American magistrates are allowed a wider arbitrary discretion than is common in Europe, because they are more constantly watched by the sovereign people, and are more absolutely at their mercy 1.

Every office is, in America, a salaried office; nor can anything be more conformable to the spirit of a democracy. The minor offices are, relatively to Europe, well paid, the higher ones ill paid. Nobody wears any dress or displays any insignia of office 2.

Administration has both an unstable and an unscientific character. Few records are kept of the acts of departments: little information is accumulated: even original documents are neglected. Tocqueville was sometimes given such documents in answer to his queries, and told that he might keep them. The conduct of public business is a hand to mouth, rule of thumb sort of affair 3.

Not less instability reigns in the field of legislation. Laws are being constantly changed; nothing remains fixed or certain *.

cause of the excellence he ascribes to the Senate, considering that the more obvious, as well as the true, explanation is to be found in the fact that the wider powers and longer term of the Senate made the ablest men seek entrance to it.

1 The only instance given of this is in the discretion allowed to the officers of the New England townships, whose functions are, however, unimportant. The statement cannot have been generally true.

2 This remained true till very recent years as regards public officials, save and except the Judges of the Supreme Court when sitting at Washington. But lately the Supreme Court Judges of some States have begun to wear

gowns.

* This has ceased to be true in Federal administration, and in that of the more advanced States.

Tocqueville does not say whether he intends this remark to apply to State legislation only or to Federal legislation also. He quotes dicta of Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson to the same effect, but these testimonies, or most of them, refer to a time anterior to the creation of the Federal

It is a mistake to suppose that democratic govern. ments are specially economical. They are parsimonious in salaries, at least to the higher officials, but they spend freely on objects beneficial to the mass of the people, such as education, while the want of financial skill involves a good deal of waste. You must not expect economy where those who pay the bulk of the taxes are a mere fraction of those who direct their expenditure. If ever America finds herself among dangers, her taxation will be as heavy as that of European monarchies.

There is little bribery of voters, but many charges against the integrity of politicians. Now the corruption of the 'governors' is worse than that of the 'governed,' for it lowers the tone of public morals by presenting the spectacle of prosperous turpitude.

The American democracy is self-indulgent and selfcomplacent, slow to recognize, still more slow to correct, its faults. But it has the unequalled good fortune of being able to commit reparable errors (la faculté de faire des fautes réparables). It can sin with impunity.

It is eminently ill-fitted to conduct foreign policy. Fortunately it has none.

The benefits which American society derives from its democratic government are summed up as follows:

As the majority make the laws, their general tendency, in spite of many errors in detail, is to benefit the majority, because though the means may sometimes Constitution. If it is true that State laws were being constantly changed in 1832, this can have been true only of administrative statutes, not of private law generally. One is tempted to believe that Tocqueville was unconsciously comparing America with France, where the Code has arrested legislation to an extent surprising to an English observer.

be ill chosen, the end is always the same. Hence the

country prospers.

Every one is interested in the welfare of the country, because his own welfare is bound up with it. This patriotism may be only an enlarged egotism, but it is powerful nevertheless, for it is a permanent sentiment, independent of transient enthusiasms. Its character appears in the childish intolerance of criticism which the people display. They will not permit you to find fault with any one of their institutions or habits, not even if you praise all the rest 1.

There is a profound respect for every political right, and therefore for every magistrate, and for the authority of the law, which is the work of the people themselves. If there be exceptions to this respect, they are to be found among the rich, who fear that the law may be made or used to their detriment.

The infinite and incessant activity of public life, the responsibilities it casts on the citizen, the sense of his importance which it gives him, have stimulated his whole nature, and made him enterprising in all private affairs also. Hence, in great measure, the industrial prosperity of the country. Democracy effects more for the material progress of a nation than in the way of rendering it great in the arts, or in poetry, or in manners, or in elevation of character, or in the capacity for acting on other nations and leaving a great name in history.

We now come to the darker side of the picture. In democracies, the majority is omnipotent, and in America

1 Every one knows how frequently European visitors used to comment upon this American trait. It is now much less noticeable than formerly. I can even say from experience that it has sensibly diminished since 1870.

the evils hence flowing are aggravated by the shortness of the term for which a legislature is chosen, by the weakness of the Executive, by the incipient disposition to. choose even the judges by popular vote, by the notion universally accepted that the majority must be right. The majority in a legislature being unchecked, laws are hastily made and altered, administration has no permanence, officials are allowed a dangerously wide range of arbitrary authority. There is no escape from the 7 tyranny of the majority. It dominates even thought, for bidding, not indeed by law, but through social penalties no less effective than legal ones, the expression of any opinion displeasing to the ordinary citizen. In theology, even in philosophy, one must beware of any divergence from orthodoxy. No one dare tell an unwelcome truth to the people, for it will receive nothing but incense. Such repression sufficiently explains the absence of great writers and of great characters in public life. It is not therefore of weakness that free government in America will ever perish, but through excess of strength, the majority driving the minority to despair and to arms.

There are, however, influences which temper the despotism of the majority. One is the existence of a strong system of local self-government, whereby nearly all administration is decentralized. Another is the power of the lawyers, a class everywhere disposed to maintain authority and to defend that which exists, and specially so disposed in England and America because the law which they study and practise is founded on precedents and despises abstract reason. A third exists in the jury, and particularly the jury in its action in civil causes, for it teaches the people not only the

regular methods of law and justice, but respect for law and for the judges who administer it.

Next we come to an enumeration of the causes which maintain republican government. They are, over and above the constitutional safeguards already discussed, the following:

The absence of neighbouring States, and the consequent absence of great wars, of financial crises 1, of invasions or conquests. How dangerous to republics is the passion for military glory is shown by the two elections of General Jackson to be President, a man of violent temper and limited capacity, recommended by nothing but the memory of his victory at New Orleans twenty years before 2.

The absence of a great capital.

The material prosperity of the country, due to its immense extent and natural resources, which open a boundless field in which the desire of gain and the love of independence may gratify themselves and render the vices of man almost as useful to society as his virtues. The passions which really agitate America are commercial, not political.

The influence of religion. American Protestantism is republican and democratic; American Catholicism no less so; for Catholicism itself tends to an equality of conditions, since it treats all men alike. The Catholic clergy are as hearty republicans as any others.

The indirect influence of religion on manners and

1 This observation seems strange indeed to any one who remembers the commercial history of the United States since the great crisis of 1838.

' Jackson's popularity began with his military exploit: but his hold on the people was due to other causes also. His election coincided with the rise of the great democratic wave already referred to.