14. Chapter XIV: Taste For Physical Gratifications United In America
To Love Of Freedom And Attention To Public Affairs
When a democratic state turns to absolute monarchy, the
activity which was before directed to public and to private
affairs is all at once centred upon the latter: the immediate
consequence is, for some time, great physical prosperity; but
this impulse soon slackens, and the amount of productive industry
is checked. I know not if a single trading or manufacturing
people can be cited, from the Tyrians down to the Florentines and
the English, who were not a free people also. There is therefore
a close bond and necessary relation between these two elements -freedom and productive industry. This proposition is generally
true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations. I
have already shown that men who live in ages of equality
continually require to form associations in order to procure the
things they covet; and, on the other hand, I have shown how great
political freedom improves and diffuses the art of association.
Freedom, in these ages, is therefore especially favorable to the
production of wealth; nor is it difficult to perceive that
despotism is especially adverse to the same result. The nature of
despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel,
but minute and meddling. Despotism of this kind, though it does
not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of
commerce and the pursuits of industry.
Thus the men of democratic ages require to be free in order
more readily to procure those physical enjoyments for which they
are always longing. It sometimes happens, however, that the
excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments abandons
them to the first master who appears. The passion for worldly
welfare then defeats itself, and, without perceiving it, throws
the object of their desires to a greater distance.
There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of
a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications
amongst such a people has grown more rapidly than their education
and their experience of free institutions, the time will come
when men are carried away, and lose all self-restraint, at the
sight of the new possessions they are about to lay hold upon. In
their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune, they lose
sight of the close connection which exists between the private
fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all. It is not
necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them
of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their
hold. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a
troublesome annoyance, which diverts them from their occupations
and business. If they be required to elect representatives, to
support the Government by personal service, to meet on public
business, they have no time -they cannot waste their precious
time in useless engagements: such idle amusements are unsuited to
serious men who are engaged with the more important interests of
life. These people think they are following the principle of
self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is a
very rude one; and the better to look after what they call their
business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain
their own masters.
As the citizens who work do not care to attend to public
business, and as the class which might devote its leisure to
these duties has ceased to exist, the place of the Government is,
as it were, unfilled. If at that critical moment some able and
ambitious man grasps the supreme power, he will find the road to
every kind of usurpation open before him. If he does but attend
for some time to the material prosperity of the country, no more
will be demanded of him. Above all he must insure public
tranquillity: men who are possessed by the passion of physical
gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom
disturbs their welfare, before they discover how freedom itself
serves to promote it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion
intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are
aroused and alarmed by it. The fear of anarchy perpetually haunts
them, and they are always ready to fling away their freedom at
the first disturbance.
I readily admit that public tranquillity is a great good;
but at the same time I cannot forget that all nations have been
enslaved by being kept in good order. Certainly it is not to be
inferred that nations ought to despise public tranquillity; but
that state ought not to content them. A nation which asks
nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already
a slave at heart -the slave of its own well-being, awaiting but
the hand that will bind it. By such a nation the despotism of
faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an
individual. When the bulk of the community is engrossed by
private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of
getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times it is
not rare to see upon the great stage of the world, as we see at
our theatres, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone
speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone
are in action whilst all are stationary; they regulate everything
by their own caprice; they change the laws, and tyrannize at will
over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into
how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may
fall.
Hitherto the Americans have fortunately escaped all the
perils which I have just pointed out; and in this respect they
are really deserving of admiration. Perhaps there is no country
in the world where fewer idle men are to be met with than in
America, or where all who work are more eager to promote their
own welfare. But if the passion of the Americans for physical
gratifications is vehement, at least it is not indiscriminating;
and reason, though unable to restrain it, still directs its
course. An American attends to his private concerns as if he
were alone in the world, and the next minute he gives himself up
to the common weal as if he had forgotten them. At one time he
seems animated by the most selfish cupidity, at another by the
most lively patriotism. The human heart cannot be thus divided.
The inhabitants of the United States alternately display so
strong and so similar a passion for their own welfare and for
their freedom, that it may be supposed that these passions are
united and mingled in some part of their character. And indeed
the Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and
surest safeguard of their welfare: they are attached to the one
by the other. They by no means think that they are not called
upon to take a part in the public weal; they believe, on the
contrary, that their chief business is to secure for themselves a
government which will allow them to acquire the things they
covet, and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment
of those possessions which they have acquired.