6. Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To
Fear
I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a
democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans,
might offer singular facilities for the establishment of
despotism; and I perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much
use had already been made by most of our rulers, of the notions,
the sentiments, and the wants engendered by this same social
condition, for the purpose of extending the circle of their
power. This led me to think that the nations of Christendom
would perhaps eventually undergo some sort of oppression like
that which hung over several of the nations of the ancient world.
A more accurate examination of the subject, and five years of
further meditations, have not diminished my apprehensions, but
they have changed the object of them. No sovereign ever lived in
former ages so absolute or so powerful as to undertake to
administer by his own agency, and without the assistance of
intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire: none ever
attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict
uniformity of regulation, and personally to tutor and direct
every member of the community. The notion of such an undertaking
never occurred to the human mind; and if any man had conceived
it, the want of information, the imperfection of the
administrative system, and above all, the natural obstacles
caused by the inequality of conditions, would speedily have
checked the execution of so vast a design. When the Roman
emperors were at the height of their power, the different nations
of the empire still preserved manners and customs of great
diversity; although they were subject to the same monarch, most
of the provinces were separately administered; they abounded in
powerful and active municipalities; and although the whole
government of the empire was centred in the hands of the emperor
alone, and he always remained, upon occasions, the supreme
arbiter in all matters, yet the details of social life and
private occupations lay for the most part beyond his control.
The emperors possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked
power, which allowed them to gratify all their whimsical tastes,
and to employ for that purpose the whole strength of the State.
They frequently abused that power arbitrarily to deprive their
subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely
onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; it
was fixed to some few main objects, and neglected the rest; it
was violent, but its range was limited.
But it would seem that if despotism were to be established
amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a
different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it
would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question,
that in an age of instruction and equality like our own,
sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political
power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually
and decidedly within the circle of private interests, than any
sovereign of antiquity could ever do. But this same principle of
equality which facilitates despotism, tempers its rigor. We have
seen how the manners of society become more humane and gentle in
proportion as men become more equal and alike. When no member of
the community has much power or much wealth, tyranny is, as it
were, without opportunities and a field of action. As all
fortunes are scanty, the passions of men are naturally
circumscribed -their imagination limited, their pleasures
simple. This universal moderation moderates the sovereign
himself, and checks within certain limits the inordinate extent
of his desires.
Independently of these reasons drawn from the nature of the state
of society itself, I might add many others arising from causes beyond my
subject; but I shall keep within the limits I have laid down to myself.
Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain
periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises
will be rare and brief. When I consider the petty passions of our
contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their
education, the purity of their religion, the gentleness of their
morality, their regular and industrious habits, and the restraint which
they almost all observe in their vices no less than in their virtues, I
have no fear that they will meet with tyrants in their rulers, but
rather guardians. [8] I think then that
the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is
unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our
contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am
trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the
whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words
"despotism" and "tyranny" are inappropriate: the thing itself is new;
and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it.
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may
appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the
observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and
alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry
pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living
apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest -his
children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of
mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to
them, but he sees them not -he touches them, but he feels them
not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his
kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have
lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and
tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their
gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is
absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like
the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object
was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to
keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the
people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but
rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly
labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter
of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and
supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages
their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the
descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances -what
remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the
trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the
free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it
circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually
robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality
has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to
endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the
community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the
supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It
covers the surface of society with a net-work of small
complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic characters cannot
penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not
shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced
by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:
such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does
not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and
stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing
better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which
the government is the shepherd. I have always thought that
servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have
just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly
believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it
might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of
the people. Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two
conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to
remain free: as they cannot destroy either one or the other of
these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at
once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of
government, but elected by the people. They combine the
principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this
gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in
tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own
guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings,
because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons,
but the people at large that holds the end of his chain. By this
system the people shake off their state of dependence just long
enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again. A
great many persons at the present day are quite contented with
this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the
sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough
for the protection of individual freedom when they have
surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not
satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me
than the fact of extorted obedience.
I do not however deny that a constitution of this kind appears to
me to be infinitely preferable to one, which, after having concentrated
all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an
irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms which
democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the
worst. When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a
legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression
which he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is
always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and
disarmed, may still imagine, that whilst he yields obedience it is to
himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that
all the rest give way. In like manner I can understand that when the
sovereign represents the nation, and is dependent upon the people, the
rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived, not only serve
the head of the State, but the State itself; and that private persons
derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they
have made to the public. To create a representation of the people in
every centralized country, is therefore, to diminish the evil which
extreme centralization may produce, but not to get rid of it. I admit
that by this means room is left for the intervention of individuals in
the more important affairs; but it is not the less suppressed in the
smaller and more private ones. It must not be forgotten that it is
especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For
my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in
great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of
the one without possessing the other. Subjection in minor affairs
breaks out every day, and is felt by the whole community
indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses
them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their
will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character
enervated; whereas that obedience, which is exacted on a few important
but rare occasions, only exhibits servitude at certain intervals, and
throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to
summon a people, which has been rendered so dependent on the central
power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that power;
this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of
thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling
below the level of humanity. [9] I add
that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and only
privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations which have
introduced freedom into their political constitution, at the very time
when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative
constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those
minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted -the people are
held to be unequal to the task, but when the government of the country
is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are
alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his masters -more
than kings, and less than men. After having exhausted all the different
modes of election, without finding one to suit their purpose, they are
still amazed, and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they
remark did not originate in the constitution of the country far more
than in that of the electoral body. It is, indeed, difficult to
conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government
should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be
governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and
energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient
people. A constitution, which should be republican in its head and
ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to be
a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the
people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its
representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon
return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.