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Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Morton J. Horwitz
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Extract

UNTIL the time Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, the problem of tyranny of the majority had dominated the political thought of no other nation as it had that of America. In the half century before the appearance of Tocqueville's great work, Americans had maintained a virtual monopoly of concern over the question of how popular sovereignty and individual liberty could peacefully coexist. The French Revolution, it is true, raised similar questions abroad, and if we take Burke's concern as representative, we see that he too was seriously troubled over the prospect that democratic tyranny would become the inevitable offspring of popular sovereignty. But despite Burke's eloquent and penetrating analysis, majority tyranny did not become a major preoccupation of English political thought, and to the extent that there was concern with the problem, as in the debate over the Reform Bill of 1832, discussion was confined to the obvious and straightforward issue of whether the suffrage should be extended. In America, on the other hand, the majority problem continued to be a persistent political issue from the beginning and, even today, a host of public questions revolves around the scope of majority rule. Yet for all the attention Americans paid to the majority question before Tocqueville entered upon the scene, they had hardly scratched the surface, and the Frenchman, therefore, was able to suggest an approach that they had not even considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , July 1966 , pp. 293 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1966

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References

1 Laski, Harold, The American Democracy (New York, 1948), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

2 Lord Bryce made the same observation concerning Tocqueville's underlying purpose in writing Democracy in America. “He wrote about America, and meant to describe it fully and faithfully,” Bryce, noted. “But his heart was in France, and the thought of France, never absent from him, unconsciously coloured every picture he drew. It made him think things abnormal which were merely un-French; it made him attach undue importance to phenomena which seemed to explain French events or supply a warning against French dangers.” Studies in History and Jurisprudence (London, 1901), I, 321Google Scholar.

2 In his preface to the twelfth edition of Democracy in 1848, for example, Tocqueville exalts America and tells Frenchmen that they must follow the American example. “Where else could we find greater causes of hope, or more instructive lessons?” he asked. Democracy in America, edited by Bradley, Philip (New York, 1957), IGoogle Scholar, ix. Hereafter cited as Democracy.

5 Janet, Paul, quoted in appendix to Democracy, II, 409Google Scholar.

5 Bryce, Lord, for one, saw that Tocqueville's “constant reference to France goes deeper than the method of his book. It determines his scope and aim. The Democracy in America is not so much a political study as a work of edification. It is a warning to France of the need to adjust her political institutions to her social conditions, and above all to improve the tone of her politics.…” Studies in History and Jurisprudence, I, 325Google Scholar.

8 Democracy, I, 319.

7 Quoted in Herr, Richard, Tocqueville and the Old Regime (Princeton, 1962), pp. 35–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Democracy, I, 334.

9 Ibid., I, 327.

10 Ibid., I, 336.

11 Pierson, George Wilson, Tocqueville in America (New York, 1959), p. 109Google Scholar. This interpretation is clearly justified, I believe, in spite of Tocqueville's explicit disclaimer. “I am very far from thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American democracy and copy the means that it has employed to attain this end [of political freedom],” he wrote. Democracy, I, 342. Of course, Tocqueville was too astute to believe that American institutions could be exported in toto, but that is not the same as arguing that he did not wish to incorporate a number of American institutions into French political life. The influence that his American experience had on him can be seen from his own description of attempts to write a new French constitution. Recollections (New York, 1959), ch. XIGoogle Scholar. Tocqueville was especially contemptuous of one member of the constitutional committee for the reason that “Institutions which had already been tried elsewhere or elsewhen seemed to him as hateful as commonplaces, and the first merit of a law in his eyes was to resemble in no way that which had preceded it.” Recollections, p. 206.

12 In a recent book, Tocqueville and the Old Regime, Richard Herr points out that by the time (1856) Tocqueville wrote The Old Regime and the French Revolution, “he could no longer cast on his own generation the responsibility” for the despotism of Louis Napoleon. “He discovered instead that France had been deprived of the possibility of freedom before his own time, before that of his parents, before 1789. In a sense, Frenchmen of the nineteenth century no longer had free will, politically speaking. Once they had had it, and certain of them had made wrongful use of it to condemn future generations to servitude.…” p. 84.

13 Democracy, I, 257.

14 Ibid., I, 9.

15 Ibid., I, 257.

16 Ibid., I, 266.

17 “Tocqueville did not mean to warn Americans of the dangers imminent in their political system; rather, he wanted to confront with his alternative [of democratic liberty and democratic despotism] the American and French political scene. In drawing the picture of a democracy without liberty, Tocqueville intended to warn his countrymen, and not his hosts.” “Democracy Without Liberty” by Dehrendorf, Ralf in Lipset, S. M. and Lowenthall, L. (eds.), Culture and Social Character (New York, 1961), p. 178Google Scholar.

18 The misleading result of this confusion was, as Lord Bryce noted, a “tendency to overestimate the value of constitutional powers and devices, and to forget how often they are modified, almost reversed, in practice by the habits of those who use them.” Studies in History and Jurisprudence, II, 322. It is ironic that this charge can be directed against Tocqueville, who believed that Democracy above all avoided this tendency.

19 Pierson, , op. cit., pp. 86–87Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 151.

21 Tocqueville himself found uniformity in America attractive to some degree. “… What strikes me,” he noted early in his American visit, “is that the immense majority of spirits join together in certain general opinions. Up to now that's what I envy America most.…” Pierson, , op. cit., p. 99Google Scholar. The emphasis is Tocqueville's. He could not help but see how American moral agreement brought stability and unity, which certainly contrasted with the French situation. In fact, his travel journals make clear beyond any doubt that Tocqueville deeply admired America.

22 Democracy, I, 277.

23 Ibid., I, 273.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., I, 276.

26 “Tocqueville and Democracy in America (Vol. II)” in Himmelfarb, Gertrude (ed.), Essays on Politics and Culture (New York, 1962), p. 258Google Scholar.

27 Democracy, I, 273.

28 Ibid., II, 337.

29 Ibid., II, 336.

30 Ibid., II, 335.

31 The Federalist (New York, 1957), pp. 339–340Google Scholar.