American Institutions and Their Influence. Alexis de Tocqueville

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СКАЧАТЬ Thus when the administration thinks fit to interfere, it is not abandoned to itself as in Europe; the duties of the private citizens are not supposed to have lapsed because the state assists in their fulfilment; but every one is ready, on the contrary, to guide and to support it. This action of individual exertions, joined to that of the public authorities, frequently performs what the most energetic central administration would be unable to execute. It would be easy to adduce several facts in proof of what I advance, but I had rather give only one, with which I am more thoroughly acquainted.{112} In America, the means which the authorities have at their disposal for the discovery of crimes and the arrest of criminals are few. A state police does not exist, and passports are unknown. The criminal police of the United States cannot be compared with that of France; the magistrates and public prosecutors are not numerous, and the examinations of prisoners are rapid and oral. Nevertheless in no country does crime more rarely elude punishment. The reason is that every one conceives himself to be interested in furnishing evidence of the act committed, and in stopping the delinquent. During my stay in the United States, I saw the spontaneous formation of committees for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime in a certain county. In Europe a criminal is an unhappy being, who is struggling for his life against the ministers of justice, while the population is merely a spectator of the conflict: in America he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.

      I believe that provincial institutions are useful to all nations, but nowhere do they appear to me to be more indispensable than among a democratic people. In an aristocracy, order can always be maintained in the midst of liberty; and as the rulers have a great deal to lose, order is to them a first-rate consideration. In like manner an aristocracy protects the people from the excesses of despotism, because it always possesses an organized power ready to resist a despot. But a democracy without provincial institutions has no security against these evils. How can a populace, unaccustomed to freedom in small concerns, learn to use it temperately in great affairs? What resistance can be offered to tyranny in a country where every private individual is impotent, and where the citizens are united by no common tie? Those who dread the license of the mob, and those who fear the rule of absolute power, ought alike to desire the progressive growth of provincial liberties.

      On the other hand, I am convinced that democratic nations are most exposed to fall beneath the yoke of a central administration, for several reasons, among which is the following:—

      The constant tendency of these nations is to concentrate all the strength of the government in the hands of the only power which directly represents the people: because, beyond the people nothing is to be perceived but a mass of equal individuals confounded together. But when the same power is already in possession of all the attributes of the government, it can scarcely refrain from penetrating into the details of the administration; and an opportunity of doing so is sure to present itself in the end, as was the case in France. In the French revolution there were two impulses in opposite directions, which must never be confounded; the one was favorable to liberty, the other to despotism. Under the ancient monarchy the king was the sole author of the laws; and below the power of the sovereign, certain vestiges of provincial institutions half-destroyed, were still distinguishable. These provincial institutions were incoherent, ill-compacted, and frequently absurd; in the hands of the aristocracy they had sometimes been converted into instruments of oppression. The revolution declared itself the enemy of royalty and of provincial institutions at the same time; it confounded all that had preceded it—despotic power and the checks to its abuses—in an indiscriminate hatred; and its tendency was at once to republicanism and to centralisation. This double character of the French revolution is a fact which has been adroitly handled by the friends of absolute power. Can they be accused of laboring in the cause of despotism, when they are defending of the revolution?{113} In this manner popularity may be conciliated with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed admirer of freedom.

      I have visited the two nations in which the system of provincial liberty has been most perfectly established, and I have listened to the opinions of different parties in those countries. In America I met with men who secretly aspired to destroy the democratic institutions of the Union; in England, I found others who attacked aristocracy openly; but I know of no one who does not regard provincial independence as a great benefit. In both countries I have heard a thousand different causes assigned for the evils of the state; but the local system was never mentioned among them. I have heard citizens attribute the power and prosperity of their country to a multitude of reasons: but they all placed the advantages of local institutions in the foremost rank.

      Am I to suppose that when men who are naturally so divided on religious opinions, and on political theories, agree on one point (and that, one of which they have daily experience), they are all in error? The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who pass a censure upon it.

      Endnotes:

      {63} It is by this periphrasis that I attempt to render the French expressions "Commune" and "Système Communal." I am not aware that any English word precisely corresponds to the general term of the original. In France every association of human dwellings forms a commune, and every commune is governed by a maire and a conseil municipal. In other words, the mancipium or municipal privilege, which belongs in England to chartered corporations alone, is alike extended to every commune into which the cantons and departments of France were divided at the revolution. Thence the different application of the expression, which is general in one country and restricted in the other. In America, the counties of the northern states are divided into townships, those of the southern into parishes; besides which, municipal bodies, bearing the name of corporations, exist in the cities. I shall apply these several expressions to render the term commune. The term "parish," now commonly used in England, belongs exclusively to the ecclesiastical division; it denotes the limits over which a parson's (personae ecclesiae or perhaps parochianus) rights extend.—Translator's Note.

      {64} In 1830, there were 305 townships in the state of Massachusetts and 610,014 inhabitants; which gives an average of about 2,000 inhabitants to each township.

      {65} The same rules are not applicable to the great towns, which generally have a mayor, and a corporation divided into two bodies; this, however, is an exception which requires a sanction of a law. See the act of 22d February, 1822, for appointing the authorities of the city of Boston. It frequently happens that small towns as well as cities are subject to a peculiar administration. In 1832, 104 townships in the state of New York were governed in this manner.—Williams's Register.

      {66} Three selectmen are appointed in the small townships, and nine in the large ones. See "The Town Officer," p. 186. See also the principal laws of the state of Massachusetts relative to the selectmen:—

      Act of the 20th February, 1786, vol. i, p. 219; 24th February, 1796, vol. i., p. 488, 7th March, 1801, vol. ii., p. 45; 16th June, 1795, vol. i., p. 475; 12th March, 1808, vol. ii., p. 186; 28th February, 1787, vol. i., p. 302; 22d June, 1797, vol. i., p. 539.

      {67} See laws of Massachusetts, vol. i., p. 150 Act of the 25th March, 1786.

      {68} All these magistrates actually exist; their different functions are all detailed in a book called, "The Town Officer," by Isaac Goodwin, Worcester, 1827; and in the Collection of the General Laws of Massachusetts, 3 vols., Boston, 1823.

      {69} See the act of 14th February, 1821. Laws of Massachusetts, vol i., p. 551.

      {70} See the act of 20th February, 1819. Laws of Massachusetts, vol ii., p. 494.

      {71} The council of the governor is an elective body.

      {72} See the act of 2d November, СКАЧАТЬ