocratic ages which preceded
the present time, the sovereigns of Europe had been deprived of,
or had relinquished, many of the rights inherent in their power.
Not a hundred years ago, amongst the greater part of European
nations, numerous private persons and corporations were
sufficiently independent to administer justice, to raise and
maintain troops, to levy taxes, and frequently even to make or
interpret the law. The State has everywhere resumed to itself
alone these natural attributes of sovereign power; in all matters
of government the State tolerates no intermediate agent between
itself and the people, and in general business it directs the
people by its own immediate influence. I am far from blaming
this concentration of power, I simply point it out.
At the same period a great number of secondary powers existed in
Europe, which represented local interests and administered local
affairs. Most of these local authorities have already disappeared; all
are speedily tending to disappear, or to fall into the most complete
dependence. From one end of Europe to the other the privileges of the
nobility, the liberties of cities, and the powers of provincial bodies,
are either destroyed or upon the verge of destruction. Europe has
endured, in the course of the last half-century, many revolutions and
counter-revolutions which have agitated it in opposite directions: but
all these perturbations resemble each other in one respect -they have
all shaken or destroyed the secondary powers of government. The local
privileges which the French did not abolish in the countries they
conquered, have finally succumbed to the policy of the princes who
conquered the French. Those princes rejected all the innovations of the
French Revolution except centralization: that is the only principle they
consented to receive from such a source. My object is to remark, that
all these various rights, which have been successively wrested, in our
time, from classes, corporations, and individuals, have not served to
raise new secondary powers on a more democratic basis, but have
uniformly been concentrated in the hands of the sovereign. Everywhere
the State acquires more and more direct control over the humblest
members of the community, and a more exclusive power of governing each
of them in his smallest concerns. [3]
Almost all the charitable establishments of Europe were formerly in the
hands of private persons or of corporations; they are now almost all
dependent on the supreme government, and in many countries are actually
administered by that power. The State almost exclusively undertakes to
supply bread to the hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work to
the idle, and to act as the sole reliever of all kinds of misery.
Education, as well as charity, is become in most countries at the
present day a national concern. The State receives, and often takes,
the child from the arms of the mother, to hand it over to official
agents: the State undertakes to train the heart and to instruct the mind
of each generation. Uniformity prevails in the courses of public
instruction as in everything else; diversity, as well as freedom, is
disappearing day by day. Nor do I hesitate to affirm, that amongst
almost all the Christian nations of our days, Catholic as well as
Protestant, religion is in danger of falling into the hands of the
government. Not that rulers are over-jealous of the right of settling
points of doctrine, but they get more and more hold upon the will of
those by whom doctrines are expounded; they deprive the clergy of their
property, and pay them by salaries; they divert to their own use the
influence of the priesthood, they make them their own ministers -often
their own servants -and by this alliance with religion they reach the
inner depths of the soul of man. [4]
But this is as yet only one side of the picture. The
authority of government has not only spread, as we have just
seen, throughout the sphere of all existing powers, till that
sphere can no longer contain it, but it goes further, and invades
the domain heretofore reserved to private independence. A
multitude of actions, which were formerly entirely beyond the
control of the public administration, have been subjected to that
control in our time, and the number of them is constantly
increasing. Amongst aristocratic nations the supreme government
usually contented itself with managing and superintending the
community in whatever directly and ostensibly concerned the
national honor; but in all other respects the people were left to
work out their own free will. Amongst these nations the
government often seemed to forget that there is a point at which
the faults and the sufferings of private persons involve the
general prosperity, and that to prevent the ruin of a private
individual must sometimes be a matter of public importance. The
democratic nations of our time lean to the opposite extreme. It
is evident that most of our rulers will not content themselves
with governing the people collectively: it would seem as if they
thought themselves responsible for the actions and private
condition of their subjects -as if they had undertaken to guide
and to instruct each of them in the various incidents of life,
and to secure their happiness quite independently of their own
consent. On the other hand private individuals grow more and
more apt to look upon the supreme power in the same light; they
invoke its assistance in all their necessities, and they fix
their eyes upon the administration as their mentor or their
guide.
I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public
administration has not become, not only more centralized, but more
inquisitive and more minute it everywhere interferes in private concerns
more than it did; it regulates more undertakings, and undertakings of a
lesser kind; and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above, and
around all private persons, to assist, to advise, and to coerce them.
Formerly a sovereign lived upon the income of his lands, or the revenue
of his taxes; this is no longer the case now that his wants have
increased as well as his power. Under the same circumstances which
formerly compelled a prince to put on a new tax, he now has recourse to
a loan. Thus the State gradually becomes the debtor of most of the
wealthier members of the community, and centralizes the largest amounts
of capital in its own hands. Small capital is drawn into its keeping by
another method. As men are intermingled and conditions become more
equal, the poor have more resources, more education, and more desires;
they conceive the notion of bettering their condition, and this teaches
them to save. These savings are daily producing an infinite number of
small capitals, the slow and gradual produce of labor, which are always
increasing. But the greater part of this money would be unproductive if
it remained scattered in the hands of its owners. This circumstance has
given rise to a philanthropic institution, which will soon become, if I
am not mistaken, one of our most important political institutions. Some
charitable persons conceived the notion of collecting the savings of the
poor and placing them out at interest. In some countries these
benevolent associations are still completely distinct from the State;
but in almost all they manifestly tend to identify themselves with the
government; and in some of them the government has superseded them,
taking upon itself the enormous task of centralizing in one place, and
putting out at interest on its own responsibility, the daily savings of
many millions of the working classes. Thus the State draws to itself the
wealth of the rich by loans, and has the poor man's mite at its disposal
in the savings banks. The wealth of the country is perpetually flowing
around the government and passing through its hands; the accumulation
increases in the same proportion as the equality of conditions; for in a
democratic country the State alone inspires private individuals with
confidence, because the State alone appears to be endowed with strength
and durability. [5]Thus the sovereign
does not confine himself to the management of the public treasury; he
interferes in private money matters; he is the superior, and often the
master, of all the members of the community; and, in addition to this,
he assumes the part of their steward and paymaster.
The central power not only fulfils of itself the whole of
the duties formerly discharged by various authorities -extending
those duties, and surpassing those authorities -but it performs
them with more alertness, strength, and independence than it
displayed before. All the governments of Europe have in our time
singularly improved the science of administration: they do more
things, and they do everything with more order, more celerity,
and at less expense; they seem to be constantly enriched by all
the experience of which they have stripped private persons. From
day to day the princes of Europe hold their subordinate officers
under stricter control, and they invent new methods for guiding
them more closely, and inspecting them with less trouble. Not
content with managing everything by their agents, they undertake
to manage the conduct of their agents in everything; so that the
public administration not only depends upon one and the same
power, but it is more and more confined to one spot and
concentrated in the same hands. The government centralizes its
agency whilst it increases its prerogative -hence a twofold
increase of strength.
In examining the ancient constitution of the judicial power,
amongst most European nations, two things strike the mind -the
independence of that power, and the extent of its functions. Not only
did the courts of justice decide almost all differences between private
persons, but in very many cases they acted as arbiters between private
persons and the State. I do not here allude to the political and
administrative offices which courts of judicature had in some countries
usurped, but the judicial office common to them all. In most of the
countries of Europe, there were, and there still are, many private
rights, connected for the most part with the general right of property,
which stood under the protection of the courts of justice, and which the
State could not violate without their sanction. It was this
semi-political power which mainly distinguished the European courts of
judicature from all others; for all nations have had judges, but all
have not invested their judges with the same privileges. Upon examining
what is now occurring amongst the democratic nations of Europe which are
called free, as well as amongst the others, it will be observed that new
and more dependent courts are everywhere springing up by the side of the
old ones, for the express purpose of deciding, by an extraordinary
jurisdiction, such litigated matters as may arise between the government
and private persons. The elder judicial power retains its independence,
but its jurisdiction is narrowed; and there is a growing tendency to
reduce it to be exclusively the arbiter between private interests. The
number of these special courts of justice is continually increasing, and
their functions increase likewise. Thus the government is more and more
absolved from the necessity of subjecting its policy and its rights to
the sanction of another power. As judges cannot be dispensed with, at
least the State is to select them, and always to hold them under its
control; so that, between the government and private individuals, they
place the effigy of justice rather than justice itself. The State is
not satisfied with drawing all concerns to itself, but it acquires an
ever-increasing power of deciding on them all without restriction and
without appeal. [6]
There exists amongst the modern nations of Europe one great
cause, independent of all those which have already been pointed
out, which perpetually contributes to extend the agency or to
strengthen the prerogative of the supreme power, though it has
not been sufficiently attended to: I mean the growth of
manufactures, which is fostered by the progress of social
equality. Manufactures generally collect a multitude of men of
the same spot, amongst whom new and complex relations spring up.
These men are exposed by their calling to great and sudden
alternations of plenty and want, during which public tranquillity
is endangered. It may also happen that these employments
sacrifice the health, and even the life, of those who gain by
them, or of those who live by them. Thus the manufacturing
classes require more regulation, superintendence, and restraint
than the other classes of society, and it is natural that the
powers of government should increase in the same proportion as
those classes.
This is a truth of general application; what follows more
especially concerns the nations of Europe. In the centuries
which preceded that in which we live, the aristocracy was in
possession of the soil, and was competent to defend it: landed
property was therefore surrounded by ample securities, and its
possessors enjoyed great independence. This gave rise to laws
and customs which have been perpetuated, notwithstanding the
subdivision of lands and the ruin of the nobility; and, at the
present time, landowners and agriculturists are still those
amongst the community who must easily escape from the control of
the supreme power. In these same aristocratic ages, in which all
the sources of our history are to be traced, personal property
was of small importance, and those who possessed it were despised
and weak: the manufacturing class formed an exception in the
midst of those aristocratic communities; as it had no certain
patronage, it was not outwardly protected, and was often unable
to protect itself.
Hence a habit sprung up of considering manufacturing property as
something of a peculiar nature, not entitled to the same deference, and
not worthy of the same securities as property in general; and
manufacturers were looked upon as a small class in the bulk of the
people, whose independence was of small importance, and who might with
propriety be abandoned to the disciplinary passions of princes. On
glancing over the codes of the middle ages, one is surprised to see, in
those periods of personal independence, with what incessant royal
regulations manufactures were hampered, even in their smallest details:
on this point centralization was as active and as minute as it can ever
be. Since that time a great revolution has taken place in the world;
manufacturing property, which was then only in the germ, has spread till
it covers Europe: the manufacturing class has been multiplied and
enriched by the remnants of all other ranks; it has grown and is still
perpetually growing in number, in importance, in wealth. Almost all
those who do not belong to it are connected with it at least on some one
point; after having been an exception in society, it threatens to become
the chief, if not the only, class; nevertheless the notions and
political precedents engendered by it of old still cling about it. These
notions and these precedents remain unchanged, because they are old, and
also because they happen to be in perfect accordance with the new
notions and general habits of our contemporaries. Manufacturing
property then does not extend its rights in the same ratio as its
importance. The manufacturing classes do not become less dependent,
whilst they become more numerous; but, on the contrary, it would seem as
if despotism lurked within them, and naturally grew with their growth.
[7] As a nation becomes more engaged in
manufactures, the want of roads, canals, harbors, and other works of a
semi-public nature, which facilitate the acquisition of wealth, is more
strongly felt; and as a nation becomes more democratic, private
individuals are less able, and the State more able, to execute works of
such magnitude. I do not hesitate to assert that the manifest tendency
of all governments at the present time is to take upon themselves alone
the execution of these undertakings; by which means they daily hold in
closer dependence the population which they govern.
On the other hand, in proportion as the power of a State
increases, and its necessities are augmented, the State
consumption of manufactured produce is always growing larger, and
toese commodities are generally made in the arsenals or
establishments of the government. Thus, in every kingdom, the
ruler becomes the principal manufacturer; he collects and retains
in his service a vast number of engineers, architects, mechanics,
and handicraftsmen. Not only is he the principal manufacturer,
but he tends more and more to become the chief, or rather the
master of all other manufacturers. As private persons become
more powerless by becoming more equal, they can effect nothing in
manufactures without combination; but the government naturally
seeks to place these combinations under its own control.
It must be admitted that these collective beings, which are
called combinations, are stronger and more formidable than a
private individual can ever be, and that they have less of the
responsibility of their own actions; whence it seems reasonable
that they should not be allowed to retain so great an
independence of the supreme government as might be conceded to a
private individual.
Rulers are the more apt to follow this line of policy, as
their own inclinations invite them to it. Amongst democratic
nations it is only by association that the resistance of the
people to the government can ever display itself: hence the
latter always looks with ill-favor on those associations which
are not in its own power; and it is well worthy of remark, that
amongst democratic nations, the people themselves often entertain
a secret feeling of fear and jealousy against these very
associations, which prevents the citizens from defending the
institutions of which they stand so much in need. The power and
the duration of these small private bodies, in the midst of the
weakness and instability of the whole community, astonish and
alarm the people; and the free use which each association makes
of its natural powers is almost regarded as a dangerous
privilege. All the associations which spring up in our age are,
moreover, new corporate powers, whose rights have not been
sanctioned by time; they come into existence at a time when the
notion ofprivate rights is weak, and when the power of government
is unbounded; hence it is not surprising that they lose their
freedom at their birth. Amongst all European nations there are
some kinds of associations which cannot be formed until the State
has examined their by-laws, and authorized their existence. In
several others, attempts are made to extend this rule to all
associations; the consequences of such a policy, if it were
successful, may easily be foreseen. If once the sovereign had a
general right of authorizing associations of all kinds upon
certain conditions, he would not be long without claiming the
right of superintending and managing them, in order to prevent
them from departing from the rules laid down by himself. In this
manner, the State, after having reduced all who are desirous of
forming associations into dependence, would proceed to reduce
into the same condition all who belong to associations already
formed -that is to say, almost all the men who are now in
existence. Governments thus appropriate to themselves, and
convert to their own purposes, the greater part of this new power
which manufacturing interests have in our time brought into the
world. Manufacturers govern us -they govern manufactures.
I attach so much importance to all that I have just been
saying, that I am tormented by the fear of having impaired my
meaning in seeking to render it more clear. If the reader thinks
that the examples I have adduced to support my observations are
insufficient or ill-chosen -if he imagines that I have anywhere
exaggerated the encroachments of the supreme power, and, on the
other hand, that I have underrated the extent of the sphere which
still remains open to the exertions of individual independence, I
entreat him to lay down the book for a moment, and to turn his
mind to reflect for himself upon the subjects I have attempted to
explain. Let him attentively examine what is taking place in
France and in other countries -let him inquire of those about
him -let him search himself, and I am much mistaken if he does
not arrive, without my guidance, and by other paths, at the point
to which I have sought to lead him. He will perceive that for
the last half-century, centralization has everywhere been growing
up in a thousand different ways. Wars, revolutions, conquests,
have served to promote it: all men have labored to increase it.
In the course of the same period, during which men have succeeded
each other with singular rapidity at the head of affairs, their
notions, interests, and passions have been infinitely
diversified; but all have by some means or other sought to
centralize. This instinctive centralization has been the only
settled point amidst the extreme mutability of their lives and of
their thoughts.
If the reader, after having investigated these details of
human affairs, will seek to survey the wide prospect as a whole,
he will be struck by the result. On the one hand the most
settled dynasties shaken or overthrown -the people everywhere
escaping by violence from the sway of their laws -abolishing or
limiting the authority of their rulers or their princes -the
nations, which are not in open revolution, restless at least, and
excited -all of them animated by the same spirit of revolt: and
on the other hand, at this very period of anarchy, and amongst
these untractable nations, the incessant increase of the
prerogative of the supreme government, becoming more centralized,
more adventurous, more absolute, more extensive -the people
perpetually falling under the control of the public
administration -led insensibly to surrender to it some further
portion of their individual independence, till the very men, who
from time to time upset a throne and trample on a race of kings,
bend more and more obsequiously to the slightest dictate of a
clerk. Thus two contrary revolutions appear in our days to be
going on; the one continually weakening the supreme power, the
other as continually strengthening it: at no other period in our
history has it appeared so weak or so strong. But upon a more
attentive examination of the state of the world, it appears that
these two revolutions are intimately connected together, that
they originate in the same source, and that after having followed
a separate course, they lead men at last to the same result. I
may venture once more to repeat what I have already said or
implied in several parts of this book: great care must be taken
not to confound the principle of equality itself with the
revolution which finally establishes that principle in the social
condition and the laws of a nation: here lies the reason of
almost all the phenomena which occasion our astonishment. All
the old political powers of Europe, the greatest as well as the
least, were founded in ages of aristocracy, and they more or less
represented or defended the principles of inequality and of
privilege. To make the novel wants and interests, which the
growing principle of equality introduced, preponderate in
government, our contemporaries had to overturn or to coerce the
established powers. This led them to make revolutions, and
breathed into many of them, that fierce love of disturbance and
independence, which all revolutions, whatever be their object,
always engender. I do not believe that there is a single country
in Europe in which the progress of equality has not been preceded
or followed by some violent changes in the state of property and
persons; and almost all these changes have been attended with
much anarchy and license, because they have been made by the
least civilized portion of the nation against that which is most
civilized. Hence proceeded the two-fold contrary tendencies
which I have just pointed out. As long as the democratic
revolution was glowing with heat, the men who were bent upon the
destruction of old aristocratic powers hostile to that
revolution, displayed a strong spirit of independence; but as the
victory or the principle of equality became more complete, they
gradually surrendered themselves to the propensities natural to
that condition of equality, and they strengthened and centralized
their governments. They had sought to be free in order to make
themselves equal; but in proportion as equality was more
established by the aid of freedom, freedom itself was thereby
rendered of more difficult attainment.
These two states of a nation have sometimes been
contemporaneous: the last generation in France showed how a
people might organize a stupendous tyranny in the community, at
the very time when they were baffling the authority of the
nobility and braving the power of all kings -at once teaching
the world the way to win freedom, and the way to lose it. In our
days men see that constituted powers are dilapidated on every
side -they see all ancient authority gasping away, all ancient
barriers tottering to their fall, and the judgment of the wisest
is troubled at the sight: they attend only to the amazing
revolution which is taking place before their eyes, and they
imagine that mankind is about to fall into perpetual anarchy: if
they looked to the final consequences of this revolution, their
fears would perhaps assume a different shape. For myself, I
confess that I put no trust in the spirit of freedom which
appears to animate my contemporaries. I see well enough that the
nations of this age are turbulent, but I do not clearly perceive
that they are liberal; and I fear lest, at the close of those
perturbations which rock the base of thrones, the domination of
sovereigns may prove more powerful than it ever was before.
[3]
This gradual weakening of individuals in relation to
society at large may be traced in a thousand ways. I shall
select from amongst these examples one derived from the law of
wills. In aristocracies it is common to profess the greatest
reverence for the last testamentary dispositions of a man; this
feeling sometimes even became superstitious amongst the older
nations of Europe: the power of the State, far from interfering
with the caprices of a dying man, gave full force to the very
least of them, and insured to him a perpetual power. When all
living men are enfeebled, the will of the dead is less respected:
it is circumscribed within a narrow range, beyond which it is
annulled or checked by the supreme power of the laws. In the
Middle Ages, testamentary power had, so to speak, no limits:
amongst the French at the present day, a man cannot distribute
his fortune amongst his children without the interference of the
State; after having domineered over a whole life, the law insists
upon regulating the very last act of it.
[4]
In proportion as the duties of the central power are
augmented, the number of public officers by whom that power is
represented must increase also. They form a nation in each nation; and
as they share the stability of the government, they more and more fill
up the place of an aristocracy.
In almost every part of Europe the
government rules in two ways; it rules one portion of the community by
the fear which they entertain of its agents, and the other by the hope
they have of becoming its agents.
[5]
On the one hand the taste for worldly welfare is
perpetually increasing, and on the other the government gets more
and more complete possession of the sources of that welfare.
Thus men are following two separate roads to servitude: the taste
for their own welfare withholds them from taking a part in the
government, and their love of that welfare places them in closer
dependence upon those who govern.
[6]
A strange sophism has been made on this head in
France. When a suit arises between the government and a private person,
it is not to be tried before an ordinary judge -in order, they say, not
to mix the administrative and the judicial powers; as if it were not to
mix those powers, and to mix them in the most dangerous and oppressive
manner, to invest the government with the office of judging and
administering at the same time.
[7]
I shall quote a few facts in corroboration of
this remark. Mines are the natural sources of manufacturing wealth: as
manufactures have grown up in Europe, as the produce of mines has become
of more general importance, and good mining more difficult from the
subdivision of property which is a consequence of the equality of
conditions, most governments have asserted a right of owning the soil in
which the mines lie, and of inspecting the works; which has never been
the case with any other kind of property. Thus mines, which were private
property, liable to the same obligations and sheltered by the same
guarantees as all other landed property, have fallen under the control
of the State. The State either works them or farms them; the owners of
them are mere tenants, deriving their rights from the State; and,
moreover, the State almost everywhere claims the power of directing
their operations: it lays down rules, enforces the adoption of
particular methods, subjects the mining adventurers to constant
superintendence, and, if refractory, they are ousted by a government
court of justice, and the government transfers their contract to other
hands; so that the government not only possesses the mines, but has all
the adventurers in its power. Nevertheless, as manufactures increase,
the working of old mines increases also; new ones are opened, the mining
population extends and grows up; day by day governments augment their
subterranean dominions, and people them with their agents.