The American System of Townships
Why the writer begins his examination of political institutions with the township. There are townships in every nation. Difficulty of establishing and maintaining their communal freedom. Its importance. Why the writer has chosen the organization of the New England township as the main subject to examine.
It is not by chance that I consider the township first.
The township is the only association; so well rooted in nature that wherever men assemble it forms-itself.
Communal society therefore exists among all peoples, whatever be their customs and their laws; man creates kingdoms and republics, but townships seem to spring directly from the hand God. But though townships are coeval with humanity, local freedom is a rare and fragile thing. A nation can always establish great political assemblies, because it always contains a certain number of individuals whose understanding will, to some extent, take the place of experience in handling affairs. But the local community is composed of coarser elements, often recalcitrant to the lawgiver’s activity. The difficulty of establishing a township’s independence rather augments than diminishes with the increase of enlightenment of nations. A very civilized society finds it hard to tolerate attempts at freedom in a local community; it is disgusted by its numerous blunders and is apt to despair of before the experiment is finished.
Of all forms of liberty, that of a local community, which is so hard to establish, is the most prone to the encroachments of authority. Left to themselves, the institutions of a local community can hardly struggle against a strong and enterprising government; they cannot defend themselves with success they have reached full development and have come to form part of national ideas and habits. Hence, until communal freedom has come to form part of mores, it can easily be destroyed, and it cannot enter into mores without a long-recognized legal existence.
So communal freedom is not, one may almost say, the fruit of human effort. It is seldom created, but rather springs up of accord. It grows, almost in secret; amid a semibarbarous society. The continual action of laws, mores, circumstances, and above all time may succeed in consolidating it. Among all the nations of continental Europe, one may say that there is not one that understands communal liberty.
However, the strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty. Passing passions, momentary interest; or chance circumstances may give it the external shape of independence, but the despotic tendencies which have been driven into the interior of the body social will sooner or later break out on the surface.
To help the reader understand the general principles on which the political organization of townships and in the United States depends, I thought it would be useful to take one particular state as an example and- examine in what happens there, subsequently taking a quick look at the rest of the country.
I have chosen one of the states of New England.
Townships and counties are not organized in the same way in all parts of the Union; nevertheless, one can see that throughout the Union more or less the same principles have guided the formation of both township and county.
Now, I thought that in New England these principles had been carried further with more far-reaching results than elsewhere. Consequently they stand out there in higher relief and are easier for a foreigner to observe.
The local institutions of New England form a complete and regular whole; they are ancient; law and, even more, mores, make them strong; and they exercise immense influence over the whole of society. For all these reasons they deserve our attention.
Limits of the Township
The New England township is halfway between a canton and a commune in France. It generally has from two to three thousand inhabitants; it is therefore not too large for all the inhabitants to have roughly the same interests, but is big enough to be sure of finding the elements of a good administration within itself.
Powers of the New England Township
The people as the origin of Power in the township as elsewhere. They handle their principal affairs themselves. No municipal council. The greater part of municipal authority concentrated in the hand of the “selectmen.” How the selectmen function. Town meeting. Last of all municipal officials. Obligatory and paid functions.
In the township, as everywhere else, the people are the source of power, but nowhere else do they exercise their power so directly. In America the people are a master who must be indulged to the utmost possible limits.
In New England the majority works through representatives when it is dealing with the general affairs of the state. It was necessary that that should be so; but in the township, where both law and administration are closer to the governed, the representative system has not been adopted. There is no municipal council; the body of the electors, when it has chosen the officials, gives them directions in everything beyond the simple, ordinary execution of the laws of the state. Such a state of affairs is so contrary to our ideas and opposed to our habits that some examples are needed to make it understandable.
Public duties in the township are extremely numerous and minutely divided, as we shall see later on, but most of the administrative power is concentrated in the hands of a few yearly elected individuals called “selectmen.”
The general laws of the state impose certain duties on the selectmen. In administering these they do not require the authorization of the governed, and it is their personal responsibility if they neglect them. For example, the state law charges them to draw up the municipal voting lists, and if they fail to do so they are guilty of an offense. But in all matters within the township’s control the selectmen carry out the popular will, just as our mayors execute the decisions of the municipal council. Usually they act on their own responsibility, merely putting into practice principles already approved by the majority. But if they want to make any change in the established order to start some new undertaking, they must go back to the source of their power. Suppose they want to start a school; the selectmen summon all the voters to a meeting on a fixed day and place; they there explain the need felt; they state the means available for the purpose, how much it will cost, and the site suggested. The meeting, consulted on all these points, accepts the principle, decides the site, votes the tax, and leaves the selectmen to carry out its orders.
Only the selectmen have the right to call a town meeting, but they may be required to do so if ten owners of property conceive some new project and wish to submit it to the approval of the township, they demand a general meeting of the inhabitants; the selectmen are bound to agree to this and preserve only the right to over the meeting.
Such political mores and social customs are certainly far removed from ours. Edo not, at this moment, want to pass judgment on them onto reveal the hidden reasons causing them and giving them life; it is- enough to describe them.
The selectmen are elected every year in April or May. At the same time, the town meeting also elects many other municipal officials to take charge of important administrative details. There are assessors to rate the township and collectors to bring the taxes in. The constable must organize the police, take care of public places and take a hand in the physical execution of the laws. The town clerk must record all resolutions; he keeps a record of the proceedings of the civil administration. The treasurer looks after the funds of the township. There are also overseers of the poor whose difficult task it is to execute the provisions of the Poor Laws; school commissioners in charge of public education; and surveyors of highways, who look after roads both large and small, to complete the list of the main administrative officials of the township. But the division of functions does not stop there; among municipal officials one also finds parish commissioners responsible for the expenses of public worship, fire wardens to direct the citizens’ efforts in case of fire, tithing men, hog reeves, fence viewers, timber measurers, and sealers of weights and measures.
Altogether there are nineteen main officials in a township. Every inhabitant is bound, on pain of fine, to accept these various duties; but most of them also carry some remuneration so that poorer citizens can devote their time to them without loss. Furthermore, it is not the American system to give any fixed salary to officials. In general, each official act has a price, and men are paid in accordance with what they have done.
Life in the Township
Each man the best judge of his own interest. Corollary of the principle of the sovereignty of the people. How American townships apply these doctrines. The New England township sovereign in all that concerns itself alone, subordinate in all else. Duties of the township toward the state. In France the government lends officials to the commune. In America the township lends its officials to the government.
I have said before that the principle of the sovereignty of the people hovers over the whole political system of the Anglo-Americans. Every page of this book will point out new applications of this doctrine.
In nations where the dogma of the sovereignty of the people prevails, each individual forms an equal part of that sovereignty and shares equally the government of the state.
Each individual is assumed to ‘be as educated, virtuous, and powerful as any of his fellows.
Why, then, should he obey society, and what are the natural limits of such obedience?
He obeys society not because he is inferior to those who direct it, nor because he is incapable of ruling himself, but because union with his fellows seems useful to him and he knows that that union is impossible without a regulating authority.
Therefore, in all matters concerning the duties of citizens toward each other he is subordinate. In all matters that concern himself alone he remains the master; he is free and owes an account of his actions to God alone. From this derives the maxim that the individual is the best and only judge of his own interest: and that society has no right to direct his behavior unless it feels harmed by him or unless it needs his concurrence.
This doctrine is universally accepted in the United States. Elsewhere I will examine its general influence on the ordinary actions of life; here and now I am concerned only with townships.
The township, taken as a whole in relation to the. central government, resembles any other individual to whom the theory just mentioned applies.
So in the United States municipal liberty derives straight from the dogma. of’ the sovereignty of the people; all the American republics have recognized this independence more or less, but there were circumstances particularly favorable to its growth among the people of New England.
In that part of the Union political life was born in the very heart of the townships; one might almost say that in origin each of them was a little independent nation. Later, when the kings of England claimed their share of. sovereignty, they limited themselves to taking over the central power. They left the townships as they had found them. Now the new England townships are subordinate, but in the beginning this was not so, or hardly so. Therefore they have not received their powers; on the contrary, it would seem that they have surrendered a portion, of their powers for the benefit of the state; that is an important distinction which the reader should always bear in mind.
In general the townships are subordinate to the state only where some interest that I shall call social is concerned, that is to say, some interest shared with others.
In all that concerns themselves alone the townships remain independent bodies, and I do not think one could find a single inhabitant of New England who would recognize the right of the government of the state to control matters of purely municipal interest.
Hence one finds the New England townships buying and selling, suing and being sued, increasing or reducing their budgets, and no administrative authority whatsoever thinks of standing in their way.
But there are social duties which they are bound to perform. Thus, if the state needs money, the township is not free to grant or refuse its help. If the state wants to open a road, the- township cannot bar its territory. If there is a police regulation, the township must carry it out. If the government wants to organize education on a uniform plan throughout the country, the- township must establish the schools required by the law. We shall see, when we come to speak of the administration of the United States, how and by whom, in these various cases, the townships are constrained to obedience.
Here I only wish to establish the fact of the obligation. Strict as this obligation is, the government of the state imposes it in principle only, and in its performance the township resumes all its independent rights. Thus taxes are, it is true, voted by the legislature, but they are assessed and collected by the township; the establishment of a school is obligatory, but the township builds it, pays for it, and controls it.
In France the state tax collector receives the communal taxes; in America the township tax collector collects state taxes.
So, whereas with us the, central government lends its agents to the commune, in America the township lends its agents to the government. That fact alone shows how far the two societies differ.
Spirit of the Township in New England
Why the new England township wins the affection of the inhabitants. Difficulty of creating municipal spirit in Europe. In America municipal rights and duties concur in forming that spirit. The homeland has more characteristic features in America than elsewhere. How municipal spirit manifests itself in New England. What happy results it produces there.
In America not only do municipal institutions exist, but there is also a municipal spirit which sustains and gives them life.
The New England township combines two advantages which, wherever they are found, keenly excite men’s interest; they are’ independence and power. It acts, it is true, within a sphere beyond which it cannot pass, but within that domain movements are free. This independence alone would give a real importance not warranted by size or population.
It is important to appreciate that, in general, men’s affections are drawn only in directions where power exists. Patriotism does not long prevail in a conquered country. The New Englander is attached to his township not so much because he was born there as because he sees the township as a free, strong corporation of which he is part and which is worth the trouble of trying to direct.
It often happens in Europe that governments themselves regret the absence of municipal spirit, for everyone agrees that municipal spirit is an important element in order and public tranquility, but they do not know how to produce it. In making municipalities strong and independent, they fear sharing their social power and exposing the state to risks of anarchy. However, if you take power and independence from a municipality, you may have docile subjects but you will not have citizens.
Another important fact must be noted. The New England township is shaped to form the nucleus of strong attachments, and there is meanwhile no rival center close by to attract the hot hearts of ambitious men.
County officials are not elected and their authority is limited. Even a state is only of secondary importance, being an obscure and placid entity. Few men are willing to leave the center of their interests and take trouble to win the right to help administer it.
The federal government does confer power and renown on those who direct it, but only a few can exercise influence there. The high office of President is hardly to be reached until a man is well on in years; as for other high federal offices, there is a large element of chance about attaining to them, and they go only to those who have reached eminence in some other walk of life. No ambitious man would make them the fixed aim of his endeavors. It is in the township, the center of the ordinary business of life, that the desire for esteem, the pursuit of substantial interests, and the taste for power and self-advertisement are concentrated; these passions, so often troublesome elements in society, take on a different character when exercised so close to home and, in a sense, within the family circle.
With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs. Apart from the voters, who from time to time are called on to act as the government, there are many and various officials who all, within their sphere, represent the powerful body in whose name they act. Thus a vast number of people make a good thing for themselves out of the power of the community and are interested in administration for selfish reasons.
The American system, which distributes local power among so many citizens, is also not afraid to multiply municipal duties. Americans rightly think that is a sort of religion strengthened by practical service.
Thus daily duties performed or rights exercised keep municipal life constantly alive. There is a continual gentle political activity which keeps society on the move without turmoil.
Americans love their towns for much the same reasons that high-landers love their mountains. In both cases the native land has emphatic and peculiar features; it has a more pronounced physiognomy than is found elsewhere.
In general, New England townships lead a happy life. Their government is to their taste as well as of their choice. With profound peace and material prosperity prevailing in America, there are few storms in municipal life. The township’s interests are easy to manage. Moreover, the people’s political education has been completed long ago, or rather they were already educated when they settled there. In New England there is not even a memory of distinctions in rank, so there is no part of the community tempted to oppress the rest, and injustices which affect only isolated individuals are forgotten in the general contentment. The government may have defects, and indeed they are easy to point out, but they do not catch the eye because the government really does emanate from the governed, and so long as it gets along somehow or other, a sort of parental pride protects it. Besides, there is no basis of comparison. Formerly England ruled the colonies as a group, but the people always looked after municipal affairs. So the sovereignty of the, people in the township is not ancient only, but primordial.
The New Englander is attached to his township because.it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights. (Vol. I, Part I Ch.5, pp. 62-71)
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Political Effects of Administrative Decentralization in the United States
Distinction to be made clear between governmental and administrative centralization. In the United States there is no administrative centralization, but very great centralization of government. Some troublesome effects resulting in the United States from extreme administrative decentralization. Administrative advantages from this order of things. The force which administers society is less well regulated, less enlightened, and less wise than in Europe, but it is much stronger. Political advantages from this same order of things. In the United States one is everywhere conscious of the nation. Support of the governed for the government. Provincial institutions increasingly necessary as social conditions become more democratic. Why?
“Centralization” is now a word constantly repeated but is one that, generally speaking, no one tries to define accurately.
There are, however, two very distinct types of centralization, which need to be well understood.
Certain interests, such as the enactment of general laws and the nation’s relations with foreigners, are common to all parts of the nation.
There are other interests of special concern to certain parts of the nation, such, for instance, as local enterprises.
To concentrate all the former in the same place or under the same directing power is to establish what I call governmental centralization.
To concentrate control of the latter in the same way is to establish what I call administrative centralization.
There are some points where these two sorts of centralization become confused. But by broadly classifying the matters that fall more particularly within the province of each, the distinction can easily be made.
One appreciates that centralization of government acquires immense strength when it is combined with administrative centralization. In that way it accustoms men to set aside their own wills constantly and completely, to obey not just once and one respect but always in everything. Then they are not only tamed by force, but their habits too are trained; they are isolated and then dropped one by one into the common mass.
These two types of centralization give each other mutual support and have a mutual attraction, but I cannot believe that they are inseparable.
Under Louis XIV France reached the greatest possible degree of centralization of government that can be conceived, for one man made the general laws and had the power to interpret them, and he represented France abroad and acted in her name. “I am the state,” he said, and he was right.
However, under Louis XIV there was much less administrative centralization than there is now.
In our own day we see one power, England, which has reached a very high degree of centralization of government; there the state seems to move as a single man; at will it can raise vast masses of men and assemble and carry its might wherever it wishes.
England, which has done such great things in the last fifty years, has no administrative centralization.
For my part, I cannot conceive that a nation can live, much less prosper, without a high degree of centralization of government.
But I think that administrative centralization only serves to enervate the peoples that submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish their civic spirit. Administrative centralization succeeds, it is true, in assembling, at a given time and place, all the available resources of the nation, but it militates against the increase of those resources. It brings triumph on the day of battle, but in the long run diminishes a nation’s power. So it can contribute wonderfully to the ephemeral greatness of one man but not to the permanent prosperity of a people.
One must note carefully that when it is said that a nation cannot act because it has no centralization, people are almost always talking of governmental centralization without realizing it. The German Empire, people keep saying, has never been able to take full advantage of its powers. Agreed. But why? Because the national power has never been centralized, because the state has never been able to enforce obedience to its general laws, because the separate parts of this great body have always had the right and the ability to refuse their cooperation to the representatives of the common authority even in matters of common interest; in other words, because it has never had any centralization of government. The same remark applies to the Middle Ages; the cause of all the miseries of feudal society was that power, not just administration, but of’ government, was divided among a thousand people and broken up in a thousand ways; the absence of all governmental centralization then prevented the nations of Europe from advancing energetically toward any goal.
We have seen that in the United States there was no administrative centralization. There is scarcely a trace of a hierarchy. There decentralization has been carried to a degree that no European nation would tolerate, I think without profound discomfort, and even in America it has produced some troublesome results. But there is a high degree of governmental centralization in the United States. It would be easy to demonstrate that national power is more concentrated than it ever was in any of the ancient European monarchies. Not only is there but one legislative body in each state, not only is there but one single authority that can create political life around it, but generally crowded assemblies of districts or of counties have been avoided for fear that such assemblies might be tempted to step beyond their administrative functions and interfere with the working of’ the government. In America the legislature of each state is faced by no power capable of’ resisting it: Nothing can check its progress, neither privileges, nor local immunities nor personal influence, nor even the authority of reason, for it represents the majority, which claims to be the unique organ of reason. So its own will sets the sole limits to its action. Beside it and under its power is the representative of executive authority, who, with the aid of force, has the duty to compel the discontented to obedience.
Weakness is found only in certain details of government action.
The American republics have no permanent armed force with which to overawe minorities, but so far no minority has been reduced to an appeal to arms, and the necessity for an army has not yet been felt. The state usually employs officials of the townships or counties in dealings with the citizens. Thus in New England, for example, it is a township’s assessor who fixes the taxes and its collector who receives them; the treasurer of the township hands over the money raised to the public treasury, and claims arising therefrom are submitted to the courts. Such a method of collecting taxes is slow and clumsy; it would be a constant embarrassment to any government requiring large, sums of money. In general, it is desirable that a government should have in all matters, essential to its existence, its own officers, appointed by it and dismissible by it, and should have speedy methods of procedure. But a central power organized like that of America will always find it easy to introduce more energetic and effective methods of action when needed.
The republics of the New World are not going to perish, as is often asserted, for lack of’ centralization; so far from being inadequately centralized, one can assert that the American governments carry it much too far; that I will demonstrate later. The legislative assemblies are constantly absorbing various remnants of governmental powers; they tend to appropriate them all to themselves, as the French Convention did. The social power thus centralized is constantly changing hands, for it is subject to the people’s power. It often lacks wisdom and foresight, because it can do anything. That is its danger. It is because of its very strength, not its weakness, that it is threatened with destruction one day.
Administrative decentralization produces several diverse effects in America.
We have seen that the Americans have almost entirely isolated the administration from the government; in doing this they seem to have overstepped the limits of sane reason, for order, even in secondary matters, is still a national interest.
As the state has no administrative officers of its own, stationed at fixed points in its territory, to whom it can give a common impulse, it seldom tries to establish general police regulations. Yet the need for such regulations is acutely felt. Europeans often notice the lack. This apparent disorder prevailing on the surface convinces them, at first glance, that there is complete anarchy in society; it is only when they examine the background of things that they are undeceived.
There are some enterprises concerning the whole state which cannot be carried out because there is no national administration to control them. Left to the care of townships or elected and temporary officers, they lead to no result, or nothing durable.
The partisans of centralization in Europe maintain that the government administers better than they can themselves; that may be true when the central government is enlightened and the local authorities are not; when it is active and they lethargic; when it is accustomed to command and they to obey. One can, moreover, appreciate that as centralization increases, that tendency is intensified, ‘the capacity of the one and the incapacity of the other become striking.
But I deny that that is so when, as in America, the people are enlightened, awake to their own interests, and accustomed to take thought for them.
On the contrary, I am persuaded that in that case the collective force of the citizens will always be better able to achieve social prosperity than the authority of the government.
I admit that it is difficult to suggest a sure method of awakening a slumbering people so as to supply the passions and enlightenment they lack; to persuade people to take an interest in their affairs is, I know well, an arduous enterprise. It would often be easier to get them interested in the details of court etiquette than in the repair off their common dwelling.
But I also think that when the central administration claims completely to replace the free concurrence of those primarily concerned, it is deceiving itself, or trying to deceive you.
A central power, however enlightened and wise one imagines it to be, can never alone see to all the details of the life of a great nation. It cannot do so because such a task exceeds human strength. When it attempts unaided to create and operate so much complicated machinery, it must be satisfied with very imperfect results or exhaust itself in futile efforts.
It is true, that centralization can easily succeed in imposing an external uniformity on men’s behavior and that that uniformity comes to be loved for itself without reference to its objectives, just as the pious may adore a statue, forgetting the divinity it represents.
Centralization easily imposes an aspect of regularity on day-to-day business; it can regulate the details of social control skillfully; check slight disorders and petty offenses; maintain the status quo of society, which cannot properly be called either decadence or progress; and keep society in that state of administrative somnolence which administrators are in the habit of calling good order and public tranquility. In a word, it excels at preventing, not at doing. When it’s a question of deeply stirring society or of setting it a rapid pace, its strength deserts it. Once its measures require any aid from individuals, this vast machine turns out to be astonishingly feeble; suddenly it is reduced to impotence.
Sometimes a centralized government does try, in despair, to summon the citizens to its aid; but it addresses them thus: “You must do what I want, as much as I want, and in precisely the way I require. You must look after the details without aspiring to direct the whole; you will work in the dark and later you will be able to judge my work by its results.” It is not on such terms that one wins the concurrence of human wills. Men must walk in freedom, responsible for their acts. Humanity is so constituted that it prefers to stay still rather than march forward without independence toward an unknown goal.
I will not deny that in the United States one often regrets the absence of those uniform rules which constantly regulate our lives in France.
Occasionally one encounters gross instances of social indifference and neglect there. Very occasionally major-blemishes appear completely at variance with the surrounding civilization.
Useful undertakings requiring continuous care and rigorous exactitude for success are often abandoned in the end, for in America as elsewhere, the people proceed by sudden impulses and momentary exertions.
Europeans, accustomed to the close and constant presence of officials interfering in almost everything, find it difficult to get used to the different machinery of municipal administration. Generally speaking, one may say that those little details of social regulations which make life smooth and comfortable are neglected in America, but the guarantees essential to man as a member of society exist there as everywhere. In America the force behind the state is much less well regulated, less enlightened, and less wise, but it is a hundred times more powerful than in Europe. Without doubt there is no other country on earth where people make such great efforts to achieve social prosperity. I know of no other people who have founded so many schools or such efficient ones, or churches more in touch with the religious needs of the inhabitants, or municipal roads better maintained. So it is no good looking in the United States for uniformity and permanence of outlook, minute care of details, or perfection of administrative procedures; what one does find is a picture of power, somewhat wild perhaps, but robust, and a life liable to mishaps but full of striving and animation.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that the villages and counties of the United States would be more efficiently administered by a central authority from outside, remaining a stranger to them, than by officials chosen from their midst, I will, if you insist, admit that there would be more security in America and that social resources would be more wisely and judiciously employed, if the administration of the whole country were concentrated in one pair of hands. But the political advantages derived by the Americans from a system of decentralization would make me prefer that to the opposite system.
What good is it to me, after all, if there is an authority always busy to see to the tranquil enjoyment of my pleasures and going ahead to brush all dangers away from my path without giving me even the trouble to think about it, if that authority, which protects me from the smallest thorns on my journey, is also the absolute master of my liberty and of my life? If it monopolizes all activity and life to such an extent that all around it must languish when it languishes, sleep when it sleeps, and perish if it dies?
There are countries in Europe where the inhabitant feels like some sort of farm laborer indifferent to the fate of the place where he dwells. The greatest changes may take place in his country without his concurrence; he does not even know precisely what has happened; he is in doubt; he has heard tell by chance of what goes on. Worse still, the condition of his village, the policing of his road, and the repair of his church and parsonage do not concern him; he thinks that all those things have nothing to do with him at all, but belong to a powerful stranger called the government. For his part, he enjoys what he has as a tenant, without feeling of ownership or any thought of improvement. His detachment from his own fate goes so far that if his own safety or that of his children is in danger, instead of trying to ward the peril off, he crosses his arms and waits for the whole nation to come to his aid. Furthermore, this man who has so completely sacrificed his freedom of will does not like obedience more than the next man. He submits, it is true, to the caprice of a clerk, but as soon as force is withdrawn, he will vaunt his triumph over the law as over a conquered foe. Thus he oscillates the whole time between servility and license.
When nations reach that point, either they must modify both laws and mores or they will perish, for the fount of public virtues has run dry; there are subjects still, but no citizens.
I say that such nations are made ready for conquest. If they do not vanish from the world’s scene it is because they are surrounded by people like or inferior to themselves or because they still have some sort of indefinable instinct of patriotism, some unconscious pride in the name they bear, some vague memory of past glory which, though not attached to anything in particular, does give them, when pressed, an urge for self-preservation.
It would be a mistake to find reassurance by remembering that certain peoples have made prodigious efforts to defend a country in which they lived almost as strangers. If one looks carefully, one will find that religion was almost always the main motive force in such cases.
For them the permanence, glory, and prosperity of the nation had become sacred dogmas, and in defending their country they defended also that holy city in which they were all citizens.
The Turkish peoples have never taken any part in the control of society’s affairs; nevertheless, they accomplish immense undertakings so long as they saw the triumph of the religion of Muhammad in the conquests of the sultans. Now their religion is departing; despotism alone remains; and they are falling.
Montesquieu, in attributing a peculiar force to despotism, did it an honor which, I think, it did not deserve. Despotism by itself can maintain nothing durable. When one looks close, one sees that what made absolute governments long prosperous was religion, not fear.
Look where you will, you will never find true power among men except in the free concurrence of their wills. Now, patriotism and religion are the only things in the world which will make the whole body of citizens go persistently forward toward the same goal.
No laws can bring back life to fading beliefs, but laws can make men care for the fate of their countries. It depends on the laws to awaken and direct that vague instinct of patriotism which never leaves the human heart, and by linking it to everyday thoughts, to make it a conscious and durable sentiment. And one should never say that it is too late to attempt that; nations do not grow old as men do. Each fresh generation is new material for the lawgiver to mold.
What I most admire in America is not the administrative but the political effects of decentralization. In the United States the motherland’s presence is felt everywhere. It is a subject of concern to the village and to the whole Union. The inhabitants care about each of their country’s interests as if it were their own. Each man takes pride in the nation; the successes it gains seem his own work, and he becomes elated; he rejoices in the general prosperity from which he profits. He has much the same feeling for his country as one has for one’s family, and a sort of selfishness makes him care for the state.
Often to a European a public official stands for force; to an American he stands for right. It is therefore fair to say that a man never obeys another man, but justice, or the law.
Moreover, he has conceived an opinion of himself which is often exaggerated but almost always salutary. He trusts fearlessly in his own powers, which seem to him sufficient for everything. Suppose that an individual thinks of some enterprise, and that enterprise has a direct bearing on the welfare of society; it does not come into his head to appeal to public authority for its help. He publishes his plan, offers to carry it out, summons other individuals to aid his efforts, and personally struggles against all obstacles. No doubt he is often less successful than the state would have been in his place, but in the long run the sum of all private undertakings far surpasses anything the government might have done.
Administrative authority arouses neither jealousy nor hatred, for it is close to the governed and in a sense represents them. As its means of action are limited, each man feels that he cannot rely solely upon it.
So when an official intervenes in his proper sphere, he is not left to his own resources as in Europe. Private people do not think that their duties have ceased because the representative of the public has come to take action. On the contrary, everyone guides, supports, and sustains him.
These efforts of private individuals combined with those of the authorities often accomplish things which the most concentrated and vigorous administration would be unable to achieve.
I could cite many facts in support of what I am saying, but I prefer to select one only, and the one I know best.
In America the means available to the authorities for the discovery of crimes and arrest of criminals are few.
There is no administrative police force, and passports are unknown. The criminal police in the United States cannot be compared to that of France; the officers of the public prosecutor’s office are few, and the initiative in prosecutions is not always theirs; and the examination of prisoners is rapid and oral. Nevertheless, I doubt whether in any other country crime so seldom escapes punishment.
The reason is that everyone thinks he has an interest in furnishing proofs of an offense and in arresting the guilty man.
During my stay in the United States I have seen the inhabitants of a county where a serious crime had been committed spontaneously forming committees with the object of catching the criminal and handing him over to the courts.
In Europe the criminal is a luckless man fighting to save his head from the authorities; in a sense the population are mere spectators of the struggle. In America he is an enemy of the human race and every human being is against him.
I think that provincial institutions are useful for all peoples, but none have a more real need of them than those whose society is democratic.
In an aristocracy one can always be sure that a certain degree of order will be maintained in freedom.
The ruling class has much to lose, and order is an important interest for the rulers.
It is also fair to say that in an aristocracy the people are always defended from the excesses of despotism, for there are always organized forces ready to resist a despot.
A democracy without provincial institutions has no guarantee against such ills.
How can liberty be preserved in great matters among a multitude that has never learned to use it in small ones?
How can tyranny be resisted in a country where each individual is weak and where no common interest unites individuals?
Those who fear license and those who are afraid of absolute power should both, therefore, desire the gradual growth of provincial liberties.
Moreover, I am convinced that no nations are more liable to fall under the yoke of administrative centralization than those with a democratic social condition.
Several causes contribute to this result, among which are the following:
It is a permanent tendency in such nations to concentrate all governmental power in the hands of the only power which directly represents the people, because apart from the people there is nothing to be seen but equal individuals mingled in a common mass.
Now, when one sole authority is already armed with all the attributes of government, it is very difficult for it not to try and penetrate into all the details of administration, and in the long run it hardly ever fails to find occasion to do so. We have seen this happen in France.
In the French Revolution there were two opposite tendencies which must not be confused; one favored freedom, the other despotism.
Under the ancient monarch the king alone made the law. Beneath his sovereign power there were some half-ruined remains of provincial institutions. These provincial institutions were incoherent, ill-regulated, and often absurd. In the hands of the aristocracy they had sometimes been instruments of oppression.
The Revolution pronounced at the same time against royalty and against provincial institutions. Revolutionary hatred was directed indiscriminately against all that had gone before, both the absolute power and those elements which could temper its rigors. The Revolution was both republican and centralizing.
This ambivalent character of the French Revolution was a fact of which the lovers of absolute power took great pains to make use. When you see them defending administrative centralization, do you think they are working in the interests of despotism? Not at all; they are defending one of the great conquests of the Revolution. In that way a man may retain popularity while being an enemy of the rights of the people; he may be the hidden servant of tyranny and the avowed lover of liberty.
I have traveled in those two countries where provincial liberties have reached their fullest growth, and I have listened to the views of the parties dividing those nations.
In America I have found men who secretly aspire to destroy the democratic institutions of their country. In England I have met others who loudly attack the aristocracy. But I have not met a single man who did not regard provincial freedom as a great blessing.
In both countries I have heard the ills of the state attributed to an infinite variety of causes, but never to local freedom.
I have heard citizens attribute the greatness and prosperity of their country to a multitude of reasons, but I found they all put the advantages of provincial freedom first and foremost of all.
Am I to believe that men who are naturally so divided that they agree neither on religious doctrines nor on political theories, but who do agree on one point, and that the matter they can best judge since they see its daily operation, are yet mistaken on that point?
Only peoples having few provincial institutions or none deny the usefulness of them; that is to say, it is only those who know nothing of them who slander them. (Vol. I, Part I, Ch. 5 pp 87-98)
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On The Use Which the Americans Make of Associations in Civil Life
I do not propose to speak of those political associations by means of which men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of the majority of the encroachments of royal power. I have treated that subject elsewhere. It is clear that unless each citizen learned to combine with his fellows to preserve his freedom at a time when he individually is becoming weaker and so less able in isolation to defend it, tyranny would be bound to increase with those associations in civil life which have no political object.
In the United States, political associations are only one small part of the immense number of different types of associations found there.
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth of propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.
Since that time I have traveled in England, a country from which the Americans took some of their laws and many of their customs, but it seemed to me that the principle of association was not used nearly so constantly or so adroitly there.
A single Englishman will often carry through some great undertaking, whereas Americans form associations for no matter how small a matter. Clearly the former regard association as a powerful means of action, but the latter seem to think of it as the only one.
Thus the most democratic country in the world now is that in which men have in our time carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of common desires and have applied this new technique to the greatest number of purposes. Is that just an accident, or is there really some necessary connection between associations and equality?
In aristocratic societies, while there is a multitude of individuals who can do nothing on their own, there is also a small number of very rich and powerful men, each of whom can carry out great undertakings on his own.
In aristocratic societies men have no need to unite for action, since they are held firmly together.
Every rich and powerful citizen is in practice the head of a permanent and enforced association composed of all those whom he makes help in the execution of his designs.
But among democratic peoples all the citizens are independent and weak. They can do hardly anything for themselves, and none of them is in a position to force his fellows to help him. They would all therefore find themselves helpless if they did not learn to help each other voluntarily.
If the inhabitants of democratic countries had neither the right nor the taste for uniting for political objects, their independence would run great risks, but they could keep both their wealth and their knowledge for a long time. But if they did not learn some habits of acting together in the affairs of daily life, civilization itself would be in peril. A people in which individuals had lost the power of carrying through great enterprises by themselves, without acquiring the faculty of doing them together, would soon fall back into barbarism.
Unhappily, the same social conditions that render associations so necessary to democratic nations also make their formation more difficult there than elsewhere.
When several aristocrats want to form an association, they can easily do so. As each of them carries great weight in society, a very small number of associates may be enough. So, being few, it is easy to get to know and understand one another and agree on rules.
But that is not so easy in democratic nations, where, if the association is to have any power the associates must be very numerous.
I know that many of my contemporaries are not the least embarrassed by this difficulty. They claim that as the citizens become weaker and more helpless, the government must become proportionately more skillful and active, so that society should do what is no longer possible for individuals. They think that answers the whole problem, but I think they are mistaken.
A government could take the place of some of the largest associations in America, and some particular states of the Union have already attempted that. But what political power could ever carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings which associations daily enable American citizens to control?
It is easy to see the time coming in which men will be less and less able to produce, by each alone, the commonest bare necessities of life. The tasks of government must therefore perpetually increase, and its efforts to cope with them must spread its net ever wider. The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect. Must the public administration cope with every industrial undertaking beyond the competence of one individual citizen? And if ultimately, as a result of the minute subdivision of landed property, the land itself is so infinitely parceled out that it can only be cultivated by associations of laborers, must the head of government leave the helm of state to guide the plow?
The morals and intelligence of a democratic people would be in as much danger as its commerce and industry if ever a government wholly usurped the place of private associations.
Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed only by the reciprocal action of men one upon another.
I have shown how these influences are reduced almost to nothing in democratic countries; they must therefore be artificially created, and only association can do that.
When aristocrats adopt a new idea or conceive a new sentiment, they lend it something of the conspicuous station they themselves occupy, and so the mass is bound to take notice of them, and they easily influence the minds and hearts of all around.
In democratic countries only the governing power is naturally in a position so to act, but it is easy to see that its action is always inadequate and often dangerous.
A government, by itself, is equally incapable of refreshing the circulation of feelings and ideas among a great people, as it is of controlling every industrial undertaking. Once it leaves the sphere of politics to launch out on this new track, it will, even without intending this, exercise an intolerable tyranny. For a government can only dictate precise rules. It imposes the sentiments and ideas which it favors, and it is never easy to tell the difference between its advice and its commands.
Things will be even worse if the government supposes that its real interest is to prevent the circulation of ideas. It will then stand motionless and let the weight of its deliberate somnolence lie heavy on all.
It is therefore necessary that it should not act alone.
Among democratic peoples associations must take the place of the powerful private persons whom equality of conditions has eliminated.
As soon as several Americans have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce before the world, they seek each other out, and when found, they unite. Thenceforth they are no longer isolated individuals, but a power conspicuous from the distance whose actions serve as an example; when it speaks, men listen.
The first time that I heard in America that one hundred thousand men had publicly promised never to drink alcoholic liquor, I thought it more of a joke than a serious matter and for the moment did not see why these very abstemious citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides.
In the end I came to understand that these hundred thousand Americans, frightened by the progress of drunkenness around them, wanted to support sobriety by their patronage. They were acting in just the same way as some great territorial magnate who dresses very plainly to encourage a contempt of luxury among simple citizens. One may fancy that if they had lived in France each of these hundred thousand would have made individual representations to the government asking it to supervise all the public houses throughout the realm.
Nothing, in my view, more deserves attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America. American political and industrial associations easily catch our eyes, but the others tend not to be noticed. And even if we do notice them we tend to misunderstand them, hardly ever having seen anything similar before. However, we should recognize that the latter are as necessary as the former to the American people; perhaps more so.
In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
Among laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads. Vol. II, Part 2, Ch 5 pp 512-517
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What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear
I noticed during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society similar to that found there could lay itself peculiarly open to the establishment of a despotism. And on my return to Europe I saw how far most of our princes had made use of the ideas, feelings, ad needs engendered by such a state of society to enlarge the sphere of their power.
I was thus led to think that the nations of Christendom might perhaps in the end fall victims to the same sort of oppression as formerly lay heavy on several of the peoples of antiquity.
More detailed study of the subject and the new ideas which came into my mind during five years meditation have not lessened my fears but have changed their object.
In past ages there had never been a sovereign so absolute and so powerful that he could by himself alone, without the aid of secondary powers, undertake to administer every part of a great empire. No one had ever tried to subject all his people indiscriminately to the details of a uniform code, nor personally to prompt and lead every single one of his subjects. It had never occurred to the mind of man to embark on such an undertaking and had it done so, inadequate education, imperfect administrative machinery, and above all the natural obstacles raised by unequal conditions would soon have put a stop to so grandiose a design.
When the power of the Roman emperors was at its height, the different peoples of the empire still preserved very various customs and mores. Although they obeyed the same monarch, most provinces had a separate administration. There were powerful and active municipalities in profusion, and though the whole government of the empire was concentrated in the hands of the emperor alone and he could, if necessary, decide everything, yet the details of social life and personal everyday existence normally escaped his control.
It is true that the emperors had immense and unchecked power, so that they could use the whole might of the empire to indulge any strange caprice. They often abused this power to deprive a man arbitrarily of life or property. The burden of their tyranny fell most heavily on some, but it never spread over a great number. It had a few main targets and left the rest alone. It was violent, but its extent was limited.
But if a despotism should be established among the democratic nations of our day, it would probably have a different character. It would be more widespread and milder; it would degrade men rather than torment them.
Doubtless in such an age of education and equality as our own, rulers could more easily bring all public powers into their own hands alone, and they could impinge deeper and more habitually into the sphere of private interests than was ever possible in antiquity. But that same equality which makes despotism easy tempers it. We have seen how, as men become more alike and more nearly equal, public mores becomes more human and gentle. When there is no citizen with great power or wealth, tyranny in some degree lacks both target and stage. When all fortunes are middling, passions are naturally restrained, imagination limited, and pleasures simple. Such universal moderation tempers the sovereign’s own spirit and keeps within certain limits the disorderly urges of desire.
Apart from these reasons, based on the nature of the state of society itself, I could adduce many others which would take me outside the range of my subject, but I prefer to remain within these self-imposed limits.
Democratic governments might become violent and cruel at times of great excitement and danger, but such crises will be rare and brief.
Taking into consideration the trivial nature of men’s passions now, the softness of their mores, the extent of their education, the purity of their religion, their steady habits of patient work, and the restraint which they all show in the indulgence of both their vices and their virtues, I do not expect their leaders to be tyrants, but rather schoolmasters.
Thus I think that the type of oppression which threatens democracies is different from anything there has ever been in the world before. Our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I have myself vainly searched for a word which will exactly express the whole of the conception I have formed. Such old words as “despotism” and “tyranny” do not fit. The thing is new, and as I cannot find a word for it, I must try to define it.
I am trying to imagine under what novel features despotism may appear in the world. In the first place, I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Mankind, for him, consists in his children and his personal friends. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, they are near enough, but he does not notice them. He touches them but feels nothing. He exists in and for himself, and though he still may have a family, one can at least say that he has not got a fatherland.
Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare its charges for a man’s life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?
Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to endure it and often even regard it as beneficial.
Having thus taken each citizen in turn in its powerful grasp and shaped him to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.
I have always thought that this brand of orderly, gentle, peaceful slavery which I have just described could be combined, more easily than is generally supposed, with some of the external forms of freedom, and that there is a possibility of its getting itself established even under the shadow of the sovereignty of the people.
Our contemporaries are ever a prey to two conflicting passions: they feel the need of guidance, and they long to stay free. Unable to wipe out these two contradictory instincts, they try to satisfy them both together. Their imagination conceives a government which is unitary, protective, and all-powerful, but elected by the people. That gives them a chance to relax. They console themselves for being under schoolmasters by thinking that they have chosen them themselves. Each individual lets them put the collar on, for he sees that it is not a person, or a class of persons, but society itself which holds the end of the chain.
Under this system the citizens quit the state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then fall back into it.
A great many people nowadays very easily fall in with this brand of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people. They think they have done enough to guarantee personal freedom when it is to the government of the state that they have handed it over. That is not good enough for me. I am much less interested in the question who my master is than in the fact of obedience.
Nevertheless, I freely admit that such a constitution strikes me as infinitely preferable to one which, having brought all powers together, should then hand them over to one irresponsible man or body of men. Of all the forms that democratic despotism might take, that assuredly would be the worst.
When the sovereign is elected, or when he is closely supervised by a legislature which is in very truth elected and free, he may go to greater lengths in oppressing the individual citizen, but such oppression is always less degrading. For each man can still think, though he is obstructed and reduced to powerlessness, that his obedience is only to himself and that it is to one of his desires that he is sacrificing all the others.
I also appreciate that, when the sovereign represents the nation and is dependent on it, the powers and right taken from each citizen are not used only for the benefit of the head of state, but for the state itself, and that private persons derive some advantage from the independence which they have handed over to the public.
To create a national representation of the people in a very centralized country does, therefore, diminish the extreme evils which centralization can produce but does not entirely abolish them.
I see clearly that by this means room is left for individual intervention in the most important affairs, but there is still no place for it in small or private matters. It is too often forgotten that it is especially dangerous to turn men into slaves where details only are concerned. For my part, I should be inclined to think that liberty is less necessary in great matters than in tiny ones if I imagined that one could ever be safe in the enjoyment of one sort of freedom without the other.
Subjection in petty affairs, is manifest daily and touches all citizens indiscriminately. It never drives men to despair, but continually thwarts them and leads them to give up using their free will. It slowly stifles their spirits and enervates their souls, whereas obedience demanded only occasionally in matters of great moment brings servitude into play only from time to time, and its weight falls only on certain people. It does little good to summon those very citizens who have been made so dependent on the central power from time to time. However important, this brief and occasional exercise of free will will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculty of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, so that they will slowly fall below the level of humanity.
I must add that they will soon become incapable of using the one great privilege left to them. Those democratic peoples which have introduced freedom into the sphere of politics, while allowing despotism to grow in the administrative sphere, have been led into the strangest paradoxes. For the conduct of small affairs, where plain common sense is enough, they hold that the citizens are not up to the job. But they give these citizens immense prerogatives where the government of the whole state is concerned. They are turned alternatively into the playthings of the sovereign and into his masters being either greater than kings or less than men. When they have tried all the different system e lection without finding one to suit them, they will look surprised and go on seeking for another, as if the ills they see did not belong much more to the constitution of the country itself than to that of the electoral body.
It really is difficult to imagine how people who have entirely given up managing their own affairs could make a wise choice of those who are to do that for them. One should never expect a liberal, energetic, and wise government to originate in the votes of a people of servants.” (Vol. II Part IV Ch 6 pp 690-694)