The making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America : 2nd ed.

The Making of Tocqueville’s

Democracy in America

s

James T. Schleifer

The Making of Tocqueville’s

Democracy in America

Second Edition

s

james t. schleifer

Liberty Fund

indianapolis

This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established

to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible

individuals.

The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif

for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word

“freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written

about 2300 b.c. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

q 2000 Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved

First published in 1980 by the University of North Carolina Press

Printed in the United States of America

04 03 02 01 00 c 54321

04 03 02 01 00 p 54321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schleifer, James T., 1942–

The making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-86597-204-4 (hardcover: alk. paper).

isbn 0-86597-205-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805–1859. De la de´mocratie en

Ame´rique. I. Title.

jk216 in process

306.280973—dc21 99-25721

Liberty Fund, Inc.

8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300

Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684

to alison, kate, and meg

Mary Mottley, Tocqueville’s future wife (ca. 1830)

(Courtesy of George W. Pierson)

Alexis de Tocqueville (ca. 1830)

(Courtesy of George W. Pierson)

Contents

s

List of Illustrations xi

Foreword by George W. Pierson xiii

Preface to the Liberty Fund Edition xix

Preface to the First Edition xxi

part i

Tocqueville’s Second Voyage to America, 1832–1840

1. The Writing of the First Part of the Democracy 3

2. An Expanding Task Resumed 23

part ii

How to Account for America? Tocqueville Looks

at Some Particular Causes Physiques

3. An Hypothesis Weighed and Rejected 49

4. Further Considerations of Environment 65

5. Was Race a Sufficient Explanation of the American

Character? 82

6. The Transformation of a Continent 97

part iii

Tocqueville and the Union: The Nature and Future

of American Federalism

7. The Bond between the States and the Central

Government 115

x Contents

8. A Prophet in Error 135

9. How Large Might a Republic Be? 149

part iv

Democracy, Centralization, and Democratic Despotisms

10. Centralization and Local Liberties 161

11. Where Would Power Accumulate? 185

12. Administrative Centralization and Some Remedies 203

13. Tocqueville’s Changing Visions of Democratic Despotism 221

part v

Democracy, the Individual, and the Masses

14. The Tyranny of the Majority 241

15. The Tyranny of the Majority: Some Paradoxes 265

16. Would De´mocratie Usher in a New Dark Ages? 279

17. De´mocratie and Egoı¨sme 290

18. From Egoı¨sme to Individualisme 305

part vi

What Tocqueville Meant by De´mocratie

19. Some Meanings of De´mocratie 325

20. Tocqueville’s Return to America 340

Epilogue: How Many Democracies? 354

Selected Bibliography 369

Index 387

Illustrations

s

Mary Mottley v

Alexis de Tocqueville vi

A page of the original working manuscript 14

M. le Comte Herve´ de Tocqueville 18

Gustave de Beaumont 19

Title page of De la De´mocratie en Ame´rique, 1835 20

Alexis de Tocqueville 24

From the “Rubish” 26

The Tocqueville Chaˆteau 27

Demander a` G. [Gustave] et L. [Louis] 43

Foreword

s

Tocqueville? In this second half of the twentieth century—in our age

of social anxieties and national self-questioning—thoughtful people

have been turning more and more to the complex but extraordinar￾ily illuminating work that the young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocque￾ville, composed about us almost a century and a half ago.

This work was entitled Democracy in America (De la De´mocratie

en Ame´rique), and it appeared, as we know, in four volumes. The

first two volumes, published in 1835 and translated in England and

republished in an American edition in 1838, described and analyzed

the American experiment with a clarity, balance, and penetration

that were astonishing, and with an overall approval that surprised

and delighted American readers. Overnight they became classic and

were printed and reprinted, with editions for use in our schools. The

second two volumes, only finished and translated in 1840, seemed to

focus on equality, or egalitarianism in the modern world, at least as

much as on American democratic self-government. Obviously they

were philosophic and more remote. Less obviously, we were not cul￾turally ready to assimilate Tocqueville’s pioneering projections into

the psychology and sociology of the masses. We regarded ourselves

as exceptions, as under a special destiny. So volumes three and four

were accepted, but much less read.

Then times changed. After the Civil War, as nationalism replaced

federalism, and as industrialism took over and the cities grew, Tocque￾ville’s institutional descriptions of what had been an agrarian repub￾lic (volumes one and two) became more and more out of date, while

xiv Foreword

his anxieties about the democratic masses (volumes three and four)

appeared to have been refuted by the dazzling expansion and pros￾perity of the nation. In 1888 James Bryce published his American

Commonwealth. And in short order this new classic replaced the old

Democracy in schools or private libraries.

So Tocqueville was almost forgotten—but has now been revived.

A part of the Tocqueville revival (which began about 1938 and

which bids fair to continue for many years) was the rediscovery of

the Democracy in America, and especially of the second two volumes.

What Tocqueville had had to say about American materialism and

money-mindedness, about the cultural shallowness of an activist and

problem-oriented society, about the instincts and jealous mediocrity

of the masses, about the tyranny of the majority and suffocation by

sheer numbers, about what wars might do to substitute centraliza￾tion for freedom, or about the risks of despotism from a democra￾tized bureaucracy, or about the loss of private energy in a welfare

state—indeed about an astonishing range of contemporary discom￾forts and anxieties—rather suddenly and irresistibly, after the Great

Depression and World War II and the disillusionments of our world￾wide responsibilities, came to seem prophetic, and not only prophetic

but challenging and profoundly instructive. So the De´mocratie has

been partially or wholly retranslated in two important new editions,

has reentered the curriculum in our colleges and universities, and is

resorted to and quoted by writers of all parties and persuasions (see

the able analysis by Robert Nisbet, “Many Tocquevilles,” in American

Scholar, winter 1976–77).

A second element contributing to the Tocqueville revival on both

sides of the Atlantic has been the recovery, publication, and study of

a fascinating variety of Tocqueville and Tocqueville-related manu￾scripts. This began with the discovery of the existence of the U.S.

travel notes and diaries and letters home of Alexis de Tocqueville and

his friend and traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont. These

were first used in my Tocqueville and Beaumont in America and have

now in considerable part been printed in the Oeuvres comple`tes d’

Alexis de Tocqueville: a still-growing edition which since 1951 has been

in the process of republishing all of Tocqueville’s works, together with

his published and unpublished papers and conversations and letters.

Recently the head of the editorial working committee, Andre´ Jardin,

and I have also brought out Beaumont’s Lettres d’ Ame´rique, 1831–

Foreword xv

1832. And over the years a collection has been forming at Yale which

includes not only the many other surviving Beaumont documents

but copies of lost Tocqueville materials and the original drafts and

the working manuscript of the Democracy itself. So there has come

into existence, or been recovered, a wide and informative range of

materials on the background, circumstances, composition, and re￾ception of Tocqueville’s masterpiece.

Rediscovery of Tocqueville—recovery of his papers—yet there has

been one thing missing. Critics and commentators have reread him.

Scholars and students have been focusing on particular aspects of

Tocqueville’s life, his experiences in England or the revolution of 1848,

his religious beliefs or his social and political thought—almost to

the point of generating a small but flourishing Tocqueville industry.

Yet up until now no one has had the courage to tackle the great vol￾ume (I should say the formidable mass) of Tocqueville’s difficult and

sometimes almost indecipherable notes and drafts and essays and

working manuscript for his celebrated masterpiece—to find out how

and why it was put together. This study of the manufacture, or rather

of the creation, of the Democracy is what James T. Schleifer has at￾tempted, and with impressive results.

The first clear gain for students of Tocqueville and of his De´mocra￾tie is a many-sided enlargement of our information. Schleifer shows

not only when Tocqueville wrote the different parts of his book—

and where and under what influences or pressures of circumstance—

but what books he read, or used, or rejected—whose conversations

and ideas most influenced him—whom he consulted for substance

or for style—how his four volumes began and grew and gradually

shifted in focus—but also what difficulties the author encountered

and what frustrations. With Schleifer’s aid each of us will make his

own discoveries, both great and small. I found Tocqueville’s (here

documented) use of the Federalist Papers, and his borrowings or re￾jections of James Madison, particularly illuminating. Schleifer will

surprise many by his demonstration that Tocqueville paid consider￾ably more attention to the American economy than I and others have

supposed. Schleifer not only confirms Tocqueville’s multiple mean￾ings for his key themes of democracy, individualism, centralization,

and despotism, and demonstrates the confusion that sometimes re￾sulted, but points out the benefits that Tocqueville realized from this

practice. Finally, we profit from the fact that, in the process of tracing