CHARLES ALEXIS MAURICE CLEEL TOCQUEVILLE, a member of the French Academy; a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1839 until December 1851; and one of the ministers of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, as president of the French Republic, was born at Verneuil, in the department of the Seine and Oise, on the 29th July 1805. Descended from an ancient family of Normandy, he was the third son of the Count of Tocqueville, by his marriage with Mlle. de Rosambo, one of the granddaughters of the illustrious Malesherbes. This marriage had been contracted in 1793, and was quickly followed by that imprisonment during the Terror, which so many of that eminent family quitted only for the guillotine; a fate from which the parents of M.de Tocqueville narrowly escaped by the event of the 9th Thermidor.
Alexis de Tocqueville was educated at the college of Metz, at first with a view to the military profession, which had already been adopted by his two elder brothers. But, before his studies were concluded, this intention was changed. He prepared himself for the bar, to which he was called in 1825, and then travelled through Italy, before entering into practice. In 1827 he was appointed judge-auditor at the tribunal of Versailles. The revolution of 1830 matured in his mind liberal sympathies and aspirations which had not been concealed in gloomier days; but the only favour which he sought at the hands of the new government was a commission to examine, jointly with Inquiry his friend Gustave de Beaumont, and at their personal expense, the penitentiary system of the United States of penton- America. This task they undertook early in 1831, and performed it, exhaustively, during a long tour throughout the States, which occupied the remainder of that year and much of 1832. They were cordially received, and made many friendships.
In 1833, the results of the inquiry were published in a work entitled, Du Système Pénitentiaire aux États-Unis, et de son Application en France; suivi d’un Appendice sur les Colonies Pénales, &c. This report traces the history of the American system, and describes the remarkable measure of success which had attended it. It shows that this success was principally due to the local administration which had both originated and worked out the system. It recommends, therefore, that in France power should be given to the departments, severally, to erect and govern cellular prisons; insists on the prime necessity of isolation,—labour,—religious instruction,—fit and responsible warders,—in the management of such prisons; condemns the system of “surveillance” exercised by the French police over released prisoners; and condemns still more emphatically the punishment of transportation under all its forms. This last feature in the report is noticeable for its date. In 1832, little attention had yet been aroused to the mischievous consequences of transportation as practised in our own country—consequences now so generally admitted. Our example, indeed, had just then been urged for French imitation by an author, M. de Blosse, whose work was laureated by the French Academy. The creation of special reformatory prisons for juvenile delinquents is also one of the recommendations of this pregnant report. Its authors, as is usual in such cases, found it uphill work to carry into operation the reforms they recommended; but both of them had opportunity to urge their views on the attention of the Chamber of Deputies, and important improvements were gradually effected in the French prisons.
The immediate results, however, pale their fires before Results of the grand result which came but incidentally from the mission of 1831; for to it we owe a masterpiece in political literature. Here, also, the date is an important element towards due appreciation. There had already been plenty of travellers in the United States, with much curiosity and ample note-books. But the great majority of them had been engrossed by the pettiest objects. Not a few had profited by an openhanded hospitality to turn into ridicule the manners, and to caricature the failings of their hosts. Others had carried into America the most vulgar prejudices of the political coteries of Europe, and from New York to Louisiana were solely intent on picking up stones to cast at republicanism. Very different was the ambition of M. de Tocqueville. He was not a republican either by conviction or by self-seeking. Himself an accomplished member of the polished aristocracy of France, he was little likely to overlook the absence in America of many courtesies and ornaments, materially conducive to the charm of social life. But he carried with him the memory of revolutions which had terribly disturbed the elegant repose of people who persist in mistaking shadows for substances. In his childhood he had heard of the prisons of the Terror from the lips of those whose lives they had blighted,—had witnessed the plaudits which welcomed the veterans who had traversed Europe in triumph,—and had twice seen foreign armies overrunning his native land. At his own outset in public life, he beheld a king driven swiftly into exile, and a luxurious capital laid at the mercy of insurgents, many of whom were in want of bread. In America, he found stability, instead of incessant revolution; peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of industry, instead of habitual panic; an almost universal possession of many of the comforts as well as of the mere necessaries of life, instead of the frequent contrast between lavish splendour and utter penury; and he thought the causes of such disparities must be worth investigating. He certainly had not travelled over the length and breadth of the United States, in such years as 1831 and 1832, without seeing the social landscape in all its aspects, and under all its phases of atmospheric change. He had witnessed things which induced a friend to ask him how it was possible that he could write of them with such good humour and kindly forbearance. "Ah!" he replied, "had you, like me, been bred up amidst all the miseries of insecurity, political and personal, you would have learned to view the worst that happens in America with calmness."
The first portion of the treatise *De la Démocratie en Amérique* was published in Paris in 1835. It reached its fifth edition in 1838, and its thirteenth edition in 1850; was quickly translated into English by Mr Henry Reeve, into Spanish by Sanchez de Bustamante, and into German by F. A. Aüder. In 1836, the French Academy awarded to it the Monthyon prize. In 1839, the second part appeared in two volumes, like the former part. As usual, the continuation was not received with quite so much favour as its predecessor. In this instance there is cause, we think, for the opinion, that its distinctive merits themselves somewhat lessened its popularity.
The seminal idea of this famous book is, that the irresistible tendency of American institutions, and of American thought, towards the utmost possible equalization of human conditions, is the counterpart of a substantially similar tendency in Europe, but is, in America, so developing itself, as to exhibit at once the ultimate benefits and the contingent perils which that equalization enfolds. In De Tocqueville's opinion, therefore, to portray America is, in a certain sense, to prefigure Europe; in substance, that is—by no means necessarily in form; and with the important qualification, that American experience may possibly so influence European opinion, as to make attainable the benefits, and avoidable the perils, of a solution of the great social problem, which, in the main, he thinks, be inevitable. Equality of condition—speaking broadly—must, he thinks, be realized in Europe as well as in America. Wise advances on the part of those who wield government or sway opinion, will help to realize it safely. Unwise resistances may retard its coming, but must at last embitter its unavoidable rule.
In Part I., after describing the external configuration of North America, and the starting-point of its colonists, he shows what they brought with them. He singles out that old principle of local self-government, from whence all the existing institutions of the country have grown, and traces its progress and its ramifications. He examines the several institutions of the States, marks the growth of their jurisprudence, and the formation of political opinion. He shows how it has come to pass that, in the most rigorous sense of the words, "the people govern;" that not only are the institutions democratic, but all their developments and modes of working are also democratic; that in America the people virtually elect both the law-maker and the administrator of law, whilst itself is the jury which punishes those who break the law. He dissects the federal constitution, and reconstructs it from its elements, bringing saliently out these three main facts:—(1.) That the majority is everywhere and in everything omnipotent; (2.) that the peace, prosperity, and even the very existence of the Union, lie immediately in the hands of the Supreme Federal Court, "the true moderator," as he terms it, "of the democracy;" (3.) that the higher and ultimate security of political freedom, and all that it involves, lies, on the one hand, in the absence of administrative centralisation; on the other, in the universal diffusion of education, property, and the sense of inherent and inalienable rights throughout the entire community. There is no winking either at the vices or at the perils of democracy. In speaking of the absolute subjection even of the press to the will of the majority, there is such plain-speaking as this:—"No writer, whatever his renown, can escape from the obligation to burn incense before his countrymen. The majority lives in perpetual self-worship. Disagreeable truths reach the ears of Americans only from the voice of a foreigner, or from the lessons of experience." Elsewhere he says,—"I know no country in which there is, usually, less independence of mind, less real freedom of discussion, than in America." But in marking defects, there is no clamour, no invective, no disdain; uniformly, the anxiety is to indicate a remedy.
Thus far the author had a solid framework of facts, of institutions, of measurable and computable results. His book is a masterpiece of systematic construction. All its parts unite and converge towards weighty and definite conclusions. In advancing to the second part, the demarcations of the subject become necessarily less distinct. There he has to treat of the influence of democracy on (1) intellectual progress; on (2) public feeling (*sentiments*); on (3) manners; on (4) political society. It is much easier to criticise this arrangement than to suggest a better one; to say, for instance (as is obvious), that "public feeling" is very closely allied both with intellectual progress and with manners. A more serious objection may perhaps lie to the universality of the influences ascribed to the one passion for political and social equality. But an excessive estimation of a great subject is probably the unavoidable condition on which we receive great works. At all events, it is certain that the modifications and minor adjustments of any such subject may easily come afterwards, and that minds of smaller calibre will suffice for the task. To the discoverer of an untrodden region in the world of thought, we can forgive some exaggeration of its treasures.
The wide survey here taken of American society in all its phases, results, on the whole, in a genial estimate of the present, and in hopeful auguries of the future. But in describing the intellectual and social results of democracy as they unfold themselves in America, there is as little sup-
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1. *De la Démocratie*, &c., treizième édition, t. 309. 2. Id. l. 307. pression of the unfavourable features as there was in the analysis of its political results. Thus, for example, in a chapter of the second part, which treats of the special importance to democratic communities of the remotest aims of human action, there occurs this passage:—“As soon as men cease to place their grand aims at a great distance, they are naturally impelled to seek the immediate realization of their pettiest desires; as if, despairing to live eternally, they must needs act as though they had but a single day to live.” This is a warning, for proof of the pertinency of which we need not look so far as to America. Much of the book has a like home applicability. There are keen censures in it, which consist simply in putting facts under the light, but the facts so lighted up are by no means exclusively of American growth. This, we think, is one of the causes why the second part was not, like the first, highly landed in articles, the entire drift and spirit of which was in antagonism with the book reviewed. Instead of this, we may perhaps find in one number of a literary journal loud praise, and in another number of the same journal an assertion that “those who follow De Tocqueville are pantheists in politics, and will soon come to pantheism in religion,”—a hit, assuredly, very wide of the mark. To us it seems that the deficiencies in the book really most obnoxious to criticism are (1), the absence of any adequate estimate of the political effects of the wide extent of sparsely-peopled territory in America; and (2), the utterly insufficient view which is given of the influences of Protestantism on the American people; both of them, it may be noted, points which are likely to be very differently regarded in France and in Britain. That Democracy in America is the work of a mind saturated with the past glories of France, alarmed at the perils that visibly obstructed her onward path, and intent, above all things else, on her deliverance, is not its least merit. To make American experience subservient French progress was the author’s constant aim.
De Tocqueville’s political career was in thorough harmony with the pervading patriotism and the lofty qualities of the book, the fame of which was already world-wide before that career began. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by the department of La Manche in 1839, and in the course of the same year made a valuable report on slavery in the French colonies, proposing its abolition (which was not effected, however, until after the fall of Louis Philippe), with an indemnity to the colonists, as a matter of public utility, “not as a compensation for the loss of that which no man ever had or could have any right to possess,” a proposition which excited great turmoil amongst the colonists. In February 1840, and again in April (after the formation of the Thiers ministry,) he strenuously supported motions for limiting the number of public functionaries in the Chamber of Deputies. Repeatedly during that and subsequent years he laboured in the promotion of improvements in the criminal law, and especially in prison discipline. In 1847, as chairman of the committee on Algiers, he made elaborate reports recommending administrative reform in that colony, and the extension of local powers in secondary matters; and strongly condemning (1) the prevalent system of attempting to do everything for the colonists, instead of training them to do most things for themselves; and (2), a particular pet project of the government for military agricultural settlements at the public cost, which was, however, carried out, but with results strongly confirmatory of the opposer’s views. His most memorable speech was that made on the 27th January 1848, in which, in the simplest words, but with the utmost possible incisiveness, he urged every member of the Chamber to put to himself the question, “What must be the end of that electoral corruption and that public scandal which I, individually, know to exist?” and then implored the ministers to change a policy which, said he, “makes the ground tremble beneath our feet;” concluding with these prophetic words—“Is it possible you can be undisturbed by that sough of revolution which is in the wind (vent de révolution qui est dans l’air), which blows we know not whence or whither, and know as little, be assured of that, whom it will whirl away? Is it at such a moment that you can calmly witness the degradation of public morality?” These words were timely. They were uttered exactly four weeks before the revolution of February; but many ears are deaf to the wisest charmer.
After that revolution, the department of La Manche re-political turned M. de Tocqueville to the National Assembly by a career majority of 110,711 votes over his next competitor. He was third on a list of fifteen names. He voted for the banishment of the House of Orleans; became vice-president of the Committee of Public Instruction, and a member of the Committee on the Constitution, and took a very prominent part in the discussions on the “rights of labour.” In one of his speeches on this topic, the socialistic theories were, for the first time in the National Assembly, fairly grappled with. He branded “socialism” as an energetic and pertinacious appeal to the lower passions of mankind; as a system of which the basis was a thorough mistrust of liberty, a hearty contempt for man individually; as, in a word, a lust for the old servitude in a new livery. In 1849, after representing France at the Brussels Congress, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in that capacity he strenuously vindicated the policy of the memorable expedition to Rome, to which, in its origin, he had not been a party, and the ultimate direction of which was to fall into quite other hands. The defence, assuredly conscientious, seems to us just as certainly fallacious. Here, however, it can neither be described nor appreciated. But it must be mentioned that one of the chief grounds of that defence in his mouth was, that the expedition tended “to prevent a return of the old abuses. . . . You must never,” he told the Assembly, “lose sight of that which now becomes the main point,—that we desire to secure to the States of the Church really liberal institutions.”
M. de Tocqueville’s ministry of foreign affairs lasted only five months. When (31st Oct. 1849) the president sent his significant message, declaring that the old parties must no longer be permitted to “renew their factious struggle,” and that the suffrage of the people had “adopted, not a man, but an entire system of policy,” the ministry in a body resigned. The brief remainder of M. de Tocqueville’s political life was passed in firm opposition to that “entire system.” Very happily, four years of vigour were left him for the production of a noble book—L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution—of which all that can here be said is, that it is more than worthy of the author of Democracy in America. This work was published in 1856. M. de Tocqueville died at Cannes on the 16th April 1859.
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1 Quarterly Review, lxvi. 493. 2 Yet this point was strongly urged upon the attention of the fellow-travellers (in relation to the specific object of their mission), by a letter from the Attorney-General of Maryland, written in January 1832. 3 Rapport au nom d’une Commission . . . relative aux Écoles des Colonies (Procès Verbaux des Séances de la Chambre des Députés, Session de 1859). Séance du 23e Juillet. 4 Rapport au nom de la Commission chargée d’examiner le projet de loi relatif aux crédits extraordinaires demandés pour l’Algérie (Procès verbaux, &c., Session de 1847, vi. 305–410). 5 Discours de M. de Tocqueville, dans la discussion du projet d’adresse, Séance du 27 Janv. 1848 (Moniteur, 23rd Jan. 1848). 6 Discours de M. de Tocqueville, &c., 6 Août 1849 (Moniteur, 7th Aug. 1849). The political horizon was then very dark. The institutions he loved, and to which he had been an honour, were suppressed. The servility he hated was rampant. But he knew that liberty has sometimes been more wisely used, and more highly valued, for its temporary loss, and that no prescription can bar the rights of a people. He had, too, a title to console himself with the thought that in his last book he had left to his countrymen an excellent manual of political study and aspiration. It is a legacy which the most gifted in the long and glorious line of French publicists might have been proud to bequeath.