21. Chapter XXI: Of Parliamentary Eloquence In The United
States
Amongst aristocratic nations all the members of the
community are connected with and dependent upon each other; the
graduated scale of different ranks acts as a tie, which keeps
everyone in his proper place and the whole body in subordination.
Something of the same kind always occurs in the political
assemblies of these nations. Parties naturally range themselves
under certain leaders, whom they obey by a sort of instinct,
which is only the result of habits contracted elsewhere. They
carry the manners of general society into the lesser assemblage.
In democratic countries it often happens that a great number
of citizens are tending to the same point; but each one only
moves thither, or at least flatters himself that he moves, of his
own accord. Accustomed to regulate his doings by personal
impulse alone, he does not willingly submit to dictation from
without. This taste and habit of independence accompany him into
the councils of the nation. If he consents to connect himself
with other men in the prosecution of the same purpose, at least
he chooses to remain free to contribute to the common success
after his own fashion. Hence it is that in democratic countries
parties are so impatient of control, and are never manageable
except in moments of great public danger. Even then, the
authority of leaders, which under such circumstances may be able
to make men act or speak, hardly ever reaches the extent of
making them keep silence.
Amongst aristocratic nations the members of political
assemblies are at the same time members of the aristocracy. Each
of them enjoys high established rank in his own right, and the
position which he occupies in the assembly is often less
important in his eyes than that which he fills in the country.
This consoles him for playing no part in the discussion of public
affairs, and restrains him from too eagerly attempting to play an
insignificant one.
In America, it generally happens that a Representative only
becomes somebody from his position in the Assembly. He is
therefore perpetually haunted by a craving to acquire importance
there, and he feels a petulant desire to be constantly obtruding
his opinions upon the House. His own vanity is not the only
stimulant which urges him on in this course, but that of his
constituents, and the continual necessity of propitiating them.
Amongst aristocratic nations a member of the legislature is
rarely in strict dependence upon his constituents: he is
frequently to them a sort of unavoidable representative;
sometimes they are themselves strictly dependent upon him; and if
at length they reject him, he may easily get elected elsewhere,
or, retiring from public life, he may still enjoy the pleasures
of splendid idleness. In a democratic country like the United
States a Representative has hardly ever a lasting hold on the
minds of his constituents. However small an electoral body may
be, the fluctuations of democracy are constantly changing its
aspect; it must, therefore, be courted unceasingly. He is never
sure of his supporters, and, if they forsake him, he is left
without a resource; for his natural position is not sufficiently
elevated for him to be easily known to those not close to him;
and, with the complete state of independence prevailing among the
people, he cannot hope that his friends or the government will
send him down to be returned by an electoral body unacquainted
with him. The seeds of his fortune are, therefore, sown in his
own neighborhood; from that nook of earth he must start, to raise
himself to the command of a people and to influence the destinies
of the world. Thus it is natural that in democratic countries
the members of political assemblies think more of their
constituents than of their party, whilst in aristocracies they
think more of their party than of their constituents.
But what ought to be said to gratify constituents is not
always what ought to be said in order to serve the party to which
Representatives profess to belong. The general interest of a
party frequently demands that members belonging to it should not
speak on great questions which they understand imperfectly; that
they should speak but little on those minor questions which
impede the great ones; lastly, and for the most part, that they
should not speak at all. To keep silence is the most useful
service that an indifferent spokesman can render to the
commonwealth. Constituents, however, do not think so. The
population of a district sends a representative to take a part in
the government of a country, because they entertain a very lofty
notion of his merits. As men appear greater in proportion to the
littleness of the objects by which they are surrounded, it may be
assumed that the opinion entertained of the delegate will be so
much the higher as talents are more rare among his constituents.
It will therefore frequently happen that the less constituents
have to expect from their representative, the more they will
anticipate from him; and, however incompetent he may be, they
will not fail to call upon him for signal exertions,
corresponding to the rank they have conferred upon him.
Independently of his position as a legislator of the State,
electors also regard their Representative as the natural patron
of the constituency in the Legislature; they almost consider him
as the proxy of each of his supporters, and they flatter
themselves that he will not be less zealous in defense of their
private interests than of those of the country. Thus electors
are well assured beforehand that the Representative of their
choice will be an orator; that he will speak often if he can, and
that in case he is forced to refrain, he will strive at any rate
to compress into his less frequent orations an inquiry into all
the great questions of state, combined with a statement of all
the petty grievances they have themselves to complain to; so
that, though he be not able to come forward frequently, he should
on each occasion prove what he is capable of doing; and that,
instead of perpetually lavishing his powers, he should
occasionally condense them in a small compass, so as to furnish a
sort of complete and brilliant epitome of his constituents and of
himself. On these terms they will vote for him at the next
election. These conditions drive worthy men of humble abilities
to despair, who, knowing their own powers, would never
voluntarily have come forward. But thus urged on, the
Representative begins to speak, to the great alarm of his
friends; and rushing imprudently into the midst of the most
celebrated orators, he perplexes the debate and wearies the
House.
All laws which tend to make the Representative more
dependent on the elector, not only affect the conduct of the
legislators, as I have remarked elsewhere, but also their
language. They exercise a simultaneous influence on affairs
themselves, and on the manner in which affairs are discussed.
There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his
mind to go home without having despatched at least one speech to
his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he
has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may
be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is
composed, and especially the district which he represents. He
therefore presents to the mind of his auditors a succession of
great general truths (which he himself only comprehends, and
expresses, confusedly), and of petty minutia, which he is but too
able to discover and to point out. The consequence is that the
debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and
perplexed, and that they seem rather to drag their slow length
along than to advance towards a distinct object. Some such state
of things will, I believe, always arise in the public assemblies
of democracies.
Propitious circumstances and good laws might succeed in
drawing to the legislature of a democratic people men very
superior to those who are returned by the Americans to Congress;
but nothing will ever prevent the men of slender abilities who
sit there from obtruding themselves with complacency, and in all
ways, upon the public. The evil does not appear to me to be
susceptible of entire cure, because it not only originates in the
tactics of that assembly, but in its constitution and in that of
the country. The inhabitants of the United States seem themselves
to consider the matter in this light; and they show their long
experience of parliamentary life not by abstaining from making
bad speeches, but by courageously submitting to hear them made.
They are resigned to it, as to an evil which they know to be
inevitable.
We have shown the petty side of political debates in
democratic assemblies -let us now exhibit the more imposing one.
The proceedings within the Parliament of England for the last one
hundred and fifty years have never occasioned any great sensation
out of that country; the opinions and feelings expressed by the
speakers have never awakened much sympathy, even amongst the
nations placed nearest to the great arena of British liberty;
whereas Europe was excited by the very first debates which took
place in the small colonial assemblies of America at the time of
the Revolution. This was attributable not only to particular and
fortuitous circumstances, but to general and lasting causes. I
can conceive nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great
orator debating on great questions of state in a democratic
assembly. As no particular class is ever represented there by men
commissioned to defend its own interests, it is always to the
whole nation, and in the name of the whole nation, that the
orator speaks. This expands his thoughts, and heightens his
power of language. As precedents have there but little weight
-as there are no longer any privileges attached to certain
property, nor any rights inherent in certain bodies or in certain
individuals, the mind must have recourse to general truths
derived from human nature to resolve the particular question
under discussion. Hence the political debates of a democratic
people, however small it may be, have a degree of breadth which
frequently renders them attractive to mankind. All men are
interested by them, because they treat of man, who is everywhere
the same. Amongst the greatest aristocratic nations, on the
contrary, the most general questions are almost always argued on
some special grounds derived from the practice of a particular
time, or the rights of a particular class; which interest that
class alone, or at most the people amongst whom that class
happens to exist. It is owing to this, as much as to the
greatness of the French people, and the favorable disposition of
the nations who listen to them, that the great effect which the
French political debates sometimes produce in the world, must be
attributed. The orators of France frequently speak to mankind,
even when they are addressing their countrymen only.