Tocqueville's Two DemocratiesAuthor(s): Seymour DrescherSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1964), pp. 201-216Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708012 .Accessed: 29/04/2011 14:18

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TOCQUEVILLE'S TWO DRMOCRATIES

BY SEYMOUR DRESCHER

Alexis de Tocqueville's De la Democratie en Amerique was pub- lished in two parts, in 1835 and 1840. The second part was less immediately successful than its predecessor. Readers in France and elsewhere noted that the empirical precision and the rich factual texture of the earlier study had yielded to far more abstruse con- clusions about democratie in general which often fitted better into a French or European setting than an American one. At times, and especially in his last chapters, Tocqueville was clearly attempting to cut loose his analysis from any existing social model and to trace the outlines of one which had not yet come into being and might never do so. In comparison with the observations of 1835 many of the most important conclusions were beyond the reach of concrete illustration or verification.

The author himself attempted to account for the difference in the second part, and for its puzzled audience, to his most appreciative critic, John Stuart Mill. "When I wrote only of the democratic society in the United States," confided Tocqueville, "I was quickly under- stood. If I had spoken of our democratic society in France as it ap- pears at present it would be even more easily grasped. But starting from ideas given me by American and French society I wanted to paint the general features of democratic societies of which no com- plete specimen yet exists. This is where I lose the ordinary reader. Only those very used to the search for general and speculative truths care to follow me in such a direction. I think that it is due to the original sin of the subject, rather than to the way in which I treated any portion of it that I must attribute the comparatively weaker effect produced by this work." 1

This evaluation has usually contented commentators upon the Democratie when they have alluded to differences between the ear- lier and later volumes, usually without emphasizing differences of detail as well as of general outlook.2 However, aided by Tocqueville's

1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes. Edition definitive publiee sous la direction de J. P. Mayer (hereafter Oeuvres), (Paris, 1951- ), Vol. VI (i) Cor- respondance Anglaise: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville avec Henry Reeve et John Stuart Mill (1954), 330, Tocqueville to Mill, December 18, 1840.

2See for example, J. P. Mayer, Alexis de Tocqueville, A Biographical Essay in Political Science (New York, 1940), 55, and George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York, 1938), 694, 757-60. H. J. Laski's "Introduc- tion" to the Mayer edition of De la Democratie en Amerique, speaks only in general terms of differences in mood and method between the 1835 and 1840 pub- lications, but correctly links the contrast to the French political scene. The impor- tance of the problem has been noted by Edward T. Gargan, "Some Problems in Tocqueville Scholarship," Mid-America, New Series, XXX, 1 (Jan. 1959).

201

202 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

working notes and travel diaries between 1835 and 1840, as well as by a careful analysis of the Democratie, we may justifiably ask whether its author's conceptions of the state, of society, of the indi- vidual, and of their historical tendencies did not change so greatly between the publication of the two parts as to render them two very different works.

The De6mocratie of 1840 declared: "The face of civil society is not less changed than the physiognomy of the political world. I treated the latter in the work I published five years ago on American democratie. The former is the object of the present work. These two parts complement one another and form but a single work." 3 A careful look at the contents of both is enough to show that this is not quite the case. Time and again the Democratie of 1840 returns to topics already dealt with in 1835 and gives them a new emphasis- topics as diverse and essentially political as the nature of tyranny, the role of political association, and the chances of aristocracies in the new democratic age. The eight concluding chapters of the book are usually regarded as the masterpiece of the entire work. They deliberately return to the analysis of political society. Tocqueville himself was aware that the second part was a revision as well as a sequel of the first. Among the notes for his preface was a reminder to himself (dated February 5, 1838) to point out "that I have been led in the second work to take up once more subjects already handled in the first, or to modify some opinions expressed there, a necessary result of so large a work done in two parts." 4 There were funda- mental differences, however, which could not be explained by the length of the work alone, or its composition in separate parts over five years. They were the result of an intrusion of new social facts which led to new perspectives.

I. The Majority and the Masses In 1835, with America as Tocqueville's example, democratic so-

ciety seemed a study in perpetual motion. Democratic political socie- Tocqueville, Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 7. In this essay the word democratie

has been left untranslated because of the multiple meanings which Tocqueville gave to it. In his notes there is evidence that he was fully aware of the ambiguities of the term but wished to keep it as comprehensive as possible. Generally it can be used interchangeably with "equality of conditions"-political, civil, social, or economic. Sometimes it indicates merely the absence of permanent class barriers or distinctions, and sometimes egalitarian attitudes-the belief that all men are or ought to be equal in rights, dignity, intelligence, power, etc. See also Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, 158n., and Jack Lively, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1962), 49-51.

4Yale Tocqueville-Beaumont Mss C.V.k. (copy of notes for the D6mocratie of 1840) Paq. No. 7, cahier 1, page 50 (5 fevrier 1838). Hereafter "Yale Mss" plus catalogue number.

TOCQUEVILLE' S TWO DJRMOCRATIES 203

ties might substitute elections for revolutions, but the urge toward new laws and new public functionaries was insatiable. He spoke of the propensity to obey impulse rather than reason, to abandon long range objectives for immediate satisfaction in foreign affairs. Passion was an inherent ingredient of democratie, and its multitudes. "In a large republic," he declared, "political passions become irresistible, not only because the object they pursue is immense, but more because millions of men feel them in the same way at the same moment." 5

Consciously or unconsciously modern man was choosing between the patriotism of all and rule by the few, "for one cannot unite the force and the social activity rendered by the first with the guaran- tees of tranquillity sometimes provided by the second." 6 But if a democratie could not have the glory or the social brilliance of an aristocratic society, it could fill its citizens with an immense sense of power and will to participate in directing the destiny of their society at every level. In this activity, declared Tocqueville, lay its greatest merit. More than anything else, it reconciled him to the new age.

Even the abuses of democratie, in 1835, were seen to flow from the excessive power of the people. The tyranny of the majority con- jured up, as Tocqueville meant it to, the idea of the absolute sover- eignty of the market place, of men who noisily drowned out dissent by the sheer weight of numbers, by exuberant pride in the univer- sality of the popular will, and by contempt or worse for the critical individual. The greatest punishment which the intolerant majority could impose upon those who angered it was to drive them from the public realm. The master [the majority] no longer says: "You will think as I do or die"; it says, "You are free to think differently from me; you may keep your life and your goods; but hereafter you are a stranger among us. You may keep your civil rights, but they will be useless; for, if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will deny them to you. If you ask their esteem they will refuse you. You will remain among men but lose your rights as a human being." 17

The adjectives used by Tocqueville to describe the majority were those which focused attention on the people as a dynamic force tyrannical, absolute, omnipotent, irresistible, and immense. His con- cluding section on the omnipotence of the majority stated quite decisively that it was by the misuse of their power and not by im- potence that democratic republics were exposed to destruction. The great triumph of America had been its ability to "confine within a narrow sphere the turbulent ambition of its citizens, turning to com- munal profit the same democratic passions which might have been

Oeuvres, Democratie, I, 164. 6bid, I, 248. 71bid., I) 267.

204 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

able to overturn the state." 8 It did this by creating vigorous insti- tutions of local government, by balancing political mobility against a fixed religious morality, and by fostering the habit of regulated public activity to control worse appetites and ambitions. The final image of democratic society in 1835 was clear; it was a flood which must be channeled by legal, political, and moral dykes.

The Democratie of 1840 appears, in the early chapters, to be a direct extension of the points made in 1835. Speaking about the prin- cipal source of belief among democratic peoples Tocqueville still re- ferred to the compressing effect of the absolute power of a majority on intellectual variety. Nevertheless, a distinction made in passing in 1835 now assumed central importance-a distinction between the epoch of revolution, with its immediate aftermath, and the epoch of social tranquility which was about to appear. The revolutionary pe- riod had given men exaggerated confidence in themselves. But it had also destroyed the traditional opinions and institutions which enabled men to consort for mutual protection and common action. The ulti- mate effect of this atomization would be to decrease the tempo of all political and intellectual activity.

The Democratie of 1835 focused upon the problem of moral and political leadership and intellectual excellence by expressing fears for the existence of a true elite of talent in a society whose electorate refuses to suffer superiority. In 1840 it is the tutelary administrative power, not the envious majority, which constitutes the chief barrier "which the most original minds, and the most energetic characters" cannot penetrate. In spite of the fact that the interdependence of equals who wished to achieve power tended to stultify independent ideas, he now insisted that ultimately, "Feelings and ideas are not expanded, the heart is not enlarged, the human mind does not de- velop except by the reciprocal action of men upon each other." 9 Not only great men, but the whole of society seemed in danger of suffo- cation.

As one proceeds further in the Democratie of 1840 this note of permanent and endless stagnancy becomes more and more pro- nounced, until, at last, the very idea that capricious passion might be the outstanding feature of democratic societies disappears entirely. Tocqueville raised the specter of European civilization grinding, like that of China, to an imperceptible halt.

The nature of tyranny had changed as well by 1840. Its locus was no longer in the majority of acting unthinking citizens, because Tocqueville's democratic citizens no longer acted or thought. An ex-

8 Ibid., I, 325 and 282. See also Yale Mss (T), C.V.h. (copy of notes for the De'mocratie of 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 4, p. 21.

9 Oeuvres, Dgmocratie, II, 115, 324.

TOCQUEVILLE'S TWO DeMOCRATIES 205

cessive sense of impotence rather than arrogant pride would be the vice of the democratic age. Toward the end of the Democratie one loses all sense of the image created in 1835 of democratie as the un- tamed child whose education in self-restraint is the great political problem of modern times. The wild child of 1835 has become the timid child-the perpetual child of 1840 and the collective weakness of men far more important than their collective strength. There was a subtle malady, an apathie gene'rale which had to be overcome.10 His working notes show that he was concerned during the writing of his second work, as he had not been in the first, with remedies for democratic apathy even to the point of recommending war as a means of raising the populace out of their social slumber."1 The longer he continued to write the closer he came to the conclusion that so- ciety was faced not simply with a straightforward choice of choosing to extend political liberty or to see it perish altogether. The very springs of action were in danger of erosion.

I. The Citizen and the Individual Nowhere did the differences between the two Democraties emerge

as clearly as in the analysis of the role of the individual in egalitarian societies. Treatment of the individual as such rather than as a mem- ber of a class or of a political group was conspicuously absent in 1835. Tocqueville stressed the inherent sociability of Americans. They spon- taneously formed an association in order to clear the road of a broken-down carriage, to build a church, to elect a representative, to approve or disapprove of the course of events, to suppress drunk- enness. Public participation seemed to Tocqueville to constitute the American's sole pleasure in life. In ordinary conversation an indi- vidual might even address his listener as "gentlemen" in the heat of the argument. If democratic man would have many of the disadvan- tages, he would also have most of the advantages of political man. In 1835 Tocqueville also described certain moments in the develop- ment of some peoples (obviously France) when the old customs broke down, enlightenment was incomplete, and political rights were in- secure. This epoch would be characterized by a period of fluid insti- tutions and loyalties during which men would be tempted to retire into "a narrow and shortsighted selfishness (egoisme etroit et sans lumiere.)" 12 But this was a transitional condition between the instinc- tive patriotism of the subject and the rational patriotism of the citizen. Men paused in confusion before plunging ahead to the proc-

?OIbid., II, 348. 1 Yale Mss C.V.k. (notes for 1840) Paq. No. 7, cahier 1, p. 74; C.V.c. Paq.

No. 5, cahier 1, pp. 14-15; and Oeuvres, Dgmocratie, II, 274. 12 Tocqueville, Oeuvres, D6mocratie, I, 246, 254. See also Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes

for 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 3, p. 3.

206 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

ess of reintegration of their ideas and actions in a new social frame- work.

During the years after 1835 Tocqueville began to shift his gaze toward another type of withdrawal. Symptomatic of this was a letter he wrote in the summer of 1838 to Royer-Collard, one of the doctri- naire liberals who most profoundly influenced his vision of the future. The letter described the Normans among whom Tocqueville lived while he worked on the Democratie. He found them honest, intelli- gent, religious and tolerably moral-but in a self-centered and egoistic way. "The egoism here, it is true, does not resemble that of Paris, so violent and often so cruel. It is a mild, peaceable and tenacious love of private interests which slowly absorbs all the other feelings of the heart and dries up almost all sources of enthusiasm. They join to this egoism a certain number of private virtues and domestic quali- ties whose totality makes honest men and poor citizens." 13 Here were certain key points: a contrast with the violence of Paris, a tran- quil self-interest, a lack of passion, and the subversion of public by private virtues. Royer-Collard's response to the letter may have been decisive. "Your Normans," he wrote, "are France-the world; this prudent and intelligent egoism is that of the honest folk of our times trait for trait," and, these, almost trait for trait, were presented in the Democratie of 1840, as typical of egalitarian man.14

During the composition of the second part of the Democratie, Tocqueville's notes show that he began to cross out the word etgoisme and to substitute for it the term individualisme.'5 The second term was used to describe an attitude of men towards each other and to- wards society which neither described the political man of republican America nor the transitional and confused abstention from political life after revolutions. Tocqueville, in adopting the term individual- isme popularized by the Saint-Simonians, also incorporated part of their image of modern man, which in turn was an adaptation of a point of view common to a broad spectrum of social thought during the period after 1815.16 Individualism was not, like egoism, an in- stinctual response to a situation. It was a rational world view which would be permanently operative in the new social context, an ethic of moderation, self-indulgence and mild estrangement which would be the predominant feature of every institution and activity outside

13 De Lanzac de Laborie, "L'Amitie de Tocqueville et de Royer-Collard d'apres une correspondance inedite," Revue des Deux Mondes (15 aofit 1930), 899, Toe- queville to Royer-Collard.

14Ibid., 899, Royer-Collard to Tocqueville, July 31, 1838. 1B Yale Mss C.V.a. (notes for 1840) Paq. No. 8, p. 29. 16 Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 105. See also Koenraad W. Swart, "'Individualism'

in the Mid-XIXth Century (1826-1860)," this Journal, XXIII, 1 (January-March 1962), 77-86.

TOCQUEVILLE' S TWO DEMOCRATIES 207

the public arena. It could actually strengthen private morality while undermining the civic spirit.17 Guaranteed security of person and property, men tended to restrict their moral vision to their families and their economic activity, living quietly and inoffensively. They viewed politics as an unnatural and suspect activity.

In its final backward glance the Democratie of 1840 pictured "an endless crowd of equal and similar men who turn constantly inward to obtain the little vulgar pleasures with which they glut themselves. Each, standing apart, is indifferent to the destiny of others: his chil- dren and his special friends are everything to him; he is among them but he does not see them; he touches them and doesn't feel them. He exists in and for himself, and, if he still retains his family, he may be said to no longer have a country." 18 The crowd of pushing, delib- erating, even shouting and rebellious individuals of 1835 is no more. The man of 1840 has become weightless and mechanical, one atom of a predictable "mass" without weight or power, without will or purpose.

III. The Industrial Revolution In addition to the steady growth of an individualistic society,

Tocqueville also sensed by 1840 that the pattern of European, or at least continental economic development was threatening some of his most fundamental presuppositions. Basic to the analysis of 1835 as re- gards the distribution of wealth and the relation of this distribution to politics was the assumption that hierarchical societies were doomed. The old European aristocracy of land and birth, save in England, he considered to be already impotent. While there might still remain rich individuals, even in America, the Democratie of 1835, treated them as remnants in the political sense, forced to conceal their wealth if they desired to run for office or to influence the public at large.19 Wealthy individuals could not constitute what Tocqueville considered to be a true "class." Family fortunes were being canceled out by cus- toms and laws tending toward the equal divisions of estates. Demo- cratie would ultimately rest on a vast mass of petty traders and property owners while occasional and temporary wealth would no longer carry with it either political influence or assured social pre- eminence.

While his journey to England in 1835 impressed him with the permanence and solidity of its "aristocracy of wealth," he felt this to be only a transitional stage on the road to democratie. There was one area of English economic life, however, which made him radically

17 See Yale Mss C.V.k. (notes for 1840) Paq. No. 7, cahier 1, p. 10, and Oeuvres, Democratie, II} 322-327. 18 Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 324.

19 Ibid.) L, 183-184, 251-252, and Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes for 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 4, p. 47.

208 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

alter his opinion that there were no pockets of permanent inequality embedded in modern societies. In the great factories of Manchester he sensed the germ of a new industrial feudalism, which clashed vio- lently with the fluid society which he had portrayed in the Democra- tie of 1835. His notes during the composition of the second part reveal his disturbance at the problem. Sometimes he tried to explain it away by historical parallels and analogy. Industrial societies like all socie- ties had to pass through an "aristocratic" phase (inequality) before they fell into line with the rest of society.20

In the published work, he admitted his uncertainty about the future of these large groups at the extremities of wealth and poverty, whose economic and social development ran counter to his thesis of ever widening equality. However, he still remained fairly certain about two things. The industrial aristocracy was confined to a small area of economic activity. More important, one could not regard this "aristocracy" as a political class. They neither possessed the alle- giance of their employees nor did they seem capable of forming stable and coherent forms of organization. They were content if only the state protected their property and maintained the legal and economic milieu in which they could continue their business activity. Thus the discussion of the industrial aristocracy in 1840 was confined to a single provocative chapter and then dropped.2'

The most significant fact about industrialization for Tocqueville between 1835 and 1840 was not that it was establishing a new eco- nomic elite in the midst of an egalitarian society, but that it was undermining the psychological and political basis of liberty as Toc- queville conceived it-the interaction of individuals who were rela- tively independent of the state as well as other individuals. In 1835 Tocqueville, like most contemporary liberals, assumed that commer- cial habits were not only compatible with the values of political liberty, but were dominated by the same spirit of independence and self-reliance which were so necessary to a free society. He felt that political liberty was causally prior to commercial prosperity and vigor-that is, that the habits of self-reliance flowed from the politi- cal into the economic sphere.22 His visits to America and England convinced him that a society valuing material well-being could easily be made to serve and to reinforce political freedom. Toward 1840, however, it became increasingly plain that economic growth was taking a dangerous turn on the continent. Where the incentive of the state was habitual in economic life, it was often the natural entre- preneur for new projects requiring immense outlays of capital. As

20 See Yale Mss C.V.k. (notes for 1840) Paq. No. 7, cahier 1, p. 12 (June 1838), and Ibid., C.V.f. Paq. No. 4, cahier 1, p. 41.

21 Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 164-167. 22 Oeuvres, Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Alge'rie, 89-91.

TOCQUEVILLE S TWO DAMOCRATIES 209

the means of production increased, innumerable private associations did not crop up in France as in England to integrate them into the social structure. Industry was instead pressed into the service of administrative accumulation. Whatever the relation between a grow- ing business class and social stability, if political habits did not pre- cede the acquisitive instinct or maintain their autonomy from it, commerce might actually subvert liberty. Taught to identify pros- perity with lack of independent initiative, the bourgeoisie, which seemed destined to overwhelming preponderance in the egalitarian age, would never break the pattern of industrialization which secured their property, their profits, and the peaceful rhythm of their lives.

IV. Association and Activity This vision of universal enfeeblement was not confined to the

analysis of the non-political realm which Tocqueville proposed as the subject matter of his second work. He returned to the topics of 1835 to revise his original conclusions. When the Democratie ap- peared in January 1835, the July Monarchy had recently severely limited the political clubs and associations and had suppressed in- surrections against the repressive legislation. Tocqueville implicitly accepted the attitude of the regime that liberty in France was men- aced most by elements which remained unsatisfied by the Revolution of 1830. The Democratie carefully distinguished the right to political association from freedom of the press, which had thus far escaped legislative restriction. The press was acknowledged to be the "con- stituent element of liberty," unrestrictable without calling every other segment of freedom into question. The unlimited right to politi- cal association, however, according to Tocqueville, constantly threw a nation into "anarchy" or threatened to do so.

In the interim between the publication of the two parts, addi- tional legislation was enacted (the famous "September Laws" of 1835) limiting freedom of the press. Contrary to what might have been expected, the Democratie of 1840 did not reaffirm the distinction between press and association. This time, however, the amalgamation of press and association did not imply that Tocqueville agreed with the regime that revolutionary agitation had moved from the banned clubs and societies to the printed page. He was now convinced that the menace of revolution was outweighed by a greater danger-the disappearance of the channels of publication. He insisted on an inti- mate connection between the printed word and the act of association. "Newspapers make associations, associations make newspapers . . . ," and "a newspaper can exist only on the condition that it reflects a doctrine or a sentiment common to a large number of men. A news- paper therefore always represents an association whose readers are its members." 23

23 Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 119, 120. Compare with I, 186.

210 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

Tocqueville went beyond placing the common expression of ideas represented by a newspaper into the general context of associations in a democracy. In 1835 he emphasized the fact that liberty of the press was often the only guarantee of the liberty and security of the citizen against the government and its agents. In the second part of the Democratie he underlined the fact that they not only protected the individual against the government or the majority, but that "if there were no newspapers there would be almost no common ac- tion." 24

There was also a modification in 1840 of the analysis of the right to political association. The Democratie of 1835 raised serious doubts about the ability of Europeans to comprehend fully how political association in America tended to fill an important r8le in protecting minority opinion and functioning as an alternative means of moral persuasion rather than as the nucleus of a revolutionary minority against the government, claiming to represent the "real" people as opposed to the legal sovereign. The Democratie of 1840 came back to political associations precisely in order to emphasize that no people could call itself truly free until it could afford to tolerate the greatest possible degree of political organization. Freedom of association was, all in all, "favorable to the well-being and even to the tranquillity of the citizens." If a society had momentarily to impose restrictions on political associations, it should never forget that "one may ampu- tate an arm to save a man's life . . . but do not assure me that he will be as agile as if he were not an amputee." 25

The Democratie of 1840 also disclosed new "social facts" relating to association. One of the favorite images in the Democratie of 1835 was that of democratic man standing alone amid the debris of all former institutions and corporate traditions, feeling himself strong only as a participant in his local government, of a political party, or of the sovereign power. He had no choice but to enter the political realm with the majority of his fellow-citizens or to turn to the au- thority of a tyrant. There was no shelter left to hide in. Even family solidarity had been atomized by revolutionary laws of equal inheri- tance. By 1840, Tocqueville had modified his views about primary human groups. The family was destroyed as a politically effective unit, but the ties of affection seemed to be rather strengthened by the change. "Democratie loosens social ties but it tightens natural ones." 26 In fact it could be counted on more than anything else to draw the individual into the strengthened family circle while sepa- rating him all the more from his fellow citizens. In 1835 men had found themselves thrust naked and unprotected into the political

24Ibid., II, 118. 25Ibid., II, 125-126. 2SIbid., II, 205. Compare with I, 328.

TOCQUEVILLE'S TWO DERMOCRATIES 211

realm by the failure of the old basic groups. In 1840 they were being lured, almost seduced, by the gentle pleasures of the rediscovered realm of private life. The great shift as regards the possibilities of action in 1835, compared with 1840, was that in the latter work the public life seemed to fill much less of the life of the individual, and private institutions were portrayed less as barriers to tyranny than as parasites of the civic spirit.

If Tocqueville stressed the continuity of voluntary civil associa- tions and political associations in 1840, he drew a distinction between the public and private realm which had been unseen or muted in 1835. In his family circle, in his restricted social club, in his self-centered economic activity, the individual could move along a continuum of activity in which he would never desire to enter the political realm. Society might be agitated in a democratic social system, but beneath the agitation lay a monotonous and unchanging social and intellectual base. In 1840 any "movement" that remained seemed most often to produce pettiness, boredom, and self-centeredness, rather than the "wonders" of public spirit with which it had been credited in his first book.

V. Centralization The most startling change in the Democratie of 1840, however,

concerned the use and growth of public power in the egalitarian era. The historical correlation of democracy and centralization was in fact the great sociological reversal of 1840 for anyone who had read the 1835 edition with care. Neither democratic France nor democratic America, but aristocratic England proved to be the catalytic agent in this shift.

Until 1835 Tocqueville treated the issue of centralization and its alternatives as a matter of comparative administration. In this spirit the first Democratie analyzed the cases of the United States and France, drawing a distinction between centralized government and centralized administration. Centralized government was constituted when the directing power of a nation was concentrated in a single place. Centralized administration referred to a similar concentration of local decisions and executive power. Centralization was envisaged not as a product of a universal egalitarian revolution, but as the prod- uct of peculiar historical circumstances which varied from country to country. The Democratie of 1835 thus dismissed fears of the con- centration of the sovereign power in the United States. In its sum- mary of the sentiments which were intimately connected to demo- cratic and republican institutions in America, Tocqueville wrote: "many among us [in France] think that, in the United States, there is a climate of opinion which favors centralization of power in the hands of the President and the Congress. I submit that a contrary

212 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

movement is obvious. The federal government, far from menacing the sovereignty of the Union alone is in peril. That is the situation at present." 27

Even concerning France, Tocqueville was hopeful in his joint prison report of 1833 with Gustave de Beaumont that political life "will enter increasingly into action at the departmental level, and that administrative interests will increasingly tend to become localized." 28

The DeTmocratie spoke with assurance of the permanence of provin- cial liberties and administrative decentralization in the whole Eng- lish-speaking world. Whatever the attacks on aristocracy in England, Tocqueville had failed to discover anyone who extended his attack to local liberty.

In April 1835, just after the Democratie was published, Tocque- ville paid a visit to England. An earlier one, in 1833, had convinced him that England was moving toward the ranks of democratic socie- ties. The second journey convinced the French traveller that there was an intimate historical and sociological relationship between dem- ocratic and centralized government. Tocqueville arrived in England at a moment when the extension of the scope of the Poor Law admin- istration was very much an issue. In its basic principles, central control, locally elected bodies and paid officials, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 attacked the aristocratic monopoly of ad- ministrative functions in local government. Its central board was an affirmation that centralization was necessary to deal with a national problem on a national basis. He was so struck by this combination of central control and elective local guardians, and by the apparent ease with which parliament had acquiesced in it, that he saw in administrative centralization the hidden corollary of the democratic revolution. After a conversation with Henry Reeve, the translator of the Democratie, on the Poor Law reform, he noted in his travel diary: "Centralization, a democratic instinct; instinct of a society which has succeeded in escaping from the individualistic system of the Middle Ages. Preparation for despotism. Why is centralization more suited to the habits of democracy? Great question to dig into in the third volume of my work, if I can integrate it there. A funda- mental question."29 Shortly thereafter he was linking the two by such expressions as "symptom of democratie and centralization."

Henceforth, one can observe the problem of centralization moving to the center of Tocqueville's conception of the democratic state.

27 Ibid., I, 412. A part of this section has already been published in S. Drescher, Tocqueville and England (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), Ch. V.

28 Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, Du systeme penitentiaire aux Etats-Unis (Paris, 1833), 175-176. See also Tocqueville, Oeuvres, Democratie, I, 98.

29 Oeuvres, V, Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Alge'rie, 49 (note, dated May 11, 1835).

TOCQUEVILLE S TWO DBMOCRATIES 213

On May 27, 1837, he recorded that Adolphe Thiers assured him, without any misgivings, that all great public works in France would have to be made at the expense of the State and its agents. "Not to be forgotten" commented Tocqueville, "when I speak of the ultra- centralizing tendencies of our day." 30 A year later he recorded, "cen- tralization must grow endlessly because it is attached to unchanging instincts," and shortly thereafter, "anarchy is a passing symptom and centralization the malady itself." 31

In the Democratie of 1835 centralized administration was charac- terized as distinctive of stagnant and backward societies like those of India and China or of nations which have just emerged from a disruptive revolutionary upheaval. In the final chapters of the 1840 study centralization almost superseded democratie as the providential end toward which all humanity was moving. No longer historically inert like those societies with which it was first identified, it had become the frankenstein of the egalitarian process.

An immense change had thus occurred in Tocqueville's portrait of the state and its authorities in a democratic society. In 1835 he had cited discontinuity of government as one of its greatest disadvantages and administrative inefficiency as one of its inevitable concommitants. The maladministration of a democratic magistrate could be consid- ered no more than an isolated fact, effective only during the short period of his tenure. The ambitions and manoeuvers of one would serve to unmask the other and "the vices of the magistrate, in de6mo- craties, [were] in general purely personal." 32 While America was, of course, his primary example, Tocqueville used "American" or "demo- cratic" magistrates interchangeably in 1835. Only an aristocracy, at this point, was credited with the capability of conducting a far- sighted policy, and acting like a "firm and enlightened man who never dies." 33 Ever changing laws and leaders were characteristics of democratic societies, which began everything and completed nothing.

The Democratie of 1840, however, emphasized the increasing power of the magistracy in spite of the instability of the magistrates. It had become the heir of the democratic revolution, like the aris- tocracy of 1835, a body which never dies. Not the elected magistrate but the eternal ministerial hierarchy was the focus of attention; not the multiplicity of electoral and revolutionary changes, but the in- stitution which seemed to benefit by all revolutions. The ruler was no longer only a man momentarily thrust into power to be swept away with the next shift in the mood of the people, but the ubiqui- tous and omnipotent state itself."4

30Yale Mss, C.V.d. (notes for 1840), p. 30 (April 4, 1837). 31 Ibid., C.V.k. (notes for 1840), Paq. No. 7, cahier 2, p. 45 (March 1838). 32 Oeuvres, Dgmocratie, I, 244. 33 Ibid., I, 240. 34Ibid., II, 310-327.

214 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

In 1835 Tocqueville offered his readers a choice between demo- cratic liberty and the tyranny of the Caesars. Civilization might be on the verge of a repetition of "the frightful centuries of Roman tyranny," when dissolute and capricious rulers "forfeited the clem- ency of heaven sooner than the patience of their subjects." 35 It would be a "despotism such as our fathers never knew at any time in his- tory," he commented in his notes, "Roman or Byzantine despotism, a mixture of corruption, rapine, barbarity, of subtlety, platitude and arrogance. . .." 36

In 1840 despotism, like the art of ruling, was no longer described against a background of violence, passion and licence. It was no longer the limitless power of a single man but the slow process of bureaucratic government itself which would silently and peacefully subvert the integrity and the autonomy of individuals and associa- tions. The ruler would ask of society only what it asked of the state, not to be disturbed in its own affairs. Political institutions might even, for a time be reduced to the minimum single parliamentary body required to call government constitutional or liberal while maximiz- ing public tranquillity through the scarcity of other channels for action.37 In the long run, however, this skeleton of constitutionalism without substance seemed a delusion to Tocqueville. "A constitution which would be republican in its head and ultra-monarchichal in all other parts has always struck me as ephemeral monster. The vices of the legislators and the imbecility of the governed would quickly lead to ruin, and the people, wearied of its representatives and of itself, would either create freer institutions or stretch itself before the feet of a single master." 38

The contrast between the two Democratie's cannot be attributed to four years of ruminating, or the more philosophical approach of the second part. Nor was it due to a basic change from the descriptive analysis of one society to an ideal-typology derived from two or more social models. Even in 1835, America was only Tocqueville's framne- work, and d6mocratie his subject.39 He just as frequently and more explicitly employed the comparative method in 1835. America was his original model for democratie in general because certain basic principles of its society seemed universally applicable. Above all Tocqueville found the same egalitarian passions on both sides of the

85 Ibid., I, 328. 86Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes for 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 3, p. 21. 87 Ibid., C.V.c. (notes for 1840), Paq. No. 5, cahier 1, p. 32. 88 Oeuvres, Democratie, II, 327. 89 Oeuvres, Correspondance Anglaise, 315, Tocqueville to Mill, November 19,

1836; Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes for 1835) Paq. No. 3, cahier 3, p. 94; Oeuvres, Dgmocratie, I, 12. America was more often the exception than the rule towards the end of the second book.

TOCQUEVILLE' S TWO DIMOCRATIES 215

Atlantic. The only difference seemed to be that the Americans had intelligently channeled theirs while the French had not.40 If the next five years brought Tocqueville to a new image of democratic man it was mainly because the consciousness of the author reacted to the changing climate of his own community. In this sense the Democratie of 1840 was as empirical as its predecessor.

Throughout the entire period during which the Democratie of 1835 was conceived and written, the July Monarchy was continually threatened by violence. As late as April 1834 insurrections at Lyons and Paris were suppressed with a ferocity which was not equalled before the Revolution of 1848. Tocqueville's initial conception of democratie was attuned to this atmosphere. His Introduction referred to his feeling of a kind of religious awe before a "providential fact." An irresistible impulse toward equality, engaging the passionate loy- alty of millions had launched mankind on a perilous venture. Human liberty was balanced on the edge of a precipice.4'

Soon after the Democratie was published France seemed to regain a real measure of stability for the first time since the July Revolution. Tocqueville, taking note of the sudden repose hoped that, given time, truly liberal institutions could become firmly rooted in France. Even the progressively restrictive legislation by the regime against the press and political association seemed to have its good side: "Al- most all the measures of a despotic tendency which have been taken in the past few years," he wrote to Mill early in 1836, "were willed by the Chamber [of Deputies] and not submitted to by it. This is momentarily disagreeable, but allows great hope for the future. The anti-liberal spirit of the Chamber is a temporary phenomenon, con- trary to all the permanent instincts of the country; its subjection would be an enduring one." 42

More than a year later, in June 1837 Tocqueville was beginning to speak of the indecisive calm in political life as a "half-sleep and half-wakefulness which defies analysis." He was worried about the lack of energy and leadership in the Chamber, but still felt certain

40Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes for 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 3, pp. 106-107; Paq. No. 3, cahier 4, pp. 58-59, Ibid., C.V.a. (notes for 1840), Paq. 8, p. 7; Oeuvres, Democratie, I, 325. Shortly after the publication of the Democratie of 1835, Basil Hall asked Tocqueville how he had been able to treat the turbulent American democracy with so much generosity. "'Ah!' replied he [Tocqueville], 'had you, like me, been bred up in the midst of revolutions and counter-revolutions, des- potisms, restorations and all the miseries of insecurity, political and personal, you might have learned to view the worst that passes in America with calmness."' [Basil Hall], "Tocqueville on the State of America," Quarterly Review, LVII (September 1836), 134.

41Yale Mss C.V.h. (notes for 1835), Paq. No. 3, cahier 3, pp. 31, 111. 420euvres, Correspondance Anglaise, 307, Tocqueville to Mill, February 10,

1836.

216 SEYMOUR DRESCHER

that as the fear of insurrections diminished "the nation is slowly re- turning to its liberal and democratic instincts." 43 By 1838, however, Tocqueville, like many Frenchmen, became thoroughly alarmed at the life which had gone out of politics. What he had conceived to be a convalescence was a collapse into exhaustion. Politics in France seemed unable to extend beyond the level of parliamentary intrigue. No blossoming of the spirit of association, no foundation of coherent political parties, no fixed limitation of the personal influence of the king had occurred. Worst of all, local politics seemed totally moribund.

Tocqueville began to attach little importance to France's "an- archic" and revolutionary potential. A continuing and pervasive fear of violence clashed with political reality and he now referred with contempt to the "hydra of anarchy" as "the sacramental word of all enemies of liberty." 44 In 1840, "anarchy" was designated as the evil to be feared least by democratic societies. In 1835 he could not have written a chapter entitled "Why Great Revolutions Will Be- come More Rare," nor have felt so certain of this conclusion as to publish it separately in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

The change in perspective was less a sudden conversion than a slow percolation of new ideas into the old framework until they changed the framework itself. It is perceptible not only between the two books, but within the earlier and later chapters of the second. It was so gradual, in psychological terms, that Tocqueville often did not realize how far he had travelled nor how long it would take him to recast his conclusions. As late as August 1838, when he began his summary statement on "The Influence of Democratic Ideas and Feel- ings on Political Society," he thought it would take one chapter, not the eight which were finally required. At the end, the religious awe of 1835 had yielded to disgust, "for the real nightmare of our age is in anticipating nothing to love or hate but only to despise. 45 To a Frenchman as politically ambitious and as deeply concerned for the "spirit of liberty" as Tocqueville, the stagnancy of the pays legal portended an age without aspiration or action. Within five years his call for "a new science of politics for a new world" came close to end- ing as an obituary for politics. Only with the approach of 1848 did Tocqueville discover, with mixed feelings, a hidden reservoir of pas- sions, a new political class, and a new dimension to the democratic revolution.

University of Pittsburgh. 43 Ibid., 325, Tocqueville to Mill, June 24, 1837. 44Yale Mss C.V.c. (notes for 1840), Paq. No. 5, cahier 1, pp. 16-18 (February

7, 1837). 45 De Lanzac de Laborie, "L'Amitie de Tocqueville et de Royer-Collard," 907,

Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, September 25, 1841. See also 885-886.