145 Spirit of Republican Government (1835)
What is understood by a republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself. It is a regular state of things really founded upon the enlightened will of the people. It is a conciliatory government under which resolutions are allowed time to ripen and in which they are deliberately discussed and executed with mature judgment. The republicans in the United States set a high value upon morality, respect religious belief, and acknowledge the existence of rights. They profess to think that a people ought to be moral, religious, and temperate, in proportion as it is free. What is called the republic in the United States is the tranquil rule of the majority which, after having had time to examine itself and to give proof of its existence, is the common source of all the powers of the State. But the power of the majority is not of itself unlimited. In the moral world humanity, justice, and reason enjoy an undisputed supremacy. In the political world vested rights are treated with no less deference. The majority recognizes these two barriers and if it now and then oversteps them it is because, like individuals, it has passions and like them it is prone to do what is wrong, whilst it discerns what is right.
In the United States, the mass of the institutions of the country is essentially republican and in order permanently to destroy the laws which form the basis of the republic, it would be necessary to abolish all the laws at once. In the United States the sovereignty of the people is not an isolated doctrine bearing no relation to the prevailing manners and ideas of the people. It may on the contrary be regarded as the last link of a chain of opinions which binds the whole Anglo-American world. That Providence has given to every human being the degree of reason necessary to direct himself in the affairs which interest him exclusively, such is the grand maxim upon which civil and political society rests in the United States. The father of a family applies it to his children, the master to his servants, the township to its officers, the province to its townships, the State to the provinces, the Union to the States. And when extended to the nation, it becomes the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people.
Thus in the United States, the fundamental principle of the republic is the same which governs the greater part of human actions. Republican notions insinuate themselves into all the ideas, opinions, and habits of the Americans whilst they are formally recognized by the legislation. And before this legislation can be altered the whole community must undergo very serious changes. In the United States even the religion of most of the citizens is republican, since it submits the truths of the other world to private judgment. As in politics the care of its temporal interests is abandoned to the good sense of the people. Thus every man is allowed freely to take that road which he thinks will lead him to heaven, just as the law permits every citizen to have the right of choosing his government.
If republican principles are to perish in America, they can only yield after a laborious social process, often interrupted and as often resumed. They will have many apparent revivals and will not become totally extinct until an entirely new people shall have succeeded to that which now exists. Now it must be admitted that there is no symptom or presage of the approach of such a revolution. There is nothing more striking to a person newly arrived in the United States than the kind of tumultuous agitation in which he finds political society. The laws are incessantly changing and at first sight it seems impossible that a people so variable in its desires should avoid adopting, within a short space of time, a completely new form of government. Such apprehensions are however premature. The instability which affects political institutions is of two kinds which ought not to be confounded. The first which modifies secondary laws is not incompatible with a very settled state of society; the other shakes the very foundations of the Constitution and attacks the fundamental principles of legislation. This species of instability is always followed by troubles and revolutions and the nation which suffers under it is in a state of violent transition.
Experience shows that these two kinds of legislative instability have no necessary connection, for they have been found united or separate according to times and circumstances. The first is common in the United States but not the second. The Americans often change their laws but the foundation of the Constitution is respected. It is however my opinion that by changing their administrative forms as often as they do, the inhabitants of the United States compromise the future stability of their Government.
It may be apprehended that men perpetually thwarted in their designs by the mutability of the legislation will learn to look upon republican institutions as an inconvenient form of society. The evil resulting from the instability of the secondary enactments might then raise a doubt as to the nature of the fundamental principles of the Constitution and indirectly bring about a revolution, but this epoch is still very remote.
It may however be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their republican institutions they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government without a long interval of limited monarchy. Montesquieu remarked that nothing is more absolute than the authority of a prince who immediately succeeds a republic, since the powers which had fearlessly been entrusted to an elected magistrate are then transferred to an hereditary sovereign. This is true in general but it is more peculiarly applicable to a democratic republic. In the United States the magistrates are not elected by a particular class of citizens but by the majority of the nation. They are the immediate representatives of the passions of the multitude and as they are wholly dependent upon its pleasure, they excite neither hatred nor fear. Hence as I have already shown, very little care has been taken to limit their influence and they are left in possession of a vast deal of arbitrary power. This state of things has engendered habits which would outlive itself: the American magistrate would retain his power but he would cease to be responsible for the exercise of it and it is impossible to say what bounds could then be set to tyranny.
Some of our European politicians expect to see an aristocracy arise in America and they already predict the exact period at which it will be able to assume the reins of government. I have previously observed and I repeat my assertion that the present tendency of American society appears to me to become more and more democratic. Nevertheless, I do not assert that the Americans will not at some future time restrict the circle of political rights in their country or confiscate those rights to the advantage of a single individual. But I cannot imagine that they will ever bestow the exclusive exercise of them upon a privileged class of citizens, or in other words, that they will ever found an aristocracy.
An aristocratic body is composed of a certain number of citizens who, without being very far removed from the mass of the people, are nevertheless permanently stationed above it. A body which it is easy to touch and difficult to strike, with which the people are in daily contact but with which they can never combine. Aristocratic institutions cannot subsist without laying down the inequality of men as a fundamental principle. As a part and parcel of the legislation, affecting the condition of the human family as much as it affects that of society. But these are things so repugnant to natural equity that they can only be extorted from men by constraint.
I do not think a single people can be quoted since human society began to exist which has by its own free will and by its own exertions created an aristocracy within its own bosom. All the aristocracies of the Middle Ages were founded by military conquest: the conqueror was the noble, the vanquished became the serf. Inequality was then imposed by force and after it had been introduced into the manners of the country it maintained its own authority and was sanctioned by the legislation. Communities have existed which were aristocratic from their earliest origin, owing to circumstances anterior to that event, and which became more democratic in each succeeding age. Such was the destiny of the Romans and of the barbarians after them. But a people having taken its rise in civilization and democracy which should gradually establish an inequality of conditions until it arrived at inviolable privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.
Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1875) I, 425-431. https://archive.org/details/toldcontemporari03hartrich/page/552/mode/2up
