20. Chapter XX: The Trade Of Place-Hunting In Certain Democratic
Countries
In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some
education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get
rich by commerce or industry, or he buys land in the bush and
turns pioneer. All that he asks of the State is not to be
disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings. Amongst
the greater part of European nations, when a man begins to feel
his strength and to extend his desires, the first thing that
occurs to him is to get some public employment. These opposite
effects, originating in the same cause, deserve our passing
notice.
When public employments are few in number, ill-paid and
precarious, whilst the different lines of business are numerous
and lucrative, it is to business, and not to official duties,
that the new and eager desires engendered by the principle of
equality turn from every side. But if, whilst the ranks of
society are becoming more equal, the education of the people
remains incomplete, or their spirit the reverse of bold -if
commerce and industry, checked in their growth, afford only slow
and arduous means of making a fortune -the various members of
the community, despairing of ameliorating their own condition,
rush to the head of the State and demand its assistance. To
relieve their own necessities at the cost of the public treasury,
appears to them to be the easiest and most open, if not the only,
way they have to rise above a condition which no longer contents
them; place-hunting becomes the most generally followed of all
trades. This must especially be the case, in those great
centralized monarchies in which the number of paid offices is
immense, and the tenure of them tolerably secure, so that no one
despairs of obtaining a place, and of enjoying it as
undisturbedly as a hereditary fortune.
I shall not remark that the universal and inordinate desire
for place is a great social evil; that it destroys the spirit of
independence in the citizen, and diffuses a venal and servile
humor throughout the frame of society; that it stifles the
manlier virtues: nor shall I be at the pains to demonstrate that
this kind of traffic only creates an unproductive activity, which
agitates the country without adding to its resources: all these
things are obvious. But I would observe, that a government which
encourages this tendency risks its own tranquillity, and places
its very existence in great jeopardy. I am aware that at a time
like our own, when the love and respect which formerly clung to
authority are seen gradually to decline, it may appear necessary
to those in power to lay a closer hold on every man by his own
interest, and it may seem convenient to use his own passions to
keep him in order and in silence; but this cannot be so long, and
what may appear to be a source of strength for a certain time
will assuredly become in the end a great cause of embarrassment
and weakness.
Amongst democratic nations, as well as elsewhere, the number
of official appointments has in the end some limits; but amongst
those nations, the number of aspirants is unlimited; it
perpetually increases, with a gradual and irresistible rise in
proportion as social conditions become more equal, and is only
checked by the limits of the population. Thus, when public
employments afford the only outlet for ambition, the government
necessarily meets with a permanent opposition at last; for it is
tasked to satisfy with limited means unlimited desires. It is
very certain that of all people in the world the most difficult
to restrain and to manage are a people of solicitants. Whatever
endeavors are made by rulers, such a people can never be
contented; and it is always to be apprehended that they will
ultimately overturn the constitution of the country, and change
the aspect of the State, for the sole purpose of making a
clearance of places. The sovereigns of the present age, who
strive to fix upon themselves alone all those novel desires which
are aroused by equality, and to satisfy them, will repent in the
end, if I am not mistaken, that they ever embarked in this
policy: they will one day discover that they have hazarded their
own power, by making it so necessary; and that the more safe and
honest course would have been to teach their subjects the art of
providing for themselves. [11]
[11]
[As a matter of fact, more recent experience has
shown that place-hunting is quite as intense in the United States
as in any country in Europe. It is regarded by the Americans
themselves as one of the great evils of their social condition,
and it powerfully affects their political institutions. But the
American who seeks a place seeks not so much a means of
subsistence as the distinction which office and public employment
confer. In the absence of any true aristocracy, the public
service creates a spurious one, which is as much an object of
ambition as the distinctions of rank in aristocratic countries. -Translator's Note.]