Alexis de
Democracy
TRANSLATED,
EDITED,
AND
WITH
AN
INTRODUCTION
BY
Tocqueville
in America
~e0~~~~0~~~~0~~0~~~
HARVEY C. MANSFIELD AND DELBA WINTHROP
I PFW
L.
SFP 2 8 2001
HELMKE LIBRARY
THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
CHICAGO
PRESS'
CHICAGO
AND
LONDON
HARVEY
C.
MANSFIELD is the William
R.
Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at
Harvard University. Political philosopher and author, he is acknowledged as a leading
translator of Machiavelli.
DELBA WINTHROP is Lecturer in Extension and administrator of the Program on
Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Her articles and essays have appeared in
numerous publications.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, 1805-1859.
[DE LA DEMOCRATIE EN AMERIQUE. ENGLISH]
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA / TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY HARVEY
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ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
being; if reason appears to you to be more profitable to men than genius; if
your object is not to create heroic virtues but peaceful habits; if you would
rather see vices than crimes, and if you prefer to find fewer great actions on
condition that you will encounter fewer enormities; if instead of acting
within a brilliant society it is enough for you to live in the midst of a prosperous society; if, finally, the principal object of a government, according to you,
is not to give the most force or the most glory possible to the entire body of
the nation, but to procure the most well-being for each of the individuals
who compose it and to have each avoid the most misery, then equalize conditions and constitute the government of a democracy.
If there is no longer time to make a choice and if a force superior to man
already carries you along toward one of the two governments without consulting your desires, seek at least to derive from it all the good that it can do;
and knowing its good instincts as well as its evil penchants, strive to restrict
the effects of the latter and develop the former.
Chapter 7
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF
THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
AND ITS EFFECTS
Natural force of the majority in democracies.-Most of the American constitutions have
artificially increased this natural force.-How.-Imperative mandates.-Moral empire
of the majority.-Opinion of its infallibility.-Respect for its rights. What augments it
in the United States.
It is of the very essence of democratic governments that the empire of the
majority is absolute; for in democracies, outside the majority there is nothing
that resists it.
Most of the American constitutions have also sought to augment this natural force of the majority artificially. 1
1. We have seen, during the examination of the federal constitution [DA I 1.8], that the
legislators of the Union made contrary efforts. The result of these efforts was to render the
federal government more independent in its sphere than that of the states. But the federal government is scarcely occupied with any but external affairs; it is the state governments that really
direct American society.
235
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
Of all political powers, the legislature is the one that obeys the majority
most willingly, Americans wanted the members of the legislature to be
named directly by the people, and for a very short term, in order to oblige
them to submit not only to the general views, but even to the daily passions
of their constituents.
They have taken the members of the two houses from the same classes
and named them in the same manner, so that the motions of the legislative
body are almost as rapid and no less irresistible than those of a single assembly.
The legislature thus constituted, they have united almost all the government in it.
At the same time that the law increased the force of powers that were
naturally strong, it enervated more and more those that were naturally weak.
It accorded neither stability nor independence to the representatives of the
executive power; and, in submitting them completely to the caprices of the
legislature, it took away from them the little influence that the nature of democratic government would have permitted them to exert.
In several states it left the judicial power to the election of the majority,
and in all, it made its existence depend in a way on the legislative power by
leaving to the representatives the right to fix the salary of the judges each year.
Usages have gone still further than the laws.
A custom that in the end will make the guarantees of representative government vain is spreading more and more in the United States: it very frequently happens that electors, in naming a deputy, layout a plan of conduct
for him and impose a certain number of positive obligations on him from
which he can in no way deviate, It is as if, except for the tumult, the majority
itself were deliberating in the public square.
Several particular circumstances also tend to render the power of the majority in America not only predominant, but irresistible.
The moral empire ofthemajority is founded in part on the idea that there
is more enlightennlent arid ""isdom in many men united than in one alone,
in the number of legislators than in their choice, It is the theory of equality
applied to intellects, This doctrine attacks the pride of man in its last asylum:
so the minority accepts it only with difficulty; it habituates itself to it only in
the long term. Like all powers, and perhaps more than any of them, therefore,
the power of the majority needs to be lasting in order to appear legitimate.
When it begins to establish itself, it makes itself obeyed by constraint; it is
only after having lived for a long time under its laws that one begins to respect it.
The idea of the right to govern society that the majority possesses by its
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
enlightenment was brought to the soil of the United States by its first inhabitants. This idea, which alone would suffice to create a free people, has passed
into mores today, and one finds it in even the least habits of life.
The French under the former monarchy held as a constant that the king
could never fail; and when he happened to do evil, they thought that the
fault was in his counselors. That marvelously facilitated obedience. One
could murmur against the law without ceasing to love and respect the legislator. The Americans have the same opinion of the majority.
The moral empire of the majority is also founded on the principle that
the interests of the greatest number ought to be preferred to those of the few.
Now, one understands without difficulty that the respect that is professed for
the right of the greatest number naturally increases or diminishes according
to the state of the parties. When a nation is partitioned among several great
irreconcilable interests, the privilege of the majority is often unrecognized
because it becomes too painful to submit to it.
If there existed in America a class of citizens whom the legislator was trying to strip of certain exclusive advantages possessed for centuries, and
wanted to make them descend from an elevated situation so as to reduce
them to the ranks of the multitude, it is probable that the minority would
not easily submit to his laws.
But the United States having been peopled by men equal among themselves, there is not as yet a natural and permanent dissidence among the interests of its different inhabitants.
There is a certain social state in which the members of the minority cannot hope to attract the majority to them, because for that it would be necessary to abandon the very object of the struggle that they sustain against it.
An aristocracy, for example, cannot become a majority while preserving its
exclusive privileges, and it cannot let its privileges escape without ceasing to
be an aristocracy.
In the United States, political questions cannot be posed in a manner so
general and so absolute, and all the parties are ready to recognize the rights
of the majority because they all hope to be able to exercise them to their
profit one day.
The majority in the United States therefore has an immense power in fact,
and a power in opinion almost as great; and once it has formed on a question,
there are so to speak no obstacles that can, I shall not say stop, but even delay
its advance, and allow it the time to hear the complaints of those it crushes
as it passes.
The consequences of this state of things are dire and dangerous for the
future.
237
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN
AMERICA INCREASES THE LEGISLATIVE AND
ADMINISTRATIVE INSTABILITY THAT IS
NATURAL TO DEMOCRACIES
How Americans increase the legislative instability that is natural to democracy by changing the legislator each year and arming him with a power almost without limits. - The
same effect produced on administration.-In America the force brought to social improvements is infinitely greater, but less continuous than in Europe.
I have spoken previously of the vices that are natural to the government of
democracYi* there is not one of them that does not grow at the same time as
the power of the majority.
And, to begin with, the most apparent of all:
Legislative instability is an evil inherent in democratic government because it is of the nature of democracies to bring new men to power. But this
evil is more or less great according to the power and the means of action
granted to the legislator.
In America they hand over sovereign power to the authority that makes
the laws. It can indulge each of its desires rapidly and irresistibly, and every
year it is given other representatives. That is to say, they have adopted
precisely the combination that most favors democratic instability and that
permits democracy to apply its changing will to the most important objects.
Thus in our day, of the world's countries, America is the one in which the
laws have the least duration. Almost all the American constitutions have been
amended within thirty years. There is therefore no American state that has
not modified the principle of its laws during this period.
As for the laws themselves, it is enough to cast a glance at the archives of
the different states of the Union to be convinced that in America the action
of the legislator never slows. It is not that American democracy is more unstable than any other by its nature, but it has been given the means to follow
the natural instability of its penchants in the forming oflaws. 2
The omnipotence of the majority and the rapid and absolute manner in
which its will is executed in the United States not only renders the law un'DA 12.5.
2. The legislative acts promulgated in the state of Massachusetts alone, from 1780 to our day,
already fill three large volumes. Moreover, it must be remarked that the collection I am speaking
of had been revised in 1823, and it removed many of the laws that were old or had become
purposeless. Now, the state of Massachusetts, which is no more populous than one of our departments, can pass for the most stable in all the Union and the one that puts the most coherence
and wisdom in its undertakings.
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
stable, it also exerts the same influence on the execution of the law and on
the action of public administration.
The majority being the sole power that is important to please, the works
that it undertakes are eagerly agreed to; but from the moment that its attention goes elsewhere, all efforts cease; whereas in the free states of Europe,
where the administrative power has an independent existence and a secure
position, the will of the legislator continues to be executed even when it is
occupied with other objects.
In America, much more zeal and activity is brought to certain improvements than is done elsewhere.
In Europe, a social force infinitely less great, but more continuous, is employed in these same things.
Several years ago, some religious men undertook to improve the state of
the prisons. * The public was moved by their voices, and the rehabilitation of
criminals became a popular work.
New prisons were then built. For the first time, the idea of reforming the
guilty penetrated the dungeon at the same time as the idea of punishment.
But the happy revolution with which the public had associated itself so eagerly, and which the simultaneous efforts of citizens rendered irresistible,
could not work in a moment.
Alongside the new penitentiaries, whose development was hastened by the
wish of the majority, the old prisons still remained and continued to confine
a great number of the guilty. The latter seemed to become more unhealthful
and more corrupting as the new ones turned more to reform and became
more healthful. This double effect is easily understood: the majority, preoccupied with the idea of founding the new establishment, had forgotten
the one that already existed. Everyone then having turned his eyes from the
object that no longer held the regard of the master, oversight had ceased.
One first saw the salutary bonds of discipline slacken, and then, soon after,
break. And alongside the prison, lasting monument to the mildness and the
enlightenment of our time, was a dungeon that recalled the barbarism of the
Middle Ages.
TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
How one must understand the principle of the sovereignty of the people. -Impossibility
of conceiving a mixed government. - The sovereign power must be somewhere. - Precau-
* AT probably has in mind the Quakers in Pennsylvania, who had long opposed the harshness
of the Anglican penal code and who in the 1780s effected reforms in the penal code and organized the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons.
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
tions that ought to be taken to moderate its action.-These precautions have not been
taken in the United States. - What results from this.
I regard as impious and detestable the maxim that in matters of government
the majority of a people has the right to do everything, and nonetheless I
place the origin of all powers in the will of the majority. Am I in contradiction with myself?
A general law exists that has been made or at least adopted not only by
the majority of this or that people, but by the majority of all men. This law
is justice.
Justice therefore forms the boundary of each people's right.
A nation is like a jury charged with representing the universal society and
with applying the justice that is its law. Ought the jury that represents society
have more power than the society itself for which it applies the laws?
Therefore, when I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not deny to the majority the right to command; I only appeal from the sovereignty of the people
to the sovereignty of the human race.
There are people who have not feared to say that a people, in the objects
that interested only itself, could not go entirely outside the limits of justice
and reason, and thus one must not fear giving all power to the majority that
represents it. But that is the language of a slave.
What therefore is a majority taken collectively, if not an individual who
has opinions and most often interests contrary to another individual that
one names the minority? Now, if you accept that one man vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why not accept the same thing
for a majority? Have men changed in character by being united? Have they
become more patient before obstacles by becoming stronger?3 As for me, I
cannot believe it; and I shall never grant to several the power of doing everything that I refuse to a single one of those like me.
lt is not that I believe that in order to preserve freedom one can mix
several principles in the same government in a manner that really opposes
them to one another.
The government called mixed has always seemed to me to be a chimera.
There is, to tell the truth, no mixed government (in the sense that one gives
to this word), because in each society one discovers in the end one principle
of action that dominates all the others.
England in the last century, which has been cited particularly as an ex3. No one would want to maintain that a people cannot abuse its strength vis-a-vis another
people. Now, parties form almost so many little nations in a great one; they are in the relation
of foreigners among themselves. If it is agreed that one nation can be tyrannical toward another
nation, how can it be denied that one party can be so toward another party?
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
ample of these sorts of governments, was an essentially aristocratic state, although large elements of democracy were found within it; for laws and mores
there had been established so that aristocracy always had to predominate in
the long term and direct public affairs at its will.
The error has come from the fact that, seeing constantly the interests of
the great doing battle with those of the people, one thought only of the
struggle instead of paying attention to the result of that struggle, which was
the important point. When a society really comes to have a mixed government, that is to say equally divided between contrary principles, it enters into
revolution or it is dissolved.
I think, therefore, that one must always place somewhere one social power
superior to all the others, but I believe freedom to be in peril when that
power finds no obstacle before it that can restrain its advance and give it time
to moderate itself.
Omnipotence seems to me to be an evil and dangerous thing in itself. Its
exercise appears to me above the strength of man, whoever he may be, and I
see only God who can be omnipotent without danger, because his wisdom
and justice are always equal to his power. There is therefore no authority on
earth so respectable in itself or vested with a right so sacred that I should
wish to allow to act without control and to dominate without obstacles.
Therefore, when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to
any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether it is exercised in a monarchy or in a republic, I say: there is
the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.
What I most reproach in democratic government, as it has been organized
in the United States, is not, as many people in Europe claim, its weakness,
but on the contrary, its irresistible force. And what is most repugnant to me
in America is not the extreme freedom that reigns there, it is the lack of a
guarantee against tyranny.
When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United States,
whom do you want him to address? Public opinion? that is what forms the
majority; the legislative body? it represents the majority and obeys it blindly;
the executive power? it is named by the majority and serves as its passive
instrument; the public forces? the public forces are nothing other than the
majority in arms; the jury? the jury is the majority vested with the right to
pronounce decrees: in certain states, the judges themselves are elected by the
majority. Therefore, however iniquitous or unreasonable is the measure that
strikes you, you must submit to it.4
4. During the War of 1812, one saw a striking example in Baltimore of the excesses that the
despotism of the majority can lead to. In this period the war was very popular in Baltimore. A
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
Suppose on the contrary a legislative body composed in such a manner
that it represents the majority without necessarily being the slave of its passions; an executive power with a force that is its own and a judicial power
independent of the other two powers; you will still have democratic government, but there will be almost no more chance of tyranny.
I do not say that at the present time frequent use is made of tyranny in
America, I say that no guarantee against it may be discovered, and that one
must seek the causes of the mildness of government in circumstances and
mores rather than in the laws.
EFFECTS OF THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE
MAJORITY ON THE ARBITRARINESS
OF AMERICAN OFFICIALS
Freedom that American law leaves to officials within the circle that it has drawn.Their power.
One must distinguish well arbitrariness from tyranny. Tyranny can be exercised by means of law itself, and then it is not arbitrariness; arbitrariness can
be exercised in the interest of the governed, and then it is not tyrannical.
Tyranny ordinarily makes use of arbitrariness, but in case of need it knows
how to do without it.
In the United States, at the same time that the omnipotence of the majornewspaper that showed itself strongly opposed excited the indignation of the inhabitants by this
conduct. The people assembled, broke the presses, and attacked the homes of the journalists.
They wanted to call up the militia, but it did not respond to the appeal. In order to save the
unfortunate ones whom the public furor threatened, they opted for conducting them to prison
like criminals. This precaution was useless: during the night, the people assembled again; the
magistrates having failed to call up the militia, the prison was forced, one of the journalists was
killed on the spot, the others left for dead: the guilty referred to the jury were acquitted.
I said one day to an inhabitant of Pennsylvania: "Explain to me, I pray you, how in a state
founded by Quakers and renowned for its tolerance, freed Negroes are not allowed to exercise
the rights of citizens. They pay tax, is it not just that they vote?" - "Do not do us the injury;' he
responded to me, "of believing that our legislators have committed so gross an act of injustice
and intolerance."-"So, among you, blacks have the right to vote?"-"Without any doubt.""Then how is it that in the electoral college this morning I did not perceive a single one of them
in the assembly?" -"This is not the fault of the law," the American said to me; "It is true, Negroes have the right to be present at elections, but they abstain voluntarily from appearing
there:' - "That indeed is modesty on their part!' - "Oh! It is not that they refuse to go there,
but they fear that they will be mistreated there. It sometimes happens that the law lacks force
among us when the majority does not support it. Now, the majority is imbued with the greatest
prejudices against Negroes, and the magistrates do not feel they have the force to guarantee to
them the rights that the legislator has conferred on them."-"What! The majority that has the
privilege of making the law still wants to have that of disobeying the law?"
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
ity favors the legal despotism of the legislator, it favors the arbitrariness of
the magistrate as well. The majority, being an absolute master in making the
law and in overseeing its execution, having equal control over those who
govern and over those who are governed, regards public officials as its passive
agents and willingly deposits in them the care of serving its designs. It therefore does not enter in advance into the details of their duties and hardly takes
the trouble to define their rights. It treats them as a master could do to his
servants if, always seeing them act under his eye, he could direct or correct
their conduct at each instant.
In general, the law leaves American officials much freer than ours within
the circle that it draws around them. It sometimes even happens that the
majority permits them to leave it. Guaranteed by the opinion of the greatest
number and made strong by its concurrence, they then dare things that a
European, habituated to the sight of arbitrariness, is still astonished at. Thus
are formed, in the bosom of freedom, habits that can one day become fatal
to it.
ON THE POWER THAT THE MAJORITY IN
AMERICA EXERCISES OVER THOUGHT
In the United States, when the majority has irrevocably settled on a question, there is
no more discussion.- Why.-Moral power that the majority exercises over thought.Democratic republics make despotism immaterial.
When one comes to examine what the exercise of thought is in the United
States, then one perceives very clearly to what point the power of the majority
surpasses all the powers that we know in Europe.
Thought is an invisible and almost intangible power that makes sport of
all tyrannies. In our day the most absolute sovereigns of Europe cannot prevent certain thoughts hostile to their authority from mutely circulating in
their states and even in the heart of their courts. It is not the same in America:
as long as the majority is doubtful, one speaks; but when it has irrevocably
pronounced, everyone becomes silent and friends and enemies alike then
seem to hitch themselves together to its wagon. The reason for this is simple:
there is no monarch so absolute that he can gather in his hands all the
strength of society and defeat resistance, as can a majority vested with the
right to make the laws and execute them.
A king, moreover, has only a material power that acts on actions and cannot reach wills; but the majority is vested with a force, at once material and
moral, that acts on the will as much as on actions, and which at the same
time prevents the deed and the desire to do it.
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind
and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.
There is no religious or political theory that cannot be preached freely in
the constitutional states of Europe and that does not penetrate the others;
for there is no country in Europe so subject to one single power that he who
wants to speak the truth does not find support capable of assuring him
against the consequences of his independence. If he has the misfortune to
live under an absolute government, he often has the people for him; if he
inhabits a free country, he can take shelter behind royal authority if need be.
The aristocratic fraction of the society sustains him in democratic regions,
and the democracy in the others. But in the heart of a democracy organized
as that of the United States, one encounters only a single power, a single
element of force and success, and nothing outside it.
In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside
those limits, the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he dares to
leave them. It is not that he has to fear an auto-da-fe, but he is the butt of
mortifications of all kinds and of persecutions every day. A political career is
closed to him: he has offended the only power that has the capacity to open
it up. Everything is refused him, even glory. Before publishing his opinions,
he believed he had partisans; it seems to him that he no longer has any now
that he has uncovered himself to all; for those who blame him express themselves openly, and those who think like him, without having his courage,
keep silent and move away. He yields, he finally bends under the effort of each
day and returns to silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.
Chains and executioners are the coarse instruments that tyranny formerly
employed; but in our day civilization has perfected even despotism itself,
which seemed, indeed, to have nothing more to learn.
Princes had so to speak made violence material; democratic republics in
our day have rendered it just as intellectual as the human will that it wants
to constrain. Under the absolute government of one alone, despotism struck
the body crudely, so as to reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those
blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyranny does not
proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul. The
master no longer says to it: You shall think as I do or you shall die; he says:
You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to
you; but from this day on, you are a stranger among us. You shall keep your
privileges in the city, but they will become useless to you; for if you crave the
vote'" of your fellow citizens, they will not grant it to you, and if you demand
*Lit.: "choice."
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
only their esteem, they will still pretend to refuse it to you. You shall remain
among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity. When you approach
those like you, they shall flee you as being impure; and those who believe
in your innocence, even they shall abandon you, for one would flee them
in their turn. Go in peace, I leave you your life, but I leave it to you worse
than death.
Absolute monarchies had dishonored despotism; let us be on guard that
democratic republics do not rehabilitate it, and that in rendering it heavier
for some, they do not remove its odious aspect and its demeaning character
in the eyes of the greatest number.
In the proudest nations of the Old World, works destined to paint faithfully the vices and ridiculousness of contemporaries were published; La Bruyere lived at the palace of Louis XIV when he composed his chapter on the
great, and Moliere criticized the Court in plays that he had performed before
courtiers.* But the power that dominates in the United States does not intend
to be made sport of like this. The slightest reproach wounds it, the least
prickly truth alarms it; and one must praise it from the forms of its language
to its most solid virtues. No writer, whatever his renown may be, can escape
the obligation of singing the praises of his fellow citizens. The majority,
therefore, lives in perpetual adoration of itself; only foreigners or experience
can make certain truths reach the ears of the Americans.
If America has not yet had great writers, we ought not to seek the reasons
for this elsewhere: no literary genius exists without freedom of mind, and
there is no freedom of mind in America.
The Inquisition could never prevent books contrary to the religion of the
greatest number from circulating in Spain. The empire of the majority does
better in the United States: it has taken away even the thought of publishing
them. One encounters nonbelievers in America, but disbelief finds so to
speak no organ.
One sees governments that strive to protect mores by condemning the
authors of licentious books. In the United States no one is condemned for
these sorts of works; but no one is tempted to write them. It is not, however,
that all the citizens have pure mores, but the majority is regular in its.
Here the use of power is doubtless good: so I speak only of the power in
itself. This irresistible power is a continuous fact, and its good use is only
an accident.
*Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696) was a French satirist, whose "chapter on the great" is to be
found in his book Characters (1688); Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673) was a French
comic playwright.
245
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
EFFECTS OF THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
ON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE
AMERICANS; ON THE SPIRIT OF A COURT IN
THE UNITED STATES
Up to the present, the effects of the tyranny of the majority have made themselves felt
more on mores than on the conduct of society.-They arrest the development of great
characters.-Democratic republics organized like those of the United States put the spirit
of a court within reach of the many.-Proofs of this spirit in the United States.- Why
there is more patriotism in the people than in those who govern in its name.
The influence of the preceding still makes itself felt only feebly in political
society; but one already remarks its distressing effects on the national character of the Americans. I think that the small number of remarkable men who
show themselves on the political scene today must above all be attributed to
the always growing activity of the despotism of the majority in the United
States.
When the American Revolution broke out, a crowd of them appeared;
public opinion then directed wills and did not tyrannize over them. The celebrated men of this period, associating freely in the movement of minds, had
a greatness that was proper to them; they spread their brilliance over the
nation and did not borrow [their brilliance 1from it.
In absolute governments, the great who are near the throne flatter the
passions of the master and voluntarily bend to his caprices. But the mass of
the nation does not lend itself to servitude; it often submits to it out of weakness, out of habit, or out of ignorance; sometimes out of love of royalty or of
the king. One has seen peoples take a kind of pleasure and pride in sacrificing
their will to that of the prince, and so place a sort of independence of soul
even in the midst of obedience. In these peoples one encounters much less
degradation than misery. Besides, there is a great difference between doing
what one does not approve of and feigning approval of what one does: the
one is the part of a weak man, but the other belongs only to the habits of
a valet.
In free countries, where each is more or less called to give his opinion
about affairs of state; in democratic republics, where public life is incessantly
mixed with private life, where the sovereign is approachable from all sides
and where it is only a question of raising one's voice to reach its ear, one
encounters many more people who seek to speculate about its weakness and
to live at the expense of its passions than in absolute monarchies. It is not
that men are naturally worse there than elsewhere, but the temptation there
is very strong and is offered to more people at the same time. A much more
general abasement of souls results from it.
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
Democratic republics put the spirit of a court within reach of the many
and let it penetrate all classes at once. That is one of the principal reproaches
that can be made against them.
That is above all true in democratic states organized like the American
republics, where the majority possesses an empire so absolute and so irresistible that one must in a way renounce one's rights as a citizen and so to speak
one's quality as a man when one wants to deviate from the path it has traced.
Among the immense crowd that flocks to a political career in the United
States, I have seen few men indeed who show that virile candor, that manly
independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in previous
times and that, everywhere it is found, forms the salient feature of great characters. One would say at first approach that in America, spirits have all been
formed on the same model, so much do they follow exactly the same ways.
The foreigner, it is true, sometimes encounters Americans who deviate from
the rigor of formulas; they come to deplore the viciousness of the laws, the
volatility of democracy, and its lack of enlightenment; they often even go so
far as to note the faults that alter the national character, and they point out
the means that could be taken to correct them; but no one except you listens
to them; and you, to whom they confide these secret thoughts, you are only
a foreigner, and you pass on. They willingly deliver to you truths that are
useless to you, and when they descend to the public square, they hold to
another language.
If these lines ever come to America, I am sure of two things: first, that
readers will all raise their voices to condemn me; second, that many among
them will absolve me at the bottom of their consciences.
I have heard the native country spoken of in the United States. I have
encountered genuine patriotism in the people; I have often sought it in vain
in those who direct it. This is easily understood by analogy: despotism depraves the one who submits to it much more than the one who imposes it.
In absolute monarchies, the king often has great virtues, but the courtiers are
always base.
It is true that courtiers in America do not say "Sire" and "Your Majesty"a great and capital difference; but they speak constantly of the natural enlightenment of their master; they do not hold a competition on the question
of knowing which one of the virtues of the prince most merits being admired; for they are sure that he possesses all the virtues, without having acquired them and so to speak without wanting to do so; they do not give him
their wives and their daughters so that he may deign to elevate them to the
rank of his mistresses; but in sacrificing their opinions to him, they prostitute themselves.
Moralists and philosophers in America are not obliged to wrap their opin-
VOLUME ONE, PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN
ions in veils of allegory; but before hazarding a distressing truth they say: We
know that we are speaking to a people too much above human weaknesses
not to remain always master of itself. We would not use language like this if
we did not address men whose virtues and enlightenment rendered them
alone among all others worthy of remaining free.
How could the flatterers of Louis XIV do better?
As for me, I believe that in all governments, whatever they may be, baseness will attach itself to force and flattery to power. And I know only one
means of preventing men from being degraded: it is to grant to no one, along
with omnipotence, the sovereign power to demean them.
THAT THE GREATEST DANGER OF THE AMERICAN
REPUBLICS COMES FROM THE OMNIPOTENCE
OF THE MAJORITY
It is by the bad use of their power, and not by powerlessness, that democratic republics
are liable to perish. - The government of the American republics more centralized and
more energetic than that of the monarchies ofEurope.-Danger that results from this.Opinions of Madison and Jefferson on this subject.
Governments ordinarily perish by powerlessness or by tyranny. In the first
case power escapes them; in the other, it is torn from them.
Many people, on seeing democratic states fall into anarchy, have thought
that government in these states was naturally weak and powerless. The truth
is that when war among their parties has once been set aflame, government
loses its action on society. But I do not think that the nature of democratic
power is to lack force and resources; I believe, on the contrary, that almost
always the abuse of its strength and the bad use of its resources bring it to
perish. Anarchy is almost always born of its tyranny or its lack of skillfulness,
but not of its powerlessness.
One must not confuse stability with force, the greatness of the thing and
its duration. In democratic republics, the power that directs society is not
stable, for it often changes hands and purpose. 5 But everywhere it is brought,
its force is almost irresistible.
The government of the American republics appears to me to be as centralized and more energetic than that of absolute monarchies of Europe. I therefore do not think that it will perish from weakness. 6
5. Power can be centralized in an assembly; then it is strong, but not stable; it can be centralized in a man: then it is less strong, but it is more stable.
6. It is needless, I think, to alert the reader that here, as in all the rest of the chapter, I am
speaking not of the federal government, but of the particular governments of each state, which
the majority directs despotically.
ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY IN THE UNITED STATES
If ever freedom is lost in America, one will have to blame the omnipotence
of the majority that will have brought minorities to despair and have forced
them to make an appeal to material force. One will then see anarchy, but it
will have come as a consequence of despotism.
President James Madison expressed the same thoughts. (See Federalist 51.)
"It is of great importance in a republic;' he says, "not only to guard the
society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. [... J* Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued
until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under
the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the
weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in the state of nature, where
the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and
as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the
uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect
the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful
factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated
from the confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the
popular form of government t within such narrow limits would be displayed
by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of
the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it."
Jefferson as well said: "The executive in our governments is not the sole,
it is scarcely the principal object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for long years. That
of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period:'?
I like to cite Jefferson in preference to everyone else on this matter because
I consider him to be the most powerful apostle that democracy has ever had.
*AT omits the following passage here: "Different interests necessarily exist in different classes
of citizens. If a majority be united in a common interest, the rights of the minority will be
insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in
the community independent of the majority-that is of the society itself; the other by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority very improbable, if not impracticable."
tAT substitutes "tyranny of the majority" for "popular form of government."
7. Jefferson to Madison, March 15, 1789. [Conseil, Melanges politiques et philosophiques. Cf.
Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 7: 312.]
249
Alexis de
Democracy
TRANSLATED,
EDITED,
AND
WITH
AN
INTRODUCTION
BY
Tocqueville
in America
~e00000000000000000
HARVEY C. MANSFIELD AND DELBA WINTHROP
I P FW
J,
SFP 2 8 2001
HELMKE LIBRARY
THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
CHICAGO
PRESS·
CHICAGO
AND
LONDON
HARVEY
C.
MANSFIELD is the William
R.
Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at
Harvard University. Political philosopher and author, he is acknowledged as a leading
translator of Machiavelli.
DELBA WINTHROP is Lecturer in Extension and administrator of the Program on
Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Her articles and essays have appeared in
numerous publications.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON
©
2000 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED 2000
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
4 5
ISBN: 0-226-80532-8
THE FRENCH TEXT ON WHICH THIS TRANSLATION IS BASED HAS BEEN LICENSED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS BY EDITIONS GALLIMARD AND IS PROTECTED BY FRENCH AND
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAWS AND AGREEMENTS.
©
EDITIONS GALLIMARD, 1992
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, 1805-1859.
[DE LA DEMOCRATIE EN AMERIQUE. ENGLISH]
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
INTRODUCTION BY HARVEY
I
TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN
C.
MANSFIELD AND DELBA WINTHROP.
P.
CM.
INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX.
ISBN 0-226-80532-8 (HARDCOVER)
1. UNITED STATES-POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT. 2. UNITED STATES-
SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 3. DEMOCRACy-UNITED STATES. I. MANSFIELD,
HARVEY CLAFLIN, 1932- II. WINTHROP, DELBA. III. TITLE.
JK216 .T713 2000B
320-473-DC21
00-008418
@ THE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF THE
AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARD FOR INFORMATION SCIENCES-PERMANENCE OF PAPER FOR
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100
VOLUME ONE, PART ONE, CHAPTER SEVEN
Chapter 7
ON POLITICAL JUDGMENT IN
THE UNITED STATES
What the author means by political judgment.-How political judgment is understood
in France, England, the United States.-In America, the political judge is occupied only
with public officials.-He pronounces removals rather than penalties.-Political judgment, habitual means ofgovernment. -Political judgment, as it is intended in the United
States, is, despite its mildness and perhaps because of its mildness, a very powerful arm
in the hands of the majority.
By political judgment I mean the decree that a political body, temporarily
vested with the right to judge, pronounces.
In absolute governments, it is useless to give judgments extraordinary
forms; the prince in whose name the accused is prosecuted, being master of
tribunals as of everything else, has no need to seek a guarantee elsewhere
than in the idea people have of his power. The sole fear he can conceive is
that even the external appearances of justice will not be kept and that in
wishing to affirm his authority, it will be dishonored.
But in most free countries, where the majority can never act on tribunals
as an absolute prince would do, it has sometimes happened that judicial
power is temporarily placed in the hands of the representatives of society
themselves. They would rather temporarily confuse the powers in this way
than violate the necessary principle of unity of government. England, France,
and the United States have introduced political judgment into their laws: it
is curious to examine the advantage that these three great peoples have gotten
from it.
In England and France, the House of Lords forms the high criminal court
of the nation. 1 It does not judge all political offenses, but it can judge them
all.
Beside the House of Lords is another political power, vested with the right
to accuse. The sole difference that exists on this point between the two countries is this: in England deputies can accuse whomsoever it well pleases them
before the Lords, while in France they can prosecute only ministers of the
king in this manner.
Furthermore, in both countries the House of Lords has at its disposition
all penal laws with which to strike offenders.
1. In addition, the House of Lords in England forms the last stage of appeal in certain civil
affairs. See Blackstone, bk. 3, chap. 4 [Commentaries, vol. 3, 571.
ON POLITICAL JUDGMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
]01
In the United States as in Europe, one of the two branches of the legislature is vested with the right to accuse, and the other with the right to judge.
The [House of] Representatives denounces the guilty one, the Senate punishes him.
But the Senate can be seised only by the representatives, and the representatives can accuse only public officials before it. Thus the Senate has a more
restricted competence than the court oflords in France, and the representatives have a more extensive right of accusation than our deputies.
But here is the greatest difference that exists between America and Europe:
in Europe, political tribunals can apply all the provisions of the penal code;
in America, when they have taken away from a guilty person the public character with which he had been vested and have declared him unworthy of
occupying any political office in the future, their right is exhausted and the
task of ordinary tribunals begins.
I suppose that the president of the United States has committed a crime
of high treason.
The House of Representatives accuses him, the senators pronounce his
deposition. Afterwards, he appears before a jury, which alone can take away
his freedom or life.
This serves to cast a bright light on the subject that occupies us.
In introducing political judgment into their laws, the Europeans wanted
to reach great criminals, whatever was their birth, their rank, or their power
in the state. To succeed at it, they have temporarily gathered all the prerogatives of tribunals within one great political body.
The legislator has then been transformed into a magistrate; he can establish the crime, classify it, and punish it. In giving him the rights of a judge,
the law has imposed on him all its obligations, and it has bound him to
observe all the forms of justice.
When a political tribunal, French or English, has a public official answerable to it, and it pronounces a conviction against him, by that fact it takes his
office away from him and can declare him unworthy of occupying any in the
future: but here the political removal and interdiction are a consequence of
the decree and not the decree itself.
In Europe, political judgment is therefore a judicial act rather than an
administrative measure.
The contrary is seen in the United States, and it is easy to be convinced
that political judgment there is indeed an administrative measure rather than
a judicial act.
It is true that the decree of the Senate is judicial in form; to render it,
senators are obliged to conform to the solemnity and usages of the proceeding. It is also judicial in the grounds on which it is founded; the Senate is
1
102
VOLUME ONE, PART ONE, CHAPTER SEVEN
generally obliged to take for the basis of its decision an offense of the common law. But it is administrative in its object.
If the principal goal of the American legislator had really been to arm a
political body with great judicial power, it would not have confined its action
within the circle of public officials, for the most dangerous enemies of the
state may not be vested with any office; this is above all true in republics,
where the favor of parties is the primary power and where one is often all
the stronger for not legally exercising any power.
If the American legislator had wanted to give to society itself the right to
prevent great crimes in the manner of the judge, by fear of punishment, he
would have put at the disposition of political tribunals all the resources of
the penal code; but he furnished them only an incomplete arm that cannot
reach the most dangerous of criminals. For a judgment of political interdiction matters little to one who wants to overturn the laws themselves.
The principal goal of political judgment in the United States is therefore
to withdraw power from someone who makes a bad use of it and to prevent
this same citizen from being vested with it in the future. It is, as one sees, an
administrative action to which they have given the solemnity of a [judicial]
decree.
In this matter, therefore, the Americans have created something mixed.
They have given to administrative removal all the guarantees of political
judgment, and they have removed from political judgment its greatest rigors.
This point fixed, everything follows; one then discovers why American
constitutions submit all civil officials to the jurisdiction of the Senate and
exempt the military from it, whose crimes are nevertheless more to be
dreaded. In the civil order, the Americans have so to speak no dismissible
officials: some are irremovable, others have their rights by a mandate that
cannot be abrogated. In order to take power away from them, it is therefore
necessary to judge them all. But the military depend on the head of state,
who is himself a civil official. In reaching the head of state, one strikes them
all with the same blow. 2
Now if one comes to compare the European system and the American
system in the effects that each produces or can produce, one discovers differences no less tangible.
In France and England political judgment is considered as an extraordinary arm that society ought not to make use of except to save itself in moments of great peril.
One cannot deny that political judgment, as intended in Europe, violates
2. It is not that one can remove an officer's rank, but one can take his command away
from him.
ON POLITICAL JUDGMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
the conservative principle of the division of powers and that it constantly
threatens the freedom and the lives of men.
Political judgment in the United States makes only an indirect attack on
the principle of the division of powers; it does not threaten the existence of
citizens; it does not hang over all heads, as in Europe, since it strikes only
those who, by accepting public offices, have submitted in advance to its
rigors.
It is all at once less dreadful and less efficacious.
Thus the legislators of the United States did not consider it as an extreme
remedy for the great ills of society, but as an habitual means of government.
From this point of view, it perhaps exerts more real influence on the social
body in America than in Europe. One must not, in fact, allow oneself to be
taken in by the apparent mildness of American legislation in what relates to
political judgments. One should remark in the first place that in the United
States the tribunal that pronounces these judgments is composed of the
same elements and is subject to the same influences as the body charged with
accusing, which gives an almost irresistible impetus to the vindictive passions
of the parties. If political judges in the United States cannot pronounce
penalties as severe as political judges in Europe, there are therefore fewer
chances of being acquitted by them. Conviction is less dreadful and more certain.
Europeans, in establishing political tribunals, had for their principal object to punish the guilty; Americans, to take power away from them. Political
judgment in the United States is in some fashion a preventive measure. One
therefore ought not to fetter the judge with very exact criminal definitions.
Nothing is more frightening than the vagueness of American laws when
they define political crimes properly speaking. "The President [... J shall be
removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of" (says the
Constitution of the United States, art. 1, sec. 4) "Treason, Bribery or other
high Crimes and Misdemeanors:'* Most of the state constitutions are still
more obscure.
"The senate shall [... J hear and determine all impeachments made [... J
against any officer or officers of the commonwealth;' says the constitution of
Massachusetts, "for misconduct and maladministration in their offices:'3
"All [... J offending against the State, either by maladministration, corruption, neglect of duty, or any other high crime or misdemeanor;' says the constitution of Virginia, "shall be impeachable by the house of delegates."t There
*The provisions for impeachment are found in art.
tVirginia constitution ofI830, art. 3, sec. 13.
3. Chap. 1, sec. 2, no. 8.
2,
sec. 4.
VOLUME ONE, PART ONE, CHAPTER SEVEN
are some constitutions that, in order to allow an unlimited responsibility to
weigh on public officials, do not specify any crime. 4
But what renders the American laws so dreadful in this matter arises, I
will dare to say, from their mildness itself.
We have seen that in Europe, the removal of an official and his political
interdiction is one consequence of the penalty and that in America, it is the
penalty itself. This is the result: in Europe, political tribunals are vested with
terrible rights that they sometimes do not know how to use; and it happens
that they do not punish for fear of punishing too much. But in America,
they do not recoil before a penalty that does not make humanity tremble: to
condemn a political enemy to death in order to take away his power is a
horrible assassination in the eyes of all; to declare one's adversary unworthy
of possessing that same power and to remove it from him, leaving him his
freedom and his life, can appear the honest result of a conflict.
Now, this judgment, so easy to pronounce, is not less the height of misfortune for the common sort among those to whom it applies. Great criminals
will doubtless brave its futile rigors; ordinary men will see in it a decree that
destroys their position, stains their honor, and condemns them to a shameful
idleness worse than death.
Political judgment in the United States therefore exerts an influence on
the working of society so much the greater as it seems less dreadful. It does
not act directly on the governed, but it renders a majority the entire master
of those who govern; it does not give to the legislature an immense power
that it could exercise only on the day of a crisis; it allows it to have a moderated, regular power that it can use every day. If the force is less great, on the
other hand, the use is more convenient and the abuse easier.
In preventing political tribunals from pronouncing judicial penalties, the
Americans therefore seem to me to have prevented the most terrible consequences of legislative tyranny rather than the tyranny itself. And I do not
know if, all in all, political judgment, as it is intended in the United. States, is
not the most formidable arm that has ever been put in the hands of the majority.
When the American republics begin to degenerate, I believe that one will
be able to recognize it easily: it will be enough to see if the number of political
judgments rises.*
*See AT's note XIII, page 694.
4. See the constitutions of Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, and Georgia.
Alexis de
Democracy
TRANSLATED,
EDITED,
AND
WITH
AN
INTRODUCTION
BY
Tocqueville
in America
HARVEY C. MANSFIELD AND DELBA WINTHROP
=S-t<
I P FW
(~ i~
J,
SFP 2 8 2001
,'j
HELMKE LIBRARY
THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
CHICAGO
PRESS·
CHICAGO
..
/
(:::-' .,~,/ ,'"
AND
/.. k)
~,
LONDON
' ".----
HARVEY
C.
MANSFIELD is the William
R.
Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at
Harvard University. Political philosopher and author, he is acknowledged as a leading
translator of Machiavelli.
DELBA WINTHROP is Lecturer in Extension and administrator of the Program on
Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Her articles and essays have appeared in
numerous publications.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON
©
2000 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED 2000
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
4 5
ISBN: 0-226-80532-8
THE FRENCH TEXT ON WHICH THIS TRANSLATION IS BASED HAS BEEN LICENSED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS BY EDITIONS GALLIMARD AND IS PROTECTED BY FRENCH AND
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAWS AND AGREEMENTS.
©
EDITIONS GALLIMARD, 1992
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, 1805-1859.
[DE LA DI1MOCRATIE EN AMERIQUE. ENGLISH]
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA / TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY HARVEY
C.
MANSFIELD AND DELBA WINTHROP.
P.
CM.
INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX.
ISBN 0-226-80532-8 (HARDCOVER)
L UNITED STATES-POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT. 2. UNITED STATESSOCIAL CONDITIONS. 3. DEMOCRACy-UNITED STATES.
I.
MANSFIELD,
HARVEY CLAFLIN, 1932- II. WINTHROP, DELBA. III. TITLE.
JK216 .T713 2000B
320·473-DC21
00-0084 18
@l THE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF THE
AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARD FOR INFORMATION SCIENCES-PERMANENCE OF PAPER FOR
PRINTED LIBRARY MATERIALS, ANSI Z39-48-1992.
ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE IN AMERICA
Peoples can therefore draw two great political consequences from the
same social state: these consequences differ prodigiously between themselves,
but they both issue from the same fact.
The first to be submitted to the formidable alternative that I have just
described, the Anglo-Americans have been happy enough to escape absolute
power. Circumstances, origin, enlightenment, and above all mores have permitted them to found and maintain the sovereignty of the people.
Chapter 4
ON THE PRINCIPLE OF
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE
IN AMERICA
It dominates all of American society.-Application that the Americans already made of
this principle before their revolution.-Development that their revolution gave to it.Gradual and irresistible lowering of the property qualification.
When one wants to speak of the political laws of the United States, it is always
with the dogma of the sovereignty of the people that one must begin.
The principle of the sovereignty of the people, which is always more or
less at the foundation of almost all human institutions, ordinarily dwells
there almost buried. One obeys it without recognizing it, or if sometimes it
happens to be brought out in broad daylight for a moment, one soon hastens
to plunge it back into the darkness of the sanctuary.
National will is one of the terms that intriguers in all times and despots
in all ages have most largely abused. Some have seen its expression in the
bought suffrage of a few agents of power; others in the votes of an interested
or fearful minority; there are even some who have discovered it fully expressed in the silence of peoples, and who have thought that from the fact of
obedience arises the right for them to command.
In America, the principle of the sovereignty of the people is not hidden
or sterile as in certain nations; it is recognized by mores, proclaimed by the
laws; it spreads with freedom and reaches its final consequences without obstacle.
If there is a single country in the world where one can hope to appreciate
the dogma of the sovereignty of the people at its just value, to study it in its
application to the affairs of society, and to judge its advantages and its dangers, that country is surely America.
53
VOLUME ONE, PART ONE, CHAPTER FOUR
54
I said previously that from the origin, the principle of the sovereignty
of the people was the generative principle of most of the English colonies
of America."
It was nevertheless very far from dominating the government of society
then as it does in our day.
Two obstacles, one external, the other internal, slowed its pervasive advance.
It could not come to light outwardly within the laws since the colonies
were still constrained to obey the mother country; it was therefore reduced
to hiding itself in provincial assemblies and above all in the township. There
it spread in secret.
American society then was not yet prepared to adopt it in all its consequences. As I brought out in the preceding chapter, enlightenment in New
England and wealth to the south of the Hudson long exerted a sort of aristocratic influence that tended to narrow into few hands the exercise of social
powers. They were still very far from having all public officials elected and
all citizens electors. Everywhere electoral rights were confined within certain
limits and subordinated to the existence of a property qualification. That
property qualification was very low in the North, more considerable in the
South.
The American Revolution broke out. The dogma of the sovereignty of the
people came out from the township and took hold of the government; all
classes committed themselves to its cause; they did combat and they triumphed in its name; it became the law of laws.
A change almost as rapid was effected in the interior of society. Estate law
served to break down local influences.
At the moment when this effect of the laws and of the Revolution began
to reveal itself to all eyes, victory had already been irrevocably pronounced
in favor of democracy. Power was, in fact, in its hands. It was no longer
permissible even to struggle against it. The upper classes therefore submitted
without a murmur and without combat to an evil henceforth inevitable.
What happens ordinarily to powers that fall happened to them: individual
selfishness took hold in their members; as they could no longer tear force
from the hands of the people and as they did not detest the multitude enough
to take pleasure in defying it, they no longer dreamed of anything except
gaining its good will at any price. The most democratic laws were therefore
voted in a rivalry among the men whose interests they bruised the most. In
this manner the upper classes did not excite popular passions against them;
but they themselves hastened the triumph of the new order. Thus, a singular
*DA I
1.2.
ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE IN AMERICA
thing! One saw the democratic impulse more irresistible in states where aristocracy had the deepest roots.
The state of Maryland, which had been founded by great lords, proclaimed universal suffrage! first and introduced into its entire government
the most democratic forms.
When a people begins to touch the electoral qualification, one can foresee
that it will sooner or later make it disappear completely. That is one of the
most invariable rules that govern societies. As one moves the limit of electoral
rights back, one feels the need to move it back more; for after each new
concession, the forces of democracy increase and its demands grow with its
new power. The ambition of those who are left below the property qualification becomes irritated in proportion to the great number of those who are
found above. The exception finally becomes the rule; concessions succeed
each other relentlessly and there is no stopping until they have arrived at
universal suffrage.
In our day the principle of the sovereignty of the people has tried out all
practical developments in the United States that the imagination can conceive. It has been disengaged from all the fictions with which one has taken
care to surround it elsewhere; one sees it reclothed successively in all forms,
according to the necessity of the case. Sometimes the people in a body makes
the laws as at Athens; sometimes deputies whom universal suffrage has created represent it and act in its name under its almost immediate surveillance.
There are countries where a power in a way external to the social body
acts on it and forces it to march on a certain track.
There are others where force is divided, placed at once in society and
outside it. Nothing like this is seen in the United States; there society acts
by itself and on itself. Power exists only within its bosom; almost no one is
encountered who dares to conceive and above all to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The people participate in the drafting of laws by the choice
of the legislators, in their application, by the election of the agents of the
executive power; one can say that they govern themselves, so weak and restricted is the part left to the administration, so much does the latter feel its
popular origin and obey the power from which it emanates. The people reign
over the American political world as does God over the universe. They are
the cause and the end of all things; everything comes out of them and everything is absorbed into them."
* See AT's note VIII, page 691.
1. Amendments made to the constitution of Maryland in
ratified in 1810 J.
1801
and
1809
[articles
12
and
14,
55
Clashing Views on
Social Issues
FOURTEENTH EDITION, EXPANDED
Selected, Edited, and with Introductions by
Kurt Finsterbusch
University of Maryland
AUG 2 J ') 7
L_
HELMJ\ LIBRARY
I
~~~-~
Contemporary
Learning Series
2460 Kerper Blvd., Dubuque, lA 52001
Visit us on the Internet
http://www. mhcls.com
To my wife, Meredith Ramsay, who richly shares with me
a life of the mind and much, much more.
Photo Acknowledgment
Cover image: Buccina Studios/Getty Images
Cover Art Acknowledgment
Maggie Lytle
Compositor: ICC Macmillan Inc.
Copyright© 2008 by McGraw-Hill Contemporary Learning Series,
A Division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Dubuque, Iowa 52001
Copyright law prohibits the reproduction, storage, or transmission in any form by any means
of any portion of this publication without the express written permission of McGraw-Hill
Contemporary Learning Series and of the copyright holder (if different) of the part
of the publication to be reproduced. The Guidelines for Classroom Copying
endorsed by Congress explicitly state that unauthorized copying
may not be used to create, to replace, or to substitute
for anthologies, compilations, or collective works.
Taking Sides ® is a registered trademark of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Fourteenth Edition, Expanded
123456789DOCDOC987
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Taking sides: clashing views on social issues/selected, edited, and
with introductions
by Kurt Finsterbusch.-14th ed., expanded
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social behavior. 2. Social problems. I. Finsterbusch, kurt, comp.
302
MHID: 0-07-339716-4
ISBN: 978-0-07-339716-0
95-83865
Printed on Recycled Paper
r>t
Clint Bolick
YES
The Key to Closing the Minority
Schooling Gap: School Choice
L a nation supposedly committed to free enterprise, consumer choice, and
equal educational opportunities, school choice should be routine. That it is not
demonstrates the clout of those dedicated to preserving the government's
monopoly over public education. To listen to the education establishment, one
would think that school choice is a radical, scary, alien concept. Indeed, the
defenders of the status quo have convinced many voters that school choice is a
threat to American sOciety.
But school choice is not threatening, and it is not new. To the contrary,
it is the norm in most modern nations .... Even in the U.S., non-government
schools have long played a key educational role, often using public funds.
America's college system-the world's envy-is built on school choice: Students can use the G.I. Bill, Pell Grants, and other forms of government aid to
attend either public or private schools, including religious institutions. At the
other end of the age spectrum, parents of preschoolers can use child care
vouchers in private and religious settings. And under federal law, tens of
thousands of disabled elementary and high school age children receive
schooling in private schools at public expense. It is only mainstream K-12
schools in which the government commands a monopoly over public funds.
Thomas Paine, the most prescient of our founding fathers, is credited with
first suggesting a voucher system in the United States. He wanted an educated,
enlightened citizenry, but the idea that the government should operate schools
was an alien concept to him and his generation. Instead, Paine proposed providing citizens with financial support that they could use to purchase education in
private schools.
The great portion of early American "public" education took place in private
schools. Even when states started creating government schools, the teachers often
were ministers. The concept of "separation of church and state" is not in the U.S.
Constitution, and was certainly never applied to education.
In 1869, Vermont adopted a school choice program for communities that
did not build their own public schools, and Maine followed suit in 1873. To this
day, both states will pay tuition for children to attend private schools, or public
schools in neighboring communities. In Vermont, 6,500 children from 90 towns
From The American Enterprise, April/May 2003, pp. 30-33. Copyright © 2003 by American Enterprise
Institute. Reprinted with permission of The American Enterprise, a magazine of Politics, Business, and
Culture. www.TAEmag.com
244
YES /
Clint Bolick
245
attend private schools at government expense; in Maine, 5,600 children from
55 towns do so. Those programs, in existence for more than a century and a
quarter, have not destroyed the local public schools; to the contrary, both states
boast a well-educated population.
But the goal of universal common schooling, fueled by the ideas of
Horace Mann, helped make government schools the norm in the late
nineteenth century. Thereafter, private schools typically served two groups: the
elite, and those seeking a religious immersion different from the Protestant theology that dominated public schools. The latter, of course, were primarily Catholic immigrants.
The rise of Catholic schools bitterly annoyed Protestant public school
advocates like Senator James Blaine (R-ME). Blaine struck back in 1876. His proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit any government aid to
religious schools came just short of securing passage in Congress. His allies,
however, lobbied state legislatures and succeeded in attaching "Blaine amendments" to approximately 37 state constitutions which prohibited expenditure
of public funds in "support" of sectarian (Le., Catholic) schools. Anti-Catholic
bigotry crested in an Oregon law, secured by the Ku Klux Klan, which required
all children to attend government schools.
In the landmark 1925 decision Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the U.S. Supreme
Court struck down that Oregon law, declaring that "The fundamental theory of
liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general
power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State;
those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the
high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." This principle of parental sovereignty remains a cornerstone of American law today.
Though it remains constantly under attack, it continues to keep private educational options (among other rights) open to parents.
The modern case for school vouchers was first made by the Nobel laureate
economist Milton Friedman in 1955. Instead of providing education as a
monopoly supplier, Friedman suggested, government should just finance it.
Every child would be given a voucher redeemable at a school of the parent's
choice, public or private. Schools would compete to attract the vouchers. Friedman's proposal contained two insights that formed the intellectual foundations
of the contemporary school choice movement: that parents, rather than government, should decide where children attend school, and that the economic rules
which yield good services and products are not suspended at the schoolhouse
door.
Support for school choice began to expand and diversify in the 1970s,
when two liberal Berkeley law professors, Jack Coons and Steven Sugarman,
began to consider school choice as a means of delivering educational equity. If
forced busing plans had failed, Coons and Sugarman argued, why not give
vouchers to poor and minority parents so they could choose the best education
for their children? Coons and Sugarman adapted Friedman's proposal to their
own ends: While Friedman advocated universal vouchers, Coons and Sugarman
246
ISSUE 14 / Is Competition the Reform That Will Fix Education?
wanted to target them to disadvantaged populations. Friedman preferred a lightly
regulated system, while Coons and Sugarman called for substantial government
oversight. Still, there was the beginning of an alliance between freedom-seeking
conservatives on the one hand and equality-seeking liberals on the other. That
alliance eventually made the school choice programs of the 1990s a reality.
The main force generating support for vouchers, however, was the alarming decline in urban public schools. During the 1960s and 1970s, most urban
public schools were ruined. Whites and middle-class blacks fled to the suburbs,
leaving poor and mostly minority populations in rapidly worsening city public
schools.
The problems of urban public schools were connected to a broader
decline in public education. The 1983 study A Nation at Risk warned that large
doses of mediocrity and failure had crept into American public schools. Meanwhile, starting in the 1980s, social scientists like James Coleman began showing
that private and religious schools were succeeding in educating the very same
poor, minority schoolchildren that government schools were failing. Many corroborating studies followed.
Also helping set the stage for a school choice movement was the 1990
Brookings Institution study by John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets &
America's Schools. Chubb and Moe set out to discover why suburban public
schools and inner-city private schools generally produced good academic outcomes, while inner-city public schools were disasters. They found that whereas
the first two types of schools were characterized by strong leaders with a clear
mission and a high degree of responsiveness to parents, inner-city schools were
not. Instead, urban public school districts were run by bloated bureaucracies
whose principal constituencies were not parents, but politicians and unions.
A crucial factor distinguishing the successful and unsuccessful schools was
the element of choice: Suburban parents could send their children to private
schools, or move to different communities, if they were dissatisfied with their
public schools. Private schools, obviously, were entirely dependent on satisfied
parents. But inner-city public school parents were captives: They had no choice
except to send their children to whatever the local government school offered. In
school districts with tens or hundreds of thousands of students, they were powerless to do anything about the system.
Introducing choice in inner-city public schools, Chubb and Moe
concluded-particularly giving parents the power to exit the public system
altogether-would force the bureaucracy to respond to its customers rather
than to politicians and special-interest groups. These findings created a scholarly foundation for school choice as a way not merely of helping children in
failing government schools, but also as an essential prerequisite for reforming public school systems.
When the current school choice movement started to come together a
decade or two ago, its leading protagonists could have met comfortably in a
telephone booth. In an amazingly short period, it has grown into a sophisticated, passionate, and ecumenical movement. There are philanthropists,
YES /
Clint Bolick
247
activists, public officials, clergy, lawyers, and parents, all willing to put aside
ideological differences in pursuit of a common cause.
The movement's core argument is that parents, not government, should
have the primary responsibility and power to determine where and how their
children are educated. That this basic principle should require a vidous fight is
testimony to the strength, determination, and ferocity of the reactionary forces
defending today's educational status quo. Teacher unions, which form the cornerstone of our education establishment, are the most powerful special-interest
group in America today. At the national level, they essentially own the Democratic Party. At the state level, they wield enormous influence over elected officials in both parties. At the local level, they frequently control school boards.
They and their education allies dedicated all the resources at their disposal to
defeat meaningful school choice anywhere it has presented itself.
For the education establishment, this battle is about preserving their
monopolistic vise grip on American schooling. For parents-and our society--the
stakes are much higher. Nearly 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, vast
numbers of black and Hispanic children do not graduate from high school.
Many of those who do still lack the most basic skills needed for even entry-level
jobs. As a result, many children in inner-city schools wind up on welfare or in
jail. Children who most need the compensations of a quality education are
instead regulated to dysfunctional schools. In climbing out of this morass we
should not worry about whether a particular reform is too radical; we should
worry about whether it is radical enough.
The school choice movement is not only a crusade to improve American
education. It is also a true civil rights struggle. It is critical to the real lives of real
people. The system has written off many of the people who most need choiceboth the parents and their children. Minority citizens may be offered welfare payments, or racial preferences, but little is done to help them become productive,
self-supporting citizens. Government schools and their liberal patrons implicitly
assume that low-income children are incapable of learning. With little expected
of these children, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meariwhile, conditions are different in most inner-city private schools. Not
because they have greater resources than their public school counterparts (they
typically have far fewer), or because they are selective (they usually accept all applicants), but rather because the operating philosophy is markedly different. At nongovernment schools, parents are not discouraged from involvement, they are
required to playa role in the school and in their children's education. The children
are expected to behave. They are expected to achieve. And research shows that
they do.
Ultimately, we want school choice programs that are large and accessible
enough to give government schools a serious run for their money. But initially,
even a small program-publicly or privately funded-can begin to introduce
inner-city parents to the previously unknown concept that there is an alternative to failure. That creates a constituency for a larger program.
Any functioning program, no matter how small, will change the debate
from one about hypotheticals to one about realities. When we can show that
248
ISSUE 14 I Is Competition the Reform That Will Fix Education?
competition helps public schools, and that families are choosing good schools
rather than, say, witch-craft schools, we can begin to debunk the myths of
choice adversaries. In Milwaukee, where school choice has been pioneered,
public opinion polls show that support for choice is stronger the closer one is to
the program. Not only inner-city parents but also suburban parents now support school choice there.
Actual experience has shown that school choice programs do not skim the
cream" of students, as our detractors like to say, leaving only hard cases in the
public schools. Instead (not surprisingly), school choice programs usually attract
children who are experiencing academic or disciplinary problems in government
schools. Many such children are on a downward trajectory. Just arresting that trajectory is an accomplishment, even if it doesn't show up immediately in
improved test scores.
Academic research by Harvard's Paul Peterson and others shows that academic gains are modest in the first year or two of a school choice program, and
begin to accelerate afterward. Longitudinal studies tracking choice students over
many years seem likely to find higher high school graduation and college
enrollment rates, plus other measures of success. If that happens, the debate
over the desirability of school choice will be over. The pioneers of school chOice
will have shown how to rescue individuals from otherwise dark futures, as well
as how to force our larger system of public education to improve itself for the
good of all students.
/I
Clashing Views on
Social Issues
FOURTEENTH EDITION, EXPANDED
Selected, Edited, and with Introductions by
Kurt Finsterbusch
University of Maryland
AUG 2 J ') 7
L_
HELMJ\ LIBRARY
I
~~~-~
Contemporary
Learning Series
2460 Kerper Blvd., Dubuque, lA 52001
Visit us on the Internet
http://www. mhcls.com
To my wife, Meredith Ramsay, who richly shares with me
a life of the mind and much, much more.
Photo Acknowledgment
Cover image: Buccina Studios/Getty Images
Cover Art Acknowledgment
Maggie Lytle
Compositor: ICC Macmillan Inc.
Copyright© 2008 by McGraw-Hill Contemporary Learning Series,
A Division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Dubuque, Iowa 52001
Copyright law prohibits the reproduction, storage, or transmission in any form by any means
of any portion of this publication without the express written permission of McGraw-Hill
Contemporary Learning Series and of the copyright holder (if different) of the part
of the publication to be reproduced. The Guidelines for Classroom Copying
endorsed by Congress explicitly state that unauthorized copying
may not be used to create, to replace, or to substitute
for anthologies, compilations, or collective works.
Taking Sides ® is a registered trademark of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Fourteenth Edition, Expanded
123456789DOCDOC987
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Taking sides: clashing views on social issues/selected, edited, and
with introductions
by Kurt Finsterbusch.-14th ed., expanded
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social behavior. 2. Social problems. I. Finsterbusch, kurt, comp.
302
MHID: 0-07-339716-4
ISBN: 978-0-07-339716-0
95-83865
Printed on Recycled Paper
POSTSCRIPT
Is Competition the Reform
That Will Fix Education?
Since school reformers have focused on school choice, the literature on it
has mushroomed. The choice proposal first gained public attention in 1955
when Milton Friedman wrote about vouchers in "The Role of Government in
Education," in Robert$olo, ed., Economics and the Public Interest (Rutgers University Press). More recent school choice advocates include Harry Brighouse,
School Choice and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000); Mark
Schneider, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American
Schools (Princeton University Press, 2000); Philip A. Woods, School Choice and
Competition: Markets in the Public Interest (Routledge, 1998); Sol Stern, Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice (Encounter
Books, 2003); Clint Bolick, Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School
Choice (Cato Institute, 2003); Clive R. Belfield and Henry M. Levin, Privatizing
Educational Choice (Paradigm Publishers, 2005); James G. Dwyer, Vouchers
within Reason: A Child-Centered Approach to Education Reform (Cornell University Press, 2002); and Emily Van Dunk, School Choice and the Question of
Accountability: The Milwaukee Experience (Yale University Press, 2003). School
choice is most strongly advocated for inner-city schools. See Frederick M.
Hess, Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (Brookings Institution Press, 2002) and William G. Howell, The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002). For
discussions between school choice systems, see Public School Choice vs. Private
School Vouchers, edited by Richard D. Kahlenberg (Century Foundation,
2003). For a less partisan view see Joseph P. Viteritti, Choosing Equality: School
Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society (Brookings Institute Press, 1999). For
comparisons of school choice with other reforms, see Margaret C. Wang and
Herbert ]. Walberg, eds., School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves
Education? (L. Erlbaum Associates, 2001). Some advocates of choice would
limit the choices in major ways. TimothyW. Young and Evans Clinchy, in
Choice in Public Education (Teachers College Press, 1992), contend that there
is already considerable choice in public education so they argue against a
voucher system, which they feel will divert badly needed financial resources
from the public schools to give further support to parents who can already
afford private schools.
Important critiques of school choice include Albert Shanker and Bella
Rosenberg, Politics, Markets, and America's Schools: The Fallacies of Private School
Choice (American Federation of Teachers, 1991); Kevin B. Smith and Kenneth].
Meier, The Case Against School Choice: Politics, Markets, and Fools (M. E. Sharpe,
1995); Seymour Bernard Sarason, Questions You Should Ask about Charter Schools
258
and Vouchers (Heinemann, 2002); Lois H. Andre Buchely, Could It Be Otherwise?
Parents and the Inequities of Public School Choice (Routledge, 2005); Gary Miron
and Christopher Nelson, What's Public about Charter Schools?: Lessons Learned
about Choice and Accountability (Corwin Press, 2002); R. Kenneth Godwin and
Frand R. Kemerer, School Choice Tradeoff: Liberty, Equity, and Diversity (University
of Texas Press, 2002); School Choice: The Moral Debate, edited by Alan Wolfe
(Princeton University Press, 2003); Ronald G. Corwin and E. Joseph Schneider,
The School Choice Hoax: Fixing American's Schools (Praeger, 2005).
259
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