5. Chapter V: How Democracy Affects the Relation Of Masters And
Servants
An American who had travelled for a long time in Europe once
said to me, "The English treat their servants with a stiffness
and imperiousness of manner which surprise us; but on the other
hand the French sometimes treat their attendants with a degree of
familiarity or of politeness which we cannot conceive. It looks
as if they were afraid to give orders: the posture of the
superior and the inferior is ill-maintained." The remark was a
just one, and I have often made it myself. I have always
considered England as the country in the world where, in our
time, the bond of domestic service is drawn most tightly, and
France as the country where it is most relaxed. Nowhere have I
seen masters stand so high or so low as in these two countries.
Between these two extremes the Americans are to be placed. Such
is the fact as it appears upon the surface of things: to discover
the causes of that fact, it is necessary to search the matter
thoroughly.
No communities have ever yet existed in which social
conditions have been so equal that there were neither rich nor
poor, and consequently neither masters nor servants. Democracy
does not prevent the existence of these two classes, but it
changes their dispositions and modifies their mutual relations.
Amongst aristocratic nations servants form a distinct class, not
more variously composed than that of masters. A settled order is
soon established; in the former as well as in the latter class a
scale is formed, with numerous distinctions or marked gradations
of rank, and generations succeed each other thus without any
change of position. These two communities are superposed one
above the other, always distinct, but regulated by analogous
principles. This aristocratic constitution does not exert a less
powerful influence on the notions and manners of servants than on
those of masters; and, although the effects are different, the
same cause may easily be traced. Both classes constitute small
communities in the heart of the nation, and certain permanent
notions of right and wrong are ultimately engendered amongst
them. The different acts of human life are viewed by one
particular and unchanging light. In the society of servants, as
in that of masters, men exercise a great influence over each
other: they acknowledge settled rules, and in the absence of law
they are guided by a sort of public opinion: their habits are
settled, and their conduct is placed under a certain control.
These men, whose destiny is to obey, certainly do not understand
fame, virtue, honesty, and honor in the same manner as their masters;
but they have a pride, a virtue, and an honesty pertaining to their
condition; and they have a notion, if I may use the expression, of a
sort of servile honor. [2] Because a
class is mean, it must not be supposed that all who belong to it are
mean-hearted; to think so would be a great mistake. However lowly it
may be, he who is foremost there, and who has no notion of quitting it,
occupies an aristocratic position which inspires him with lofty
feelings, pride, and self-respect, that fit him for the higher virtues
and actions above the common. Amongst aristocratic nations it was by no
means rare to find men of noble and vigorous minds in the service of the
great, who felt not the servitude they bore, and who submitted to the
will of their masters without any fear of their displeasure. But this
was hardly ever the case amongst the inferior ranks of domestic
servants. It may be imagined that he who occupies the lowest stage of
the order of menials stands very low indeed. The French created a word
on purpose to designate the servants of the aristocracy -they called
them lackeys. This word "lackey" served as the strongest expression,
when all others were exhausted, to designate human meanness. Under the
old French monarchy, to denote by a single expression a low-spirited
contemptible fellow, it was usual to say that he had the "soul of a
lackey"; the term was enough to convey all that was intended.
The permanent inequality of conditions not only gives
servants certain peculiar virtues and vices, but it places them
in a peculiar relation with respect to their masters. Amongst
aristocratic nations the poor man is familiarized from his
childhood with the notion of being commanded: to whichever side
he turns his eyes the graduated structure of society and the
aspect of obedience meet his view. Hence in those countries the
master readily obtains prompt, complete, respectful, and easy
obedience from his servants, because they revere in him not only
their master but the class of masters. He weighs down their will
by the whole weight of the aristocracy. He orders their actions -to a certain extent he even directs their thoughts. In
aristocracies the master often exercises, even without being
aware of it, an amazing sway over the opinions, the habits, and
the manners of those who obey him, and his influence extends even
further than his authority.
In aristocratic communities there are not only hereditary
families of servants as well as of masters, but the same families
of servants adhere for several generations to the same families
of masters (like two parallel lines which neither meet nor
separate); and this considerably modifies the mutual relations of
these two classes of persons. Thus, although in aristocratic
society the master and servant have no natural resemblance -although, on the contrary, they are placed at an immense distance
on the scale of human beings by their fortune, education, and
opinions -yet time ultimately binds them together. They are
connected by a long series of common reminiscences, and however
different they may be, they grow alike; whilst in democracies,
where they are naturally almost alike, they always remain
strangers to each other. Amongst an aristocratic people the
master gets to look upon his servants as an inferior and
secondary part of himself, and he often takes an interest in
their lot by a last stretch of egotism.
Servants, on their part, are not averse to regard themselves
in the same light; and they sometimes identify themselves with
the person of the master, so that they become an appendage to him
in their own eyes as well as in his. In aristocracies a servant
fills a subordinate position which he cannot get out of; above
him is another man, holding a superior rank which he cannot lose.
On one side are obscurity, poverty, obedience for life; on the
other, and also for life, fame, wealth, and command. The two
conditions are always distinct and always in propinquity; the tie
that connects them is as lasting as they are themselves. In this
predicament the servant ultimately detaches his notion of
interest from his own person; he deserts himself, as it were, or
rather he transports himself into the character of his master,
and thus assumes an imaginary personality. He complacently
invests himself with the wealth of those who command him; he
shares their fame, exalts himself by their rank, and feeds his
mind with borrowed greatness, to which he attaches more
importance than those who fully and really possess it. There is
something touching, and at the same time ridiculous, in this
strange confusion of two different states of being. These
passions of masters, when they pass into the souls of menials,
assume the natural dimensions of the place they occupy -they are
contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes
puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The
servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the
marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to
his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few
of these old servants of the aristocracy are still to be met with
here and there; they have survived their race, which will soon
disappear with them altogether. In the United States I never saw
anyone at all like them. The Americans are not only unacquainted
with the kind of man, but it is hardly possible to make them
understand that such ever existed. It is scarcely less difficult
for them to conceive it, than for us to form a correct notion of
what a slave was amongst the Romans, or a serf in the Middle
Ages. All these men were in fact, though in different degrees,
results of the same cause: they are all retiring from our sight,
and disappearing in the obscurity of the past, together with the
social condition to which they owed their origin.
Equality of conditions turns servants and masters into new
beings, and places them in new relative positions. When social
conditions are nearly equal, men are constantly changing their
situations in life: there is still a class of menials and a class
of masters, but these classes are not always composed of the same
individuals, still less of the same families; and those who
command are not more secure of perpetuity than those who obey.
As servants do not form a separate people, they have no habits,
prejudices, or manners peculiar to themselves; they are not
remarkable for any particular turn of mind or moods of feeling.
They know no vices or virtues of their condition, but they
partake of the education, the opinions, the feelings, the
virtues, and the vices of their contemporaries; and they are
honest men or scoundrels in the same way as their masters are.
The conditions of servants are not less equal than those of
masters. As no marked ranks or fixed subordination are to be
found amongst them, they will not display either the meanness or
the greatness which characterizes the aristocracy of menials as
well as all other aristocracies. I never saw a man in the United
States who reminded me of that class of confidential servants of
which we still retain a reminiscence in Europe, neither did I
ever meet with such a thing as a lackey: all traces of the one
and of the other have disappeared.
In democracies servants are not only equal amongst
themselves, but it may be said that they are in some sort the
equals of their masters. This requires explanation in order to
be rightly understood. At any moment a servant may become a
master, and he aspires to rise to that condition: the servant is
therefore not a different man from the master. Why then has the
former a right to command, and what compels the latter to obey? -the free and temporary consent of both their wills. Neither of
them is by nature inferior to the other; they only become so for
a time by covenant. Within the terms of this covenant, the one
is a servant, the other a master; beyond it they are two citizens
of the commonwealth -two men. I beg the reader particularly to
observe that this is not only the notion which servants
themselves entertain of their own condition; domestic service is
looked upon by masters in the same light; and the precise limits
of authority and obedience are as clearly settled in the mind of
the one as in that of the other.
When the greater part of the community have long attained a
condition nearly alike, and when equality is an old and
acknowledged fact, the public mind, which is never affected by
exceptions, assigns certain general limits to the value of man,
above or below which no man can long remain placed. It is in
vain that wealth and poverty, authority and obedience,
accidentally interpose great distances between two men; public
opinion, founded upon the usual order of things, draws them to a
common level, and creates a species of imaginary equality between
them, in spite of the real inequality of their conditions. This
all-powerful opinion penetrates at length even into the hearts of
those whose interest might arm them to resist it; it affects
their judgment whilst it subdues their will. In their inmost
convictions the master and the servant no longer perceive any
deep-seated difference between them, and they neither hope nor
fear to meet with any such at any time. They are therefore
neither subject to disdain nor to anger, and they discern in each
other neither humility nor pride. The master holds the contract
of service to be the only source of his power, and the servant
regards it as the only cause of his obedience. They do not
quarrel about their reciprocal situations, but each knows his own
and keeps it.
In the French army the common soldier is taken from nearly
the same classes as the officer, and may hold the same
commissions; out of the ranks he considers himself entirely equal
to his military superiors, and in point of fact he is so; but
when under arms he does not hesitate to obey, and his obedience
is not the less prompt, precise, and ready, for being voluntary
and defined. This example may give a notion of what takes place
between masters and servants in democratic communities.
It would be preposterous to suppose that those warm and
deep-seated affections, which are sometimes kindled in the
domestic service of aristocracy, will ever spring up between
these two men, or that they will exhibit strong instances of
self-sacrifice. In aristocracies masters and servants live
apart, and frequently their only intercourse is through a third
person; yet they commonly stand firmly by one another. In
democratic countries the master and the servant are close
together; they are in daily personal contact, but their minds do
not intermingle; they have common occupations, hardly ever common
interests. Amongst such a people the servant always considers
himself as a sojourner in the dwelling of his masters. He knew
nothing of their forefathers -he will see nothing of their
descendants -he has nothing lasting to expect from their hand.
Why then should he confound his life with theirs, and whence
should so strange a surrender of himself proceed? The reciprocal
position of the two men is changed -their mutual relations must
be so too.
I would fain illustrate all these reflections by the example
of the Americans; but for this purpose the distinctions of
persons and places must be accurately traced. In the South of
the Union, slavery exists; all that I have just said is
consequently inapplicable there. In the North, the majority of
servants are either freedmen or the children of freedmen; these
persons occupy a contested position in the public estimation; by
the laws they are brought up to the level of their masters -by
the manners of the country they are obstinately detruded from it.
They do not themselves clearly know their proper place, and they
are almost always either insolent or craven. But in the Northern
States, especially in New England, there are a certain number of
whites, who agree, for wages, to yield a temporary obedience to
the will of their fellow-citizens. I have heard that these
servants commonly perform the duties of their situation with
punctuality and intelligence; and that without thinking
themselves naturally inferior to the person who orders them, they
submit without reluctance to obey him. They appear to me to
carry into service some of those manly habits which independence
and equality engender. Having once selected a hard way of life,
they do not seek to escape from it by indirect means; and they
have sufficient respect for themselves, not to refuse to their
master that obedience which they have freely promised. On their
part, masters require nothing of their servants but the faithful
and rigorous performance of the covenant: they do not ask for
marks of respect, they do not claim their love or devoted
attachment; it is enough that, as servants, they are exact and
honest. It would not then be true to assert that, in democratic
society, the relation of servants and masters is disorganized: it
is organized on another footing; the rule is different, but there
is a rule.
It is not my purpose to inquire whether the new state of
things which I have just described is inferior to that which
preceded it, or simply different. Enough for me that it is fixed
and determined: for what is most important to meet with among men
is not any given ordering, but order. But what shall I say of
those sad and troubled times at which equality is established in
the midst of the tumult of revolution -when democracy, after
having been introduced into the state of society, still struggles
with difficulty against the prejudices and manners of the
country? The laws, and partially public opinion, already declare
that no natural or permanent inferiority exists between the
servant and the master. But this new belief has not yet reached
the innermost convictions of the latter, or rather his heart
rejects it; in the secret persuasion of his mind the master
thinks that he belongs to a peculiar and superior race; he dares
not say so, but he shudders whilst he allows himself to be
dragged to the same level. His authority over his servants
becomes timid and at the same time harsh: he has already ceased
to entertain for them the feelings of patronizing kindness which
long uncontested power always engenders, and he is surprised
that, being changed himself, his servant changes also. He wants
his attendants to form regular and permanent habits, in a
condition of domestic service which is only temporary: he
requires that they should appear contented with and proud of a
servile condition, which they will one day shake off -that they
should sacrifice themselves to a man who can neither protect nor
ruin them -and in short that they should contract an
indissoluble engagement to a being like themselves, and one who
will last no longer than they will.
Amongst aristocratic nations it often happens that the
condition of domestic service does not degrade the character of
those who enter upon it, because they neither know nor imagine
any other; and the amazing inequality which is manifest between
them and their master appears to be the necessary and unavoidable
consequence of some hidden law of Providence. In democracies the
condition of domestic service does not degrade the character of
those who enter upon it, because it is freely chosen, and adopted
for a time only; because it is not stigmatized by public opinion,
and creates no permanent inequality between the servant and the
master. But whilst the transition from one social condition to
another is going on, there is almost always a time when men's
minds fluctuate between the aristocratic notion of subjection and
the democratic notion of obedience. Obedience then loses its
moral importance in the eyes of him who obeys; he no longer
considers it as a species of divine obligation, and he does not
yet view it under its purely human aspect; it has to him no
character of sanctity or of justice, and he submits to it as to a
degrading but profitable condition. At that moment a confused
and imperfect phantom of equality haunts the minds of servants;
they do not at once perceive whether the equality to which they
are entitled is to be found within or without the pale of
domestic service; and they rebel in their hearts against a
subordination to which they have subjected themselves, and from
which they derive actual profit. They consent to serve, and they
blush to obey; they like the advantages of service, but not the
master; or rather, they are not sure that they ought not
themselves to be masters, and they are inclined to consider him
who orders them as an unjust usurper of their own rights. Then
it is that the dwelling of every citizen offers a spectacle
somewhat analogous to the gloomy aspect of political society. A
secret and intestine warfare is going on there between powers,
ever rivals and suspicious of one another: the master is
ill-natured and weak, the servant ill-natured and intractable;
the one constantly attempts to evade by unfair restrictions his
obligation to protect and to remunerate -the other his
obligation to obey. The reins of domestic government dangle
between them, to be snatched at by one or the other. The lines
which divide authority from oppression, liberty from license, and
right from might, are to their eyes so jumbled together and
confused, that no one knows exactly what he is, or what he may
be, or what he ought to be. Such a condition is not democracy,
but revolution.
[2]
If the principal opinions by which men are guided are
examined closely and in detail, the analogy appears still more striking,
and one is surprised to find amongst them, just as much as amongst the
haughtiest scions of a feudal race, pride of birth, respect for their
ancestry and their descendants, disdain of their inferiors, a dread of
contact, a taste for etiquette, precedents, and antiquity.