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Some remains of aristocratic institutions in the heart of the most complete democracy.—Why?—One must distinguish carefully what is of Puritan origin and of English origin.
The reader must not draw consequences too general and too absolute from what precedes.
no one can disengage himself entirely from the past;
When one wants to know and judge the Anglo-Americans of our day, one ought therefore to distinguish carefully what is of Puritan origin or of English origin.
a single example
The civil and criminal legislation of the Americans recognizes only two means of action: prison or bail.
The rich man,
all penalties that the law inflicts are reduced to fines.42 What is more aristocratic than legislation like this?
It is in England that one must seek the explanation of this phenomenon: the laws I speak of are English.
Americans have not changed
The thing that a people changes least, after its usages, is its civil legislation.
The picture that American society presents is, if I can express myself so, covered with a democratic finish, beneath which from time to time one sees the old colors of aristocracy showing through.
Chapter 3 SOCIAL STATE OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS
In order to know the legislation and mores of a people, one must therefore begin by studying its social state.
The social state of the Americans is eminently democratic.
a very great equality reigned among the emigrants who came to settle on the shores of New England. Not even the seed of aristocracy was ever deposited in this part of the Union. One could never found any but intellectual influences here.
This took place east of the Hudson; to the southwest of this river and downward to Florida it was otherwise.
great English property owners had come to settle.
Aristocratic principles, and with them English estate laws, had been imported.
One therefore saw wealthy landed property owners in this part of the continent; but their influence was not precisely aristocratic as it is understood in Europe since they possessed no privileges, and since cultivation by slaves gave them no tenant farmers and consequently no patronage.
Still, the great proprietors to the south of the Hudson formed a superior class, having ideas and tastes of its own and generally concentrating political action within itself.
It was this class that, in the South, put itself at the head of the insurrection: to it the American Revolution owes its greatest men.
In this period the whole of society was shaken:
it was estate law that made equality take its last step.
These laws belong, it is true, to the civil order; but they ought to be placed at the head of all political institutions, for they have an incredible influence on the social state of peoples, of which political laws are only the expression.
When estate law permits, and even more so when it orders equal partition of the father’s goods among all the children, its effects are of two sorts;
In countries where legislation establishes equality of partition, goods and particularly territorial fortunes will therefore have a permanent tendency to diminish.
the law of equal partition does not exert its influence only on the fate of goods; it acts on the very souls of property owners and calls their passions to its aid. It is its indirect effects that rapidly destroy great fortunes and above all great domains.
In peoples where estate law is founded on the right of primogeniture,
family spirit is in a way materialized in the land.
When estate law establishes equal partition, it destroys the intimate connection that exists between the spirit of the family and preservation of the land;
Once divided, great landed properties are no longer remade; for the small property owner draws more revenue from his field2 proportionately than the great property owner from his;
As the family no longer presents itself to the mind as anything but vague, indeterminate, and uncertain, each concentrates on the comfort of the present;
Thus not only does estate law make it difficult for families to preserve the same domains intact, but it takes away from them the desire to make the attempt, and it brings them in a way to cooperate with it in their own ruin.
English legislation on the transmission of goods was abolished in almost all the states in the period of the Revolution. The law of entail was modified in such a manner as to hinder the free circulation of goods only in an imperceptible manner.
Today, when hardly sixty years have elapsed,
the families of the great landed property owners have almost all been swallowed up within the common mass.
At the end of the last century hardy adventurers began to penetrate the valleys of the Mississippi.
In the West one can observe democracy reaching its furthest limit.
In that part of the American continent, the population therefore escapes not only the influence of great names and great wealth, but of that natural aristocracy that flows from enlightenment and virtue.
But it is not only fortunes that are equal in America; up to a certain point equality extends to intelligence itself.
Primary instruction there is within reach of each; higher instruction is within reach of almost no one.
at fifteen they enter into a career; thus their education most often ends in the period when ours begins.
There does not exist in America, therefore, any class in which the penchant for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with comfort and inherited leisure, and which holds the works of the intellect in honor.
intelligence, while remaining unequal as the Creator wished, finds equal means at its disposition.
Men show themselves to be more equal in their fortunes and in their intelligence or, in other terms, more equally strong than they are in any country in the world and than they have been in any century of which history keeps a memory.
POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE SOCIAL STATE OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS
Now I know only two manners of making equality reign in the political world: rights must be given to each citizen or to no one.
For peoples who have reached the same social state as the Anglo-Americans it is therefore very difficult to perceive a middle term between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one alone.
peoples whose social state is democratic
