Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform

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Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform Michael Drolet

Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform

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Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform Michael Drolet Department of History Royal Holloway, University of London

© Michael Drolet 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1567–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drolet, Michael, 1962– Tocqueville, democracy, and social reform/by Michael Drolet. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1567–9 (cloth) 1. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805–1859. 2. United States – Politics and government. 3. United States – Social conditions. 4. Democracy – United States. I. Title. JK216.T7193D766 320.973–dc21

2003 2003048063

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To my father and Catherine and in memory of my mother

You have accomplished a great achievement: you have changed the face of political philosophy. John Stuart Mill to Alexis de Tocqueville, 11 May 1840

Contents List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction

1

Part I Society, Economy and Democracy 1 The American Journey and Tocqueville’s Intellectual Awakening

19

2 Embracing Liberal Political Economy and then Rejecting it: Tocqueville’s Reading of Say and Malthus

36

3 Equality, Liberty and the Problem of Self-Interest: Democracy in America (1835)

54

4 Legitimism and Political Economy: The Influence of Villeneuve-Bargemont

95

Part II Democracy and Social Reform 5 Tocqueville and Beaumont on Prison Reform

115

6 The Investigations into the Causes of Poverty and the Ways to Remedy it

135

7 The Investigations into Abandoned Children

161

Part III Democracy and Revolution 8 Democracy and the Threats to Liberty: Democracy in America (1840)

177

9 Administrative Centralisation and the Threats to Liberty: The Composition of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution

202

Conclusion

231

Notes

238

Bibliography

282

Index

302

vii

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the many friends and institutions for helping me to write this book. My first debt is to David McLellan who, as my doctoral supervisor many years ago, set me to work on Tocqueville. His inspiration, guidance and generosity of spirit I can never adequately repay. I owe special thanks to François Houle, André Vachet, Douglas Moggach and Koula Mellos for introducing me to the study of the history of political thought. The late Jack Lively answered the many questions I had on Tocqueville, as has Larry Siedentop from whom I have learned much. Gregory Claeys helped me a great deal in the early stages of this project and his encouragement was invaluable. For comments on various chapters I wish to thank John Burrow, Lyndal Roper, Michèle Riot-Sarcy, Nick Stargardt, Cheryl Welch, Donald Winch and Richard Whatmore. I have benefited from conversations with Istvan Hont, Joanna Innes, Lucien Jaume, Colin Jones, Pierre Manent, Françoise Mélonio, Mark Philp, Michael Quinn, John Robertson and Georgios Varouxakis. Pamela Pilbeam, Justin Champion and William Thomas read large portions of the manuscript. Their exacting questions and constructive comments helped me improve this text considerably and their enthusiasm for this project proved uplifting at difficult junctures. Deborah Thomas helped me improve my style at a crucial stage of revision. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘Democracy and Political Economy: Tocqueville’s Thoughts on J.-B. Say and T.R. Malthus’ in History of European Ideas, 29, 2, Spring 2003. I thank Elsevier Science for their permission to reproduce this material. The staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale and Library of Congress did a great deal to make my visits both productive and pleasant. The staff of the British Library have been wonderful in every respect. I am particularly grateful to Nina Evans for all the help she gave me. Many thanks to Oren Ben Dor, Marie-Hélène Baneth-Jakob, Richard Bett, Pierre Boyer, Alison Brown, Jimmy Burns, Jeremy Cater, Richard Cockett, Janet Coleman, Pene Corefield, Vince Geoghegan, Geraldine Henchy, Andrew Gow, Mary Hickman, Patrick Hill, John Hope Mason, Margaret Humphrey, Michael Levin, Scott Lewis, Richard Jay, Fionnula Jay-O’Boyle, Gerd Jakob, Harvey Mansfield, Debby Murphy, Alan Neil, Richard Noble, Francis Robinson, Tony Stockwell and José Luis Valdés-Ugalde for advice and encouragement. viii

Acknowledgements ix

Thanks to Luciana O’Flaherty for being such a superb editor and to Daniel Bunyard and my copy-editor Keith Povey for shepherding this book through production. My greatest debts are to my family and to Rosalind to whom I owe more than I can say. MICHAEL DROLET

List of Abbreviations AR

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the French Revolution (Stuart Gilbert, trans.) (New York: Doubleday, 1955)

CCEP

J.-B. Say, Cours complet d’économie politique pratique; ouvrage destiné à mettre sous les yeux des hommes d’état, des propriétaires fonciers et des capitalistes, des savants, des agriculteurs, des manufacturiers, des négociants, et en général de tous les citoyens, l’économie des sociétés (Paris: Rapilly, 1828–1829), 6 vols.

CW

John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (J.M. Robson et al., eds) (Toronto/London: University of Toronto Press/Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963– 1991)

DA

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (George Lawrence, trans.) ( J.P. Mayer, ed.) (New York: Doubleday, 1969).

DA, Nolla edition

De la démocratie en Amérique. Edited by Eduardo Nolla. Paris: J. Vrin, 1990.

ECP

Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Économie politique chrétienne, ou recherches sur la nature et les causes du paupérisme en France et en Europe, et sur les moyens de la soulager et de le prévenir (Paris: Paulin, 1834), 3 vols.

HCE

François Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe (William Hazlitt, trans.) (Larry Siedentop, ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997).

OC

Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres complètes. Definitive edition prepared under the supervision of the Commission nationale pour la publication des Oeuvres d’Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Gallimard, 1950–). I i–ii. De la Démocratie en Amérique. Introduced by Harold Laski with a preliminary note by J.P. Mayer (1951). II, i. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution. Introduced by Georges Lefebvre with a preliminary note by J.P. Mayer (1952). x

List of Abbreviations xi

II, ii. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution. Edited and annotated by André Jardin (1953). III, i. Écrits et discours politiques. Edited and annotated by André Jardin. Introduced by J.-J. Chevallier and André Jardin (1962). III, ii, Écrits et discours politiques, Edited, annotated, and introduced by André Jardin (1985). III, iii. Écrits et discours politiques. Edited, annotated, and introduced by André Jardin (1990). IV, i–ii. Écrits sur le système pénitentiaire en France et à l’étranger. Edited and introduced by Michelle Perrot (1984). V, i. Voyages en Sicile et aux États-Unis. Edited and prefaced by J.P. Mayer (1957). V, ii. Voyages en Angleterre, Irelande, Suisse et Algérie. Edited and annotated by J.P. Mayer and André Jardin (1958). VI, i. Correspondance anglaise: correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville avec Henry Reeve et John Stuart Mill. Edited and annotated by J.P. Mayer and Gustave Rudler. Introduced by J.P. Mayer (1954). VI, ii. Correspondance anglaise: correspondance et conversations d’Alexis de Tocqueville et Nassau William Senior. Edited and annotated by Hugh Brogan and A.P. Kerr. Introduced by Hugh Brogan. Notes by J.P. Mayer. Preface by Lord Roll (1991). VII. Correspondance étrangère d’Alexis de Tocqueville: Amérique, Europe Continentale. Edited by Françoise Mélonio, Lise Queffélec and Anthony Pleasance (1986). VIII, i–iii. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et de Gustave de Beaumont. Edited, annotated, and introduced by J.P. Mayer (1967). IX. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et d’Arthur de Gobineau. Edited and annotated by M. Degros. Introduced by J.-J. Chevalier (1959). X. Correspondance et écrits locaux. Edited by Lise Queffélec-Dumasy. Preface by André-Jean Tudesq (1995).

xii List of Abbreviations

XI. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville avec P.-P. Royer-Collard et avec J.-J. Ampère. Edited and annotated by André Jardin (1970). XII. Souvenirs. Edited, annotated, and introduced by Luc Monnier (1964). XIII, i–ii. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorley. Edited by André Jardin. Introduction and notes by Jean-Alain Lesourd (1977). XIV. Correspondance familiale. Edited by Jean-Louis Benoît and André Jardin. Preface by Jean-Louis Benoît (1998). XV, i–ii. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et de Françisque de Corcelle. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et de Madame Swetchine. Edited by Pierre Gibert (1983). XVI. Mélanges. Edited by Françoise Mélonio (1989). XVIII. Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville avec Adolphe de Circourt et Madame de Circourt. Edited by A.P. Kerr. Revised by Louis Girard and Douglas Johnson (1984). OC, I, Pléiade edition Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres. Edited under the direction of André Jardin with the collaboration of Françoise Mélonio and Lise Queffélec (Paris: Gallimard, 1991). OCB

Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres et correspondance inédites (Gustave de Beaumont, ed.) (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1861).

OCBT

Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres complètes d’Alexis de Tocqueville (Marie Mottley Clérel de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, eds) (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1861–1877).

SL

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Translated and edited by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

TEP

J.-B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent, et se consomment les richesses (Paris: Crapelet, 1803).

Introduction

This book deals with the writings of a remarkable man whose thoughts continue to exert a powerful grip on the imagination of political theorists, historians and sociologists. Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant and prescient Democracy in America is considered one of the most comprehensive books on democracy ever written. In a time when contemporary democracies are in a state of crisis, with electors distrusting their elected representatives, low voter turnouts in the world’s most advanced democracies and an accelerating citizen disengagement from community associations and local institutions, Tocqueville’s work is turned to for the lessons and possible answers it might provide in facing these problems. The extent of the work’s importance has prompted within the last few years one new English translation with another in progress.1 In the same period, two journals have devoted special issues to Tocqueville and democracy.2 Both Left and Right claim Tocqueville’s blessing whether in search of a renewal of community and civic politics, attempts to theorise a new public philosophy of democracy, or endeavours to explore whether freedom is still possible in the modern world. Democracy in America is clearly acknowledged as the theoretical inspiration for a great deal of contemporary reflection.3 Yet because of its thoroughness, intellectual rigor and imaginative power, political theorists and sociologists have tended to look to this one work alone for inspiration, and have less often ventured to examine Tocqueville’s historical writings such as the Souvenirs and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.4 These works, like Democracy in America, are also comprehensive, intellectually brilliant and beautifully written. They too have exercised a powerful hold over the minds of their readers, but they have been mostly studied by historians who have paid less attention to Tocqueville’s social and political writings.5 The ability of Tocqueville’s major works to mesmerise has resulted in an artificial separation between his social and political writings and his historical works, but it has also caused his less well known official and semi-official reports and extensive correspondence to fall into semi-obscurity.6 This is unfortunate because 1

2

Introduction

Tocqueville’s great works were closely wedded to his other intellectual, political, and personal preoccupations.7 This book’s central contention is that in order to understand Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution fully it is necessary to examine how they relate to his other writings and to understand their historical and intellectual context. This is essential not least because Tocqueville’s personal and political life illuminated his ideas and stimulated his imagination; his theory was not divorced from the observations of practice. By contextualising Tocqueville’s work in this way what this book will show is not only just how novel his thoughts were but how they evolved over time, reflecting a subtle shift in political perspective from legitimism to an idiosyncratic liberalism of the left of centre. Tocqueville was writing at a time in the history of France where political power seemed no longer firmly tethered to one social class. Economic and cultural transformations had resulted in the collapse of an old order, but the establishment of a new one was contested and France was plunged into a series of revolutions throughout the nineteenth century. The preoccupations of Tocqueville and his contemporaries clearly resemble certain modern anxieties about the role of the state, communities, and individuals. Today, changes to economy and society appear to have resulted in what some proclaim to be the decline of modern order and the rise of a new and strange postmodern age.8 Globalisation has altered fundamentally the way nation states can now exercise power. It has also resulted in new class, gender and ethnic relations which are emerging and transforming the nature of politics and society itself. To stress these broad economic, social, cultural and political affinities between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is not to contend that history is repeating itself, a patently absurd proposition. Rather it is to suggest that the issues Tocqueville responded to in his epoch resonate with issues encountered today by political theorists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, philosophers and historians. Tocqueville’s reflections in Democracy in America illuminate discussions in modern political theory on how best to renew democracy. But his lesser known considerations on social issues such as prison reform, poverty and unwanted children, or his thoughts on political economy, may also illuminate modern-day thinking on these issues. Much of what Tocqueville had to say on these topics bears a striking resemblance to the terms of today’s discussions in political and social policy circles. His considerations on the nature of political economy and its relation to a dynamic democratic polity are echoed in current discussions on democracy and the new world economic order. His reflections on how poverty can be alleviated and abandoned children cared for through community-based initiatives are reminiscent of current rethinking on the role of the state and communities in welfare provision. His thoughts on juve-

Introduction 3

nile crime, prison reform, and the reintegration of ex-convicts into the community are echoed in debates today – then, as now, a central question was whether character could be reformed.9 Tocqueville continues to have contemporary relevance, but this aptness has a wider scope than contemporary disciplinary divisions might suggest. Tocqueville believed his empirical investigations into prisons and poverty in France, America and elsewhere, and his explorations in political economy were integral to his theorisation of democracy (he always maintained that the science of politics required that theory had to be informed by practice and vice versa). So our own understanding of the problems modern-day democracies face, including that of the reanimation of democratic culture and politics, can be informed by Tocqueville’s empirical research into social issues. This has been acknowledged recently, but only vaguely. Because of the authority commanded by Democracy in America some of Tocqueville’s thoughts and lesser known works have been called upon to influence social and political practitioners. On the Right, Tocqueville is understood to have believed that economic liberty brings about political liberty, that unfettered capitalism is the foundation to democracy. He is seen as a critic of administrative centralisation and big government, and his 1835 report on pauperism is called upon to show that he rejected any legal entitlement of welfare for the poor.10 On the Left, Tocqueville is used for different reasons. His stress on associations is viewed as a powerful defence of civil society and taken to be an endorsement of a new politics of the ‘Third Way’. His 1835 travel diaries from England and Ireland are cited for his shocked reaction to the inhuman conditions in which industrial workers in Birmingham and Manchester found themselves, thereby confirming his antipathy toward laissez-faire economics and industrial capitalism.11 All of these individual details are correct, but when taken on their own, in isolation from their contexts and from Tocqueville’s other ideas and convictions, they give a partial, one-sided, and distorted picture of his thought. The aim of this book is to correct this deformed portrayal by presenting a full account of Tocqueville’s ideas and their relation to those of his contemporaries in France, America and Britain. In contextualising his ideas in this way, this book reveals not only how Tocqueville was influenced by his contemporaries but also just how novel his thoughts were. This uniqueness defies modern attempts to pigeonhole his ideas into specific ideological categories, or to view them within the narrow confines of modern-day disciplines. His work bridged the old political order and the new, the old agrarian economy and the new industrial one, the Old World and the New. It is this quality that allows the nineteenth-century Tocqueville to maintain such a powerful hold on the modern imagination.

4

Introduction

Life and work Alexis de Tocqueville was born into an old Norman noble family during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. From an early age he was keenly aware of the peculiarity of his family situation. The French Revolution left a black mark on the family. Nearly all his relations had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror. His parents were imprisoned for many months and awaited execution themselves. Tocqueville’s father, the Comte Hervé de Tocqueville, was visibly transformed by the Terror: his hair turned white at twenty-four. His mother, Louise-Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosambo, suffered more cruelly, and was left a nervous invalid for the rest of her life. The images of the Revolution and the Terror remained with Tocqueville for the rest of his life, and they were to have the most profound influence on his thoughts about the future of France and Europe. From an early age Tocqueville rejected the prejudices of his class. With the fall of Napoleon and the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, many French aristocrats worked to recreate the society of the ancien régime and restore their ancient privileges. They believed the changes to French society brought about by the Revolution and under the Empire were merely accidental and reversible. The Restoration presented them with the chance to return France to her ancient glory. But Tocqueville disagreed. He was convinced the ancien régime was finished, the era of aristocracy over. He believed those who sought to restore absolute monarchy and the old order had learned nothing from history; they were motivated by their narrow class interests,12 and he despaired that their actions would plunge the nation into civil war. Despite believing the era of aristocracy to be over, Tocqueville remained a royalist, although he was also a liberal. He believed in the legitimacy of the Bourbon monarchy, but he also thought absolutism anachronistic. He was convinced of the need for royal power to maintain high moral standards, a love of religion and ensure peace and security, but he also thought monarchy had to be limited by a constitution that guaranteed rights and liberties. What struck and disheartened him was that the last years of French Restoration politics guaranteed that France continued to be a nation divided against itself. Aligned on one side were those ‘men who prize morality, religion, order; and on the other those who love liberty, equality before the law’. The spectacle of Frenchmen ordered one against the other in this way was, for him, one of the ‘most extraordinary and deplorable that could ever have presented itself to the eyes of men’; for Tocqueville was convinced that those values separated by Frenchmen were, as he put it, ‘united indissolubly in the eyes of God’.13 In this uncompromising political climate Tocqueville’s beliefs seemed out of place. Tocqueville had an instinctive love for liberty, a genuine and passionate desire to wish for its development in all French political institutions. But he also professed a profound respect for justice, a love of order and the rule of law and an attachment to morals and religious

Introduction 5

beliefs ‘so profound and so considered’ that he acknowledged that he could not believe that his contemporaries did not ‘perceive in him a new species of liberal’.14 Tocqueville sustained a deep faith in the legitimacy of the Bourbon monarchy throughout the reign of Louis XVIII (1814–24), the former comte de Provence. He believed the monarch’s reign was the embodiment of the kind of legitimate constitutional monarchy which could best serve the needs of modern-day France.15 It maintained high moral standards at the same time as serving the interests of liberty. It sought both to safeguard freedom and guarantee peace and security. Tocqueville esteemed Louis XVIII’s political acumen and leadership. The king understood the extent to which French politics and society had been fundamentally transformed by the Revolution and the Empire. He knew how weak initial support for the Bourbon Restoration was, and understood he could not achieve a firm basis for rule without acknowledging and accepting those profound changes. He agreed to a constitutional order in which his power was constrained by a bicameral parliament and a Constitutional Charter which enshrined individual and civic rights.16 He resisted the demands of the ultra-royalists’ famous ‘Unthinkable Chamber’ (Chambre introuvable), its members bent on restoring the ancien régime. He favoured moderate ministries dominated by a group of liberal intellectuals known as the Doctrinaires who sought to steer a middle course between the ultras, Bonapartist sympathisers and republican revolutionaries. He was, as Tocqueville opined many years later, the ‘only French sovereign who had the good sense, or the patience, to govern constitutionally’.17 The elevated principles that governed the reign of Louis XVIII, however, were scorned by his brother Charles X (1824–30). This ‘king of the émigrés and the clergy’ desired nothing less than a return to the ancien régime. Whereas his brother accepted the profound changes France had undergone and worked to bring about national reconciliation by uniting the nation under his reign, ‘Charles le Simple’ rejected them, and, as a result, presided over a divided nation. Believing in his divine right to rule, Charles X opposed the constitutional order agreed to by his brother. The new Bourbon king was not only, as Tocqueville declared in 1830, championed by ‘fools in raptures’,18 but also, as he continued to maintain twenty years later, ‘impermeable to constitutional ideas’.19 Charles X embodied everything Tocqueville feared most for France. Rather than sustain the high ideals of a monarchy wedded to the cause of liberty and national unity, Charles X brought about an extreme weakening of royal power.20 He endorsed the narrow interests and reactionary policies of the ultra-royalist government of the comte de Villèle. He presided over legislation which brought the clergy back to the centre of French politics and society, including the 1825 law against sacrilege which made the profanation of the Eucharist punishable by torture followed by death. He favoured the restriction of the franchise,

6

Introduction

the indemnification of émigrés, the dismantling of the revolutionary land settlement guaranteed by the Constitutional Charter, and the return of primogeniture and consolidation of noble power in the countryside. When the last ultra ministry under his close friend, the prince de Polignac, could not impose its will on a liberal parliament, he invoked emergency powers and governed by decree. When Charles X was finally overthrown at the end of July 1830, Tocqueville was not sorry to see the monarch flee Paris. By now a junior magistrate in the law courts at Versailles he assessed the royal family harshly: ‘As for the Bourbons, they have conducted themselves like cowards and do not deserve even the thousandth part of the blood which has flowed as a result of their quarrel.’21 The outcome of the Three Glorious Days resulted in Charles’s younger cousin the duc d’Orléans, Louis-Philippe, acceding to the throne. For a young legitimist like Tocqueville this was difficult to accept. Yet France had been subject to such internal division and had undergone such a lengthy period of political instability that he saw no alternative but to do what he ‘must for his country which [was] incapable of finding its salvation except through the domination which [arose] out of saving [it] from anarchy.’22 This he did by swearing allegiance to the new regime, an act he found ‘deeply wounding’.23 While he was prepared to accept the political settlement which resulted in the July monarchy, he continued to believe a Bourbon king would have been best placed to heal internal divisions and maintain France’s standing among the European powers. Yet the kind of monarchy Tocqueville had in mind was neither absolute nor ill-considered as Charles X had been, rather, he longed for the Bourbons under Charles X’s grandson, the duc de Bordeaux, to learn that ‘the general principles of government should be liberal’. A ‘democratic people in whom the social force is more diffused than in an aristocracy’ required a strong monarch who would spur central government to be ‘energetic in its own sphere of action’,24 but at the same time, in order for that people to be free, central government had to leave a social sphere of action to individuals and their ‘personal initiative’.25 Tocqueville’s hopes for a Bourbon renewal proved to be in vain. Swearing the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe entailed paying a very heavy price: aristocrats like him were both immediately excluded from society and regarded with suspicion by the new régime. His ‘pride was wounded by the idea that others might think that ambition made [him] act against his convictions’, but he was also apprehensive that he would be removed from his post, as the law courts were being purged of known legitimists.26 Tocqueville could see no way out of his predicament other than to leave France and remain abroad until the impassioned atmosphere dissipated. This he did in the spring of 1831. The journey he undertook with a close friend, fellow legitimist and magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont, was to America. It is the subject of Chapter 1. Tocqueville was fascinated by America and eager to learn about the organ-

Introduction 7

isation and workings of the American republic. This sentiment was widely shared by many Frenchmen, who, since the days of the American Revolution, felt a close bond to the young republic. Writers like Tocqueville’s cousin, Chateaubriand, nourished this feeling with his romantic novels René and Atala. Republicans, such as Armand Carrel established the Revue américaine in order better to inform the French of America’s history and political institutions, and thereby promote republican ideas. Famous Idéologues such as the political economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, looked to America as an example of a successful modern republic.27 Tocqueville shared many of their opinions, believing a serious study of America could offer the French valuable lessons that might deliver them from an enduring state of political strife. He hoped too that if he were fortunate to write a good study on America, he might restore his own political fortunes.28 But the way he approached his study of America was markedly different from what any of his compatriots had undertaken, and the comparison is most instructive. A repeated theme here and throughout this book is that Tocqueville’s ideas and works can be best understood through a study of his own intellectual background and studies, and indeed that they had a sophisticated and complex relationship to earlier and current discussions in France, as well as England and America. The official intention of his and Beaumont’s journey was to study and assess America’s various penitentiary systems. The young Frenchmen chose the subject of their investigation with care, believing, like the great philanthropist and statesman the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, that it could tell them a great deal about the nation’s laws and constitution and offer them profound insights into the customs, traditions, manners (moeurs) and attitudes of Americans. The insights they gained and the way they linked their joint investigation on prisons to their individual studies of American society and politics were striking. After spending nearly a year in America, Tocqueville and Beaumont arrived back in France in late March 1832 and set about writing their official report on American prisons and completing investigations necessary to it. Tocqueville seems to have suffered from occasional bouts of manic depression throughout his life, and soon after his return from America fell into a state of lethargy. What he described as being ‘struck by imbecility’ took on the ‘character of a chronic illness’.29 It severely impeded his work on the prison report, and Beaumont had to take responsibility for writing most of the first draft of the text. Eventually, however, Tocqueville was able to free himself from his ‘culpable inertia’, and began working in earnest on the report, drafting and annotating numerous sections of the manuscript, writing the lengthy appendices which made up a third of the text, and ordering and composing a commentary on voluminous supporting documents.30 The results of their efforts appeared in January 1833 under the title The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France. The work was

8

Introduction

hailed as a masterpiece and was awarded the Montyon prize by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. It represented a definitive study of American and European prisons; at the vanguard of prison investigations, its recommendations overturned conventional wisdom on prison reform. How it was written, why it was so novel, altering debates on prison reform throughout Europe and America, and how it related to Tocqueville’s other writings are discussed in Chapter 5. Throughout 1833 and 1834 Tocqueville devoted his time to writing a book on American institutions, and Beaumont to writing on American manners. Tocqueville believed his own work could best profit the French if it were comparative, highlighting elements that were distinct to America and ones it shared with France. In order to write a thorough study along those lines, however, he thought it necessary to explore the foundation of America’s culture and her political and legal institutions. This, he considered, lay in England. He was supported in his belief by the works of anglophiles like Montesquieu and the historian François Guizot, who championed ‘English liberty’. As a student Tocqueville had profited from reading A History of England by the English Catholic John Lingard, and in preparation for his American investigation he studied William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and Jean de Lolme’s The English Constitution. However, when he visited England for the first time in August 1833, he was struck by how different it was from the United States. Whereas he and Beaumont were impressed by the extent to which the ‘spirit of democracy’ permeated American society, in England he was fascinated by how the ‘aristocratic spirit’ had penetrated all social classes. America and England were two entirely different countries. In England, he was unable to ‘recognise in any way’ the America he and Beaumont visited.31 Nonetheless, England proved instructive in ways he had not originally anticipated. He reasoned that the enlightened ‘aristocratic spirit’ that governed English society, if it were described and analysed, might prove instructive to a narrow-minded French nobility and bourgeoisie. He also thought that conveying something to the French about England’s system of decentralised administration might teach them something about, as Jeremy Bentham’s amanuensis John Bowring put it to him, ‘the chief cause of the substantial material progress we have made in civilization’.32 Tocqueville’s journey to England was motivated by two other reasons. He believed it to be useful to promote his and Beaumont’s prison report, using the investigation as a ‘passport’ to intellectual circles.33 But by far the most important reason for the journey was to see Marie Mottley, whom he had known since 1828, and ask for her hand. Tocqueville was deeply attached to Marie who had been raised, from an early age, by her aunt and lived in Versailles for some time. Being a foreigner and middle class, she was detached from the usual French class prejudices. Both this and her taste for ideas appealed to Tocqueville. Their relationship had great depth, his love

Introduction 9

for her, as he later confessed to his close friend Louis de Kergorlay, approximating an ardent passion.34 It was Tocqueville’s letters to her, however, that reveal most about their passion and his own character.35 She had, as he confessed to her, the gift to ‘reconcile me with the world and with myself’.36 They were married in October 1835. In August 1834 Tocqueville completed the manuscript of his book on American institutions. Published in January 1835, Democracy in America became an instant success. The prominent intellectual and elder statesman Royer-Collard hailed Tocqueville as the ‘new Montesquieu’, and the progovernment Journal des débats acclaimed him ‘the Blackstone of America’. The work provoked great excitement and heated debate. Reviews in the press covering the entire political spectrum praised the author’s ‘wisdom’, his ‘gift for observation’, and the text’s profound ‘philosophical nature’. Tocqueville’s publisher, André Gosselin, who had refrained from reading the manuscript and anticipated the work might win some esteem within a small circle of people, was startled by its success. ‘Well!’, he declared to Tocqueville, ‘It seems you’ve written a masterpiece!’37 The members of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences agreed, awarding it the Montyon prize, and eventually electing Tocqueville himself to the Academy. Tocqueville’s account of America struck a cord with his French readers. He adopted an approach and style of writing that was easily identified with Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws, and he chose a topic that, because of France’s historic ties to America, fascinated the French. But he undertook something truly ambitious in Democracy in America, the scale of which has not been fully appreciated. He integrated into his study new scholarly developments from the disciplines of history, political economy, geography and statistics. He adopted an analytical method that was both powerfully informed by the work of Guizot and Idéologues such as Destutt de Tracy and Jean-Baptiste Say. As a young student Tocqueville attended Guizot’s famous lectures on The History of Civilization in Europe and The History of Civilization in France, and was transported by what the historian had to say. He understood at once the importance of Guizot’s method of ‘philosophical’ history. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, for his own study of American democracy Tocqueville adopted Guizot’s analytical method, but he improved on it by complementing it with new innovations in political economy, another aspect of Tocqueville’s method which has been underestimated. In 1828 Tocqueville began a serious study of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique. Say worked with key concepts employed by Guizot. The complementary nature of their respective approaches attracted Tocqueville. But he was also drawn to Say’s political economy because it both illuminated issues surrounding national character, and explained clearly the ‘spirit’ of American democracy through the concept of enlightened self-interest in a way that older works such as Montesquieu’s Spirit of

10

Introduction

Laws could not.38 The first volume of Democracy in America (1835) shows the extent to which he was influenced by Say, as we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3. Ironically, Say’s political economy may have furnished Tocqueville with ideas and insights that would later cause him to reject important aspects of the political economist’s work. In the opening section of Say’s Cours complet, the political economist stressed the scientific and independent character of political economy.39 Whereas moral philosophers like Adam Smith had always argued that political economy was but one branch of a wider science of morals and legislation, Say believed political economy to be a science in its own right, distinct from other disciplines. At the same time, however, he also emphasised that political economy was based on experience and should be practical; it should, as the subtitle of his Traité d’économie politique asserted, serve to explain the economic working of society to statesmen and citizens, and thereby ensure that society conformed to the natural laws that governed it. Say’s insistence that political economy was distinct from other disciplines encouraged other political economists, particularly David Ricardo and John Ramsay McCulloch, to stress its formal and theoretical character at the expense of practical considerations. Say was critical of this development, believing the overabstraction of political economy made it very difficult ‘to explain the economic workings of society’ to citizens.40 Ironically, it was Say himself who set in train this development by separating political economy from moral and political considerations. This point was made by T.R. Malthus, but it was an opinion shared by other political economists like the French legitimist administrator Alban Villeneuve-Bargemont. Both Malthus and Villneuve-Bargemont were to exercise a profound and lasting influence on Tocqueville after he completed the first volume of Democracy in America, something that has not been well understood. Their works would bring about his gradual estrangement from important aspects of Say’s economic thought. How Tocqueville came to embrace Say and then later reject him is the subject of Chapter 2. The role Villeneuve-Bargemont’s work was to play in Tocqueville’s later considerations on democracy, thoughts that made up the second volume of Democracy in America (1840), is the topic of Chapter 4. When Say attacked Ricardo and McCulloch for overformalising political economy he harboured the fear that by rendering the science too abstract citizens would be deprived of knowledge that could sustain the vitality of free institutions and prevent moral corruption. On the whole, however, he was sanguine about the positive benefits to be derived from political economy. This had an important effect on Tocqueville’s assessment of democracy in the first volume of Democracy in America, giving the work an optimistic tone. But what is not widely recognised is that once Tocqueville started to examine in detail the internal elements of democratic society, the

Introduction 11

ideas, outlooks, customs and manners of their populations, and relate the effects of commercial and industrial developments to them, he discerned worrying tendencies that suggested political economy was not as effective in preventing moral corruption as its proponents suggested. This influenced the more pessimistic tone of the second volume of 1840. Other considerations, however, also influenced the tone of that work. As soon as he completed the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville began to investigate the issue of poverty. As an aristocrat with a powerful sense of obligation and duty to those less fortunate than himself, he was naturally inclined to study this issue. Some scholars have rightly pointed out that his own interest in understanding the causes of poverty, and his efforts at improving the condition of the poor, placed him within the context of a broader humanitarian movement led by aristocratic and bourgeois intellectuals: Tocqueville’s membership of numerous charitable organisations, including The Society of Christian Morality (La société de la morale chrétienne ), The French Society for the Abolition of Slavery (Société française pour l’abolition de l’esclavage), and the Annals of Charity (Annales de la charité), certainly confirms this.41 But what is less well known is the full extent to which his social investigations informed his thoughts on democracy. In his studies on prisons, pauperism and the plight of abandoned children, Tocqueville used the latest empirical research to supplement the analytical method he employed in the 1835 and 1840 volumes of Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. What was then known as moral statistics served to broaden his knowledge of basic social facts and thereby gave greater depth to his understanding of society. His social investigations also gave him important insights into the interaction between various elements of society. When placed alongside his reading of Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont, they helped him to understand better, as we shall see, how economic developments transformed people’s outlooks, habits and ideas. They also assisted him in assessing how changing attitudes on poverty and crime and punishment affected political and social institutions. These studies informed the ideas of the second volume of Democracy in America, which were, as John Stuart Mill remarked, ‘brought from a much greater depth in human nature itself’, than those of any other work that century.42 Chapters 5, 6, and 7 examine those investigations. One point, however, does require mentioning here: Tocqueville attached great importance to his writings on the abolition of slavery.43 In 1839 he was made secretary to a parliamentary committee on slave emancipation and wrote its report. In 1843 he wrote a series of articles on slave emancipation for the left-leaning newspaper Le Siècle. These writings are exemplary both of Tocqueville’s lofty humanitarianism and of his political realism, but their importance cannot be conveyed justly in one chapter, and a thorough examination would distract us from the main concern of this book. There is also an important theoretical consideration: Tocqueville believed slavery

12

Introduction

was inconsistent with modern democracies. It was, as one commentator put it, an issue that ‘stood outside of democracy entirely, marking its fixed limits’.44 It is for these reasons that I have excluded from this book any detailed discussion of this issue.45 Democracy in America was never intended to be a work of narrow theory. Rather, it was sustained by high political ideals and had a clear political purpose. It gave a new configuration to an idea the Doctrinaires introduced before him: the struggle between aristocracy and democracy, the struggle between the old France and the new. Like the Doctrinaires, Tocqueville believed the French Revolution succeeded in accelerating developments ‘determined by blind forces or, if one prefers . . . the work of Providence’.46 These changed the social order, making it democratic; it was the ‘striking result of the Revolution’. A consequence of these developments, however, was that the French became divided between those who loved and idealised democracy and those who loathed it, believing it akin to anarchy.47 The struggle that ensued led to division, the atomisation of society, and the destruction of local institutions, resulting in a nation governed by a powerful bureaucratic central power. Tocqueville expanded on Royer-Collard’s declaration that the French were ‘an administered people, under the hand of irresponsible civil servants, themselves centralised in the power of which they are agents’.48 He believed a powerful central authority was always prone to become allied to vested interests. This was an unholy alliance which led inexorably to factionalised politics. As the nation became ever more fractured, individuals lost their fundamental respect for their fellows and held opinions of them which bordered on contempt. In this atmosphere of political division, liberty withered and despotism flourished.49 The central power, in ruling over society, divided it. But, he argued, because the French had been deprived of civic and political experience, they could only overcome this division by contemplating a more powerful central authority to end it. This was the problem that marked French politics in Tocqueville’s lifetime, and it was the one to which he devoted most of his energies to solve. With society divided between those who prized morality, religion and order, and those who loved liberty and equality before the law, the French became incapable of finding salvation from anarchy except, as he commented on the 1830 Revolution, through domination.50 Yet this nineteenth-century problem could be resolved only if its distant origins were laid bare. Tocqueville thought he might begin that work of historical archaeology in answering a question that applied to the French Revolution of 1789: why was it that this great Revolution, one embodying the elevated principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, gave way to despotism? His answer, which appeared in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, and is explored in Chapter 9, was that the political inexperience of the French left them with no better resources than theory to make their revolution. Doctrinal difference leading to political division, violence and the extinguishing of liberty were the consequences of this lack of experience.

Introduction 13

Tocqueville worked hard to convince his compatriots of the need for greater civic and political participation, and his writings on social issues, far from being marginal, were, I believe, an important part of this effort. He thought this greater civic participation was one way in which antithetical social and political groups in France might be reconciled and the long series of revolutions and uprisings stopped. He believed France’s political parties no longer adequately represented the French, such that ‘the largest party is made up of men who have no party’.51 This ‘floating mass’ he thought characteristic of democracies because within them ‘the social force’ was dispersed. Whilst potential benefits could be derived from this condition, not least the dissipation of political passions, there were important disadvantages, he thought, among the most significant being the potential to dominate society. Though he hoped the nation might be galvanised to the cause of liberty, he thought successive French governments ‘manipulated’ the ‘diverse elements’ of society to the advantage of their own narrow class interests. This stood in stark contrast to what he encountered in America (see Chapter 3). There, though party interests had developed to an extent which made the political manipulation of a diffuse society possible, these were checked by deep-rooted customs and robust political institutions which sustained an active political community. In France, however, it was much more difficult to hinder party interests because the customs and institutions of the ancien régime had been overturned and the institutions that replaced them were flawed and weak. Yet in the 1820s the advent of an active commonwealth emerged as a distinct possibility from a coherent and effective opposition strategy developed by the liberal opponents of Charles X. Denied an effective voice in the nation’s established political fora, liberals expanded the number of political arenas by establishing new political associations and reviews or using established ones to new political ends. Liberal political associations such as Guizot’s aide-toi le ciel t’aidera or liberal newspapers like Paul-François Dubois and Pierre Leroux’s the Globe became powerful forces in the struggle between the old France and the new. These associations and newspapers fostered the conditions under which politics and society could be thought anew, and they became instrumental to what became known as the Great Debate. Tocqueville’s intellectual and political development owed much to the culture spawned by that debate, although the accession of the July Monarchy (1830) proved severely disillusioning for him. Liberals, like Guizot, who were brought to the centre of political power, abandoned their high ideals; as Tocqueville put it, ‘the leaders of the liberalism of 1828, those makers of 1830, put to the sword the first principles of civil liberty which we, former royalists, would never have abandoned at any price’.52 Tocqueville, however, remained true to his principles. He drew on his earlier political education and experiences and set out from the 1830s to establish a political review that sought to give a new direction to French politics by bringing about national reconciliation. He believed governments

14

Introduction

which sought to manipulate the diverse social elements to their advantage by driving a wedge between the advocates of liberty and the defenders of religious faith were becoming less successful at sustaining this cynical and base ambition because the ranks of the allies of liberty and the champions of religious faith were becoming more and more difficult to discern. Experience had taught those who divorced politics from religion that the freest societies were those that had most need for religious faith, and those who believed religion incompatible with freedom had also, through experience, come to learn the two were complementary.53 He believed the review might act as a force for reconciliation of these two groups. He thought this aim to be noble, for he was convinced that rights and freedoms could not endure without uniting the spirit of liberty with the spirit of Christianity.54 His early education under the Jansenist abbé Lesueur and lifelong love of Pascal’s work convinced him that religion sustained an elevated and aristocratic love of liberty by tempering the democratic love of material gain. It directed an individual’s attention away from immediate and material interests toward eternal and sublime considerations. If the review achieved its goal it would have fulfilled what the ‘friends of liberty’ had long understood: ‘in order to safeguard the rights the nation had gained and ones she might gain in future, it is necessary to introduce into the heart of all classes and particularly the lower classes the ideas of order, economy, and finally morality’.55 Tocqueville’s plans for the review were not fulfilled in the 1830s, however, and it was not until 1844, when he led a group to purchase the business newspaper Le Commerce, that his earlier ambitions were achieved. He directed the paper’s editorial policy away from narrow business concerns to the cause of noble beliefs and high ideals in the hope that they might lead individuals away from their preoccupation with material gain: a malady that, he believed, contributed to the atomisation of society, exacerbating the divisions within it. Yet his efforts seemed fruitless in the face of individuals’ obsession with acquiring material possessions. French political life seemed to be reduced to narrow and antagonistic class politics; society itself was levelled down, he thought, and rendered mediocre. The beliefs Tocqueville brought to Le Commerce he upheld in the Chamber of Deputies, to which he was elected in 1839, positioning himself between Adolphe Thiers’s centre–left and Odilon Barrot’s dynastic left. He maintained the profound conviction that politics should be raised to an elevated purpose: the safeguarding of liberty and human dignity.56 In order to achieve this goal within the democratic age, he believed politics needed to be thought out anew, stressing, as he had done in his introduction to Democracy in America (1835), the importance of enlightened politics to democracy and the advance of civilization: The first duty imposed on those who now direct society is to educate democracy; to put, if possible, new life into its beliefs; to purify its

Introduction 15

manners; to control its actions; gradually to substitute understanding of statecraft for present inexperience and knowledge of its true interests for blind instincts; to adapt government to the needs of time and place; and to modify it as men and circumstances require.57 To this end a ‘new political science [was] needed for a world itself quite new’. But the new political science did not rest on a separation between theory and practice. Rather, it could fulfil its wider purpose of advancing civilization only if it was informed by experience, and this could be gained only through an active participation in civic and political life. Only freedom could safeguard that experience – and only freedom could make the science of politics possible.


Part I Society, Economy and Democracy


1 The American Journey and Tocqueville’s Intellectual Awakening

The journey to America was a decisive and formative experience for Tocqueville and Beaumont. The idea for the trip was inspired in part by a desire to escape personal and social circumstances in France. As young magistrates, Tocqueville and Beaumont were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the new Orléanist government of Louis-Philippe. This they did, but not out of any sense of loyalty to the new regime. Tocqueville was very critical of Charles X and certainly did not regret his fall. Though he wished the Bourbon monarchy to continue to rule the French, and hoped that the duc de Bordeaux, Charles X’s grandson, would accede to the throne, this proved a futile hope. Political conditions in France would not permit it. Fearing that France would collapse into anarchy, Tocqueville and Beaumont saw no alternative but to swear allegiance to Louis-Philippe; the new regime seemed the only credible and durable obstacle to revolution and anarchy.1 Those who swore allegiance to the Orléanist regime, however, were excluded from society, such was the hostility and bitterness between the old aristocracy and the new regime. The salons of the Saint-Louis and NotreDame quarters no longer welcomed them,2 and in the ‘impassioned atmosphere of the period following the Three Glorious Days, young magistrates who had sworn the oath were accused of having sordid ambitions that violated their families’ tradition of honour.’3 Tocqueville and Beaumont found themselves in an unenviable position. They were shunned by society for having taken the oath, but they were also distrusted by the new regime because they were perceived as being legitimists at heart. The dilemma was acute, and Tocqueville and Beaumont decided to leave France and remain abroad until the hostile mood dissipated and hatreds became less intense. Going to America offered a way to restore their political fortunes. If put to good effect, the trip would ensure that both could be freed ‘from the crowd’ of those who swore to serve the regime loyally. If they worked on ‘some sort of publication’, as Tocqueville put it, they could ‘alert the public to [their] existence and turn the attention of parties’ toward them upon returning to France.4 To that end Tocqueville and Beaumont arrived at a professional 19

20

Society, Economy and Democracy

excuse for a trip to America that would justify a long absence from France. It was to examine an issue that had dominated political debates in France for many years: how best to reform France’s prison system. On this issue America was an important case study for the French. Numerous travel accounts and other books discussed the American penitentiary system.5 What none of these works offered, however, was a thorough analysis of either that system or of how it might contribute to modernising France’s antiquated prison regime. Tocqueville and Beaumont proposed to undertake just such a study. The outcome of their investigations, The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, was a brilliant success, winning the Montyon prize of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1833 and setting the standard throughout Europe for all subsequent prison studies. But the journey to America had a second, unstated and unofficial purpose. This was to study ‘exactly what a vast republic is’. Here, too, America was an ideal case study.6 Its constitution was entirely republican, and, as all travel accounts emphasised, its citizens were animated by a deep love of equality and liberty: freedom and equality united to make an ideal democratic republic. This unauthorised enquiry resulted in Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America, and Beaumont’s popular, Marie, ou de l’esclavage aux États-Unis.

Tocqueville and Beaumont in America: society, politics and philanthropy Tocqueville and Beaumont left France on 2 April 1831 and landed in New York on 11 May. Their arrival was announced in the American papers, and to their astonishment Americans seemed to attach considerable importance to their mission.7 Americans of ‘every class’ competed with each other in their attempts to assist their investigations. Every courtesy was given them, and every useful document that could be obtained was procured for them. America’s leading prison reformers were, to a man, anxious to meet Tocqueville and Beaumont; the interviews the young magistrates conducted produced a wealth of information. It was not just America’s prison reformers who were eager to meet Tocqueville and Beaumont; social reformers, legal and political thinkers, and important politicians were also keen to meet them. A former President, John Quincy Adams, welcomed the opportunity to discuss with them the nature of the American federation and President Andrew Jackson himself was happy to give them a private audience. As a way to gain access to important individuals and acquire knowledge and insights into America, the study of that country’s penitentiary system was an inspired choice. Their itinerary followed the ‘fashionable tour’ or ‘promenade à la mode’ described in Gideon Minor Davison’s The Fashionable Tour: A Guide to Travellers Visiting the Middle and Northern States, and the Provinces of Canada,8 but

The American Journey 21

it also took in many less fashionable destinations, from America’s great Eastern State Penitentiary outside Philadelphia to the lugubrious house of correction in Cincinnati. Their first impressions of the young republic shaped much of what they later observed. They began their sojourn in New York, staying in lodgings at 66 Broadway, the city’s most fashionable neighbourhood. They were enthusiastically welcomed by New York society, so much so that they had ‘great difficulty . . . from getting confused between all the engagements and invitations’ they had each day.9 They spent a good deal of time with Edward Livingston, author of what were generally agreed to be some of the most important works on prisons and penal codes. They were assisted in their investigations by the Mayor of New York, Walter Bowne, and the aldermen of the city. They were welcomed by the Governor of New York State, Enos Throop, at a Tammany celebration.10 Though they were overwhelmed by New York society, the city itself was singularly uninspiring, its architecture giving the place a very ‘monotone’ air.11 Of New Yorkers themselves, Tocqueville’s judgement was equally harsh. They had ‘commercial habits’ and a ‘money conscious spirit’ that rendered them remarkably ‘vulgar’.12 During their time in New York, Tocqueville and Beaumont engaged in their official business with zeal, visiting the House of Refuge for delinquent minors and the penitentiary at Blackwell’s island. On 29 May they visited the famous Sing Sing, or as it was also known, Mount Pleasant, penitentiary. The prison was 25 miles from New York and a visit to this institution was high on their list of prisons to see. Having described it as ‘the most perfect penitentiary in the United States’, Tocqueville and Beaumont planned to spend a couple of days observing its workings. In the end they spent nine days there, such was their fascination with it. Upon returning to New York, they spent a further three weeks investigating the various prisons and houses of detention in the immediate vicinity. From New York they travelled north to Albany, the capital of New York State. Travelling through the wilderness they visited one of the most important and impressive penitentiaries in America at Auburn. They interviewed its former governor, the noted disciplinarian, Elam Lynds. From Auburn they travelled overland to Detroit. They then crossed into Upper Canada. Here Tocqueville and Beaumont observed a very different society. Though Canadians, like Americans, had a deep love for liberty, they were much more reserved than their southern neighbours; their chaste morals may have had something to do with this.13 Lower Canada was something of a revelation for Tocqueville and Beaumont. Here they discovered a place ‘beyond comparison, of those parts of America which we have visited so far, that which bears the greatest analogy to Europe and, especially to France’.14 In Lower Canada the society of ancien régime France continued to exist. The inhabitants of Lower Canada, though they lived alongside the English and were subject to English laws, were French, ‘trait pour trait’. According to

22


Tocqueville the clergy generated a strength of religious feeling which maintained manners that were entirely French.15 French Canadians may have been ‘a conquered people’, but, according to Tocqueville, they had a deep love of equality and were fiercely independent in spirit; they bore a striking resemblance to French peasants.16 Tocqueville concluded that the Canadiens’ independence of spirit ensured Lower Canada’s prosperity,17 even if they lacked the ‘mercantile spirit which obtrudes in all the actions and sayings of an American’. It was this relation between independence of spirit and prosperity that would later appear as an important theme in both Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.18 For Tocqueville believed individual liberty to be the foundation of durable economic prosperity. After their week in Lower Canada, Tocqueville and Beaumont spent almost one month in Boston. The city was very much to their liking, conforming admirably to their aristocratic temperaments. They were honoured guests of Boston society, one Tocqueville described as ‘the best’, the most ‘like that of the upper classes in Europe’. Here they were in daily contact with men who played an important part in American life. But though their role was important, this American élite was at odds with the nation’s government. Dominated by intellectual preoccupations, the Bostonian élite was a rich ‘source for general views of the people, the social life, and the government of America’.19 The members of this group, most of whom were Whigs, distrusted President Andrew Jackson and feared the populist, demagogic, politics of the Jacksonian Democrats, the direct heirs of Jeffersonian Republicans. Representing aristocratic and important manufacturing and financial interests, the Bostonian Whigs attached less importance to more traditional community relationships and were more comfortable with rational, formal and more self-interested human relations premised upon inward restraint – precisely the kind of relations essential to a manufacturing and commercial society and ones necessary to individual advancement in a competitive world.20 In Boston ‘luxury and refinement prevail[ed]’. People’s manners were ‘distinguished’ and their conversation ‘turn[ed] on intellectual subjects’,21 prison discipline featured prominently. Tocqueville and Beaumont met officials of various prisons, houses of correction and members of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, the ardent defenders of the Auburn penitentiary system. With Edward Everett and the New England historian, Jared Sparks, whom Tocqueville already knew from previous meetings in Paris in 1828, their discussions centred on the subject of local self-government. Tocqueville was clearly fascinated with the issue of local self-government. Though his own ideas on the subject were not clear and needed much more development, he was already aware of the relation that existed between local self-government and individual liberty from his reading of both Montesquieu and Rousseau, but more particularly from diligently following


François Guizot’s fourteenth Sorbonne lecture on The History of Civilization in Europe where that relationship was thoroughly analysed.22 Tocqueville and Beaumont’s conversations with Sparks on this topic were of very great interest to them. They looked for points of comparisons with France in order to understand fully how local self-government secured liberty. But having neither a sophisticated knowledge of administrative law nor any experience in public administration, they sought assistance from other quarters. Tocqueville wrote to his father, a once distinguished administrator and prefect of several departments, and to his friends Ernest Chabrol and Ernest de Blosseville for more information on the subject. Before leaving Boston, Tocqueville and Beaumont compiled for Sparks a list of thirty-three questions on the general principles regulating town governments, on the role of central administration and the functions of local government.23 As their travels continued they sent more questions to him. In answer to their queries the New England historian wrote a small book he entitled Observations on the Government of Towns in Massachusetts (1832). This work was complemented by studies from Chabrol and Blosseville and most significantly from Tocqueville’s father, who had already written on the issue in an 1828 pamphlet, Pour la charte provinciale. These four essays served to inform those chapters in Democracy in America on the government of the Union, and most importantly on the American system of townships. During a formal dinner organised by Alexander Everett, Edward Everett’s brother, Tocqueville found himself sitting beside former President John Quincy Adams. Their conversation, which Tocqueville carefully recorded, dealt with the differences between the societies of the different states and territories, on the role of manufactures in American society and on the importance of religion to the vitality of the nation’s polity. The relation of religion to politics was also an important theme of conversations with America’s leading representatives of the Unitarian church, William Ellery Channing and Joseph Tuckerman, and with leading Quakers in Philadelphia such as Roberts Vaux. These proved useful to Tocqueville. Not only did they influence much of what he had to say in the volumes of Democracy in America published in 1835 and 1840 on religion in democracies, but they also served to inform his later political ambition of uniting religion and politics.24 Tocqueville’s conversations with the Unitarians Channing and Tuckerman, and Quakers like Vaux were also important because, as leading philanthropists, they had sophisticated thoughts on prison reform and philanthropy.25 As we shall see, Tocqueville soon engaged with the views they expressed. Both groups stressed the individual virtues of self-discipline, self-reliance and hard work. Channing, for instance, advocated the cultivation of an ethic of self-help which would free the poor from a dependence which, he believed, bred ‘servility’ and ‘want of self-respect [the] preparation for every evil’.26 These values were integrated into a philanthropy which, accepting the new and important role of manufactures in

24


America’s economy, sought to eliminate or reduce its deleterious side effects, urban poverty, alcoholism, increasing numbers of illegitimate births, crime and disease, by drawing on ideas formulated in Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population. Channing, Tuckerman and Vaux had written extensively on prisons and conducted serious studies into the causes of criminality, particularly poverty and urban deprivation. They had established considerable reputations in Europe among philanthropists, theologians and political economists such as Edward Coplestone and Richard Whately.27 Vaux was admired by European prison reformers and opponents of slavery such as Zachery Macaulay. Tuckerman was esteemed by the Baron de Gérando for his translation of the latter’s Visiteur du pauvre and the stimulating introduction to that translation. Channing, whose influence was important in French liberal circles,28 established his philanthropic credentials with the 1829 publication of his Remarks on Associations, a work firmly anchored in the belief that both rich and poor were capable of moral and physical improvement. Neither Vaux’s nor Tuckerman’s nor Channing’s interest in the issue of poverty and its prevention, however, was purely academic. Vaux had founded many charitable institutions and was the founder of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of the Public Prisons. Channing had long been engaged in ministering to the poor and had established a large following, and Tuckerman was one of the most vigorous advocates of Channing’s brand of Unitarian philanthropy rooted in an ethic of self-help that emphasised the themes of individual moral and ethical renovation. He too ministered to the poor and his efforts at remedying their plight soon developed into a comprehensive and influential philosophy combining principles of political economy with an ethic for poor-relief.29 This philosophy was rooted in his opinions about individual discipline and self-mastery,30 and it was put into practice with the creation of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in 1834.31 Tuckerman, like Channing and Vaux, believed political economy and poor relief were most effective when attached to Christian principles. Like his French counterpart Gérando, he attacked the culture of greed spawned by unfettered market relations. He thought this culture was bolstered by new doctrines that sought to elevate political economy to a purely scientific status, divorcing it from politics and morals. Like Malthus, he believed political economy could not be considered independently of politics and morals, and had to be rooted in Christian principles. Only in this way could it animate a public ethic based on duty and responsibility, one central to a dynamic community and democratic polity. In his attack on new ‘scientific’ doctrines of political economy and the ethos of greed they cultivated, he focused on a particular change in individual and social manners. Individuals, he believed, slowly lost sight of their duties and responsibilities to others at the same time as they vigorously


defended their entitlements. His examination of the system of poor relief which operated in the state of Massachusetts, Report of the Commissioners on the Pauper Laws (1833), served to illustrate his point. In it he marshalled evidence proving the system of workhouses and compulsory labour were baneful both to the poor and other social classes. The system fostered the expectation among the poor of immediate relief. Among the better off it encouraged a surrendering to the state of individual duties and responsibilities to the poor; it furthered the abandonment of individuals’ moral and Christian duties to those in distress.32 To safeguard these duties Tuckerman argued that public relief should be done away with gradually and be replaced by private charity. Private charity, in fostering a spirit of association between rich and poor by being directed toward housing the homeless, promoting education among the poor and the values of hard work and thrift through the creation of savings banks, would reinforce social cohesion and help the poor to help themselves. It was a belief he argued with conviction in Letters on the Principles (1826), his reports to the American Unitarian Association from 1828 to 1832, and his prizewinning essay attacking wage-exploitation of women in which he saw the root-cause of female prostitution.33 His arguments were remarkably Malthusian and were shared by other American philanthropists like Channing and the German–American Francis Lieber, translator of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France. Just like Malthus, Channing argued, in his two most prominent works, Ministry for the Poor (1835) and Self-Culture (1838), that Christian political economy was central to any legitimate doctrine of private charity. In viewing economic activity in its wider relation to morality and politics rather than through the narrow focus of its relation to immutable metaphysical laws, he understood Christian political economy as emphasising both the individual and social commitment to duty and responsibility. In this way it embodied an ethos by which the wider society could help the poor to help themselves. Lieber was also inspired by Malthus’s ideas and in his introduction to Tocqueville and Beaumont’s On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France he emphasised the link between individual discipline, virtue, and community.34 His Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College for Orphans (1834) drew on these ideas and stressed the importance of educating children in Christian virtues and social discipline; the book may have influenced Tocqueville’s own thoughts on measures which could be adopted to prevent juvenile crime and improve the lot of abandoned children, themes which appeared in reports he wrote in the 1840s for the general departmental council of the Manche. These philanthropists’ firm belief in uniting private charity to religious instruction and political economy to Christianity grew naturally out of their fear that political economy without any firm religious foundation would give licence to a culture of greed35 which in turn would shatter humanity’s

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relation to God.36 Their ideas on political economy, urban poverty and the causes of crime were instructive to Tocqueville and Beaumont. The young Frenchmen, aware of the growing importance of manufactures to the French economy and their repercussions on social relations, were receptive to many of the ideas advanced by these philanthropists. From Boston Tocqueville and Beaumont travelled to Philadelphia and Baltimore. They stayed in Philadelphia almost three weeks. As in Boston, they saw an earnestness of spirit among the Quaker and Unitarian reformers of the city. These individuals had a single-minded devotion to good works. Alleviating the miseries of the poor, reforming the character of criminals, educating the ignorant and caring for the sick were high on their agenda. Tocqueville and Beaumont were enthusiastically greeted by members of the numerous philanthropic societies, particularly the members of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. In Philadelphia, more than any other American city, Tocqueville and Beaumont’s mission was treated with the highest degree of seriousness. As we shall see in Chapter 5 the rivalry between supporters of the Auburn penitentiary system – communal labour under a strictly controlled regime – which included groups in New York and Boston, and those of the Pennsylvania, or Philadelphia, penitentiary system – solitary confinement – was intense. The supporters of the Philadelphia system were eager to leave Tocqueville and Beaumont with a very favourable impression of their system. In their eagerness to promote its virtues, members of the Philadelphia society, James J. Barclay, George Washington Smith and Roberts Vaux, organised an ambitious number of visits to various institutions of detention, including the famous Eastern State Penitentiary. Vaux and other zealots of philanthropy furnished Tocqueville and Beaumont with so many books, pamphlets and other documents on the beneficent effects of the Philadelphia penitentiary system that the young magistrates feared the sheer volume of material would make it difficult to take back to France.37 Philadelphia, however, was important to Tocqueville for other reasons. It was here that he felt obliged to respond to questions about America’s banking system from his brother Édouard. He also felt bound to work on an essay on the organisation of civil and criminal justice in America he had promised his friend Chabrol. To this end he obtained the assistance of a young lawyer who would later become Attorney General of the United States, Henry Gilpin, and the Recorder of the city, Joseph McIlvaine. Gilpin responded to Tocqueville’s detailed questions on civil and criminal law by offering him a detailed exposition on common law, statute law, equity law, inferior and superior courts, and the functions of judges and juries. McIlvaine assisted Tocqueville and Beaumont in their inquiries by writing three long essays, a small book in fact, on the history of the penal code in Pennsylvania. In addition to these essays he wrote two others on the judicial organisation of the state, detailing every aspect of the judiciary. Of particu-


lar importance, however, was McIlvaine’s long and detailed account of the jury system. For Tocqueville and Beaumont, junior magistrates at a time when the French had been debating the usefulness of juries, this material was very important. Much of it would appear in that famous chapter of Democracy in America (1835), ‘What tempers the tyranny of the majority in the United States’, Tocqueville’s own brilliant contribution to those intellectual debates of the 1830s on the role and composition of juries.38 In all those discussions Tocqueville was able to explore in greater detail the role of the private citizen in a democratic republic; the issues of suffrage and right of assembly were analysed. But what caught his interest most was the role associations, particularly philanthropic ones, played in a democratic republic: how they were an expression of the individual citizen’s liberty and how associations bolstered that liberty. From the reports of those philanthropic societies in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, from Tuckerman’s Letter to the Mechanics of Boston, or Vaux’s Notices of the original and successive efforts to improve the discipline of the prison of Philadelphia, Tocqueville was able to arrive at a clear idea of the importance of associations to cultivating and safeguarding liberty in democracies. While in Philadelphia he began work on some of the most important chapters of Democracy in America (1835), those featuring in the second part of that work. From Philadelphia Tocqueville and Beaumont made their way west into the interior of America. Here they observed a coarse and vulgar populace, one prone to the demagoguery of Jacksonian democrats. They spent five days in Cincinnati, a ‘town which seems to want to get built too quickly to have things done in order’.39 They travelled south by steamboat on the Mississippi through Kentucky and Tennessee. In contrast to Lower Canada or the New England States, where farmers’ fierce spirit of independence ensured the economic prosperity of their farms, in the south they were struck by how much slavery undermined enterprise and corrupted the manners of even the poorest farmer.40 The consequence was that agriculture was far less productive than either in Lower Canada or the non-slave states of the Union41 – an observation Beaumont reiterated in speeches he gave first in 1835 in Paris to the société française pour l’abolition de l’esclavage and then to a large abolitionist assembly hosted by Lord Brougham that same year in London.42 But these states exposed dangerous characteristics of democracy. Society seemed almost primitive, in no way resembling ‘the high civilisation of New England’. The inhabitants were coarse and driven by an almost uncontrolled desire to make their fortunes. The consequence of this was that these same individuals seemed ‘to foresee nothing’.43 This, Tocqueville later observed, was characteristic of the habitual inattention endemic to American democracy, one of its worst failings.44 Arriving in New Orleans on 1 January 1832, Tocqueville and Beaumont were struck by its inhabitants who had ‘faces with every shade of colour’, and conversed in French, English, Spanish and Creole. Tocqueville and

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Beaumont were also taken aback by the distinct lack of morality here, the practice of concubinage, the only observable link between the different races.45 The contrast with the moral purity of New England could not have been greater. They stayed three days in New Orleans and from there they went overland to Charleston, South Carolina. After travelling overland through Georgia and Virginia they arrived in Washington on 16 January 1832 and spent a little over two weeks in the capital. This enabled them to observe the workings of Congress, to speak to politicians and to meet briefly with President Andrew Jackson, ‘a successful as well as a desperate political gangster’, as one of Tocqueville’s diary entries described him.46 Tocqueville and Beaumont’s stay in Washington was full of activity. They spent most evenings as party or dinner guests at Edward Livingston’s official residence. They were honoured guests at a large ball hosted by the Secretary of the Treasury, Louis McLane and they dined for a second time with John Quincy Adams, returning once more to the issue of the durability of the American federation, the theme of the concluding chapter of Democracy in America (1835). Their days, however, were devoted to serious studies, observing the workings of America’s political institutions. They attended sessions of the House of Representatives and Senate, and when they were not attending sessions of Congress they spent their remaining hours with Edward Livingston discussing issues related to the workings of American government.47 These discussions, and Livingston’s advice, played a crucial role in informing ideas expressed in Democracy in America. Tocqueville thought Livingston’s contribution to his own understanding of America very important; he would be the only American of all those individuals Tocqueville met to be thanked by name in the pages of Democracy in America. By the time of their departure on 20 February 1832, Tocqueville had observed a great deal of America, though he felt his knowledge of the southern states lacking.48 Nonetheless, he had accumulated an important number of books and other documents. His own written observations were extensive.49 His interviews and conversations with statesmen, judges, lawyers, prison officials, social reformers and leading philanthropists were meticulously recorded and annotated. This considerable body of material contributed to his sophisticated understanding of the nature and workings of democracy, and served as an important foundation to what he believed would be a ‘passable book’ on the subject.50 ‘Passable’ it certainly was.

Prison investigations and the study of democracy It is generally accepted that Tocqueville and Beaumont were interested principally in their unauthorised enquiries into American society and democracy. The official reason for their journey, to study America’s penal system, was of little significance to them and a mere pretext to their wider enquiries.51 Certainly there is important evidence to support that claim.52


Whilst investigating American prisons served to inform important political debates in France, observing the workings of American democracy and writing about them, Tocqueville believed, could serve a more important purpose: to offer the French important lessons explaining why France since 1789 experienced so many revolutions and how these could be avoided.53 It would later become Tocqueville’s ambition for Democracy in America.54 This does not mean, however, that Tocqueville and Beaumont’s investigations into American prisons should be divorced from their wider studies.55 To separate them would be a mistake. Simple practical considerations ensured a link between these different investigations. Because prison reform was such an important issue to the French and the Americans, Tocqueville and Beaumont believed any serious study of American prisons would act as a passport to wider social enquiries. Investigating prisons would allow them to meet important social and political thinkers and politicians in America, and give them access to an enormous number of documents on prisons, but also on other political and social issues.56 These benefits Tocqueville readily acknowledged.57 But there were five important methodological and theoretical considerations that ensured the two studies were more intimately related than modern-day scholars have considered them to be. The first was that the study of American prisons influenced Tocqueville’s selection of topics for Democracy in America (1835). Chapters on judicial power, analyses of the legal profession, American’s respect for the law, the effects of demography on public morality, the effects of private morality on public manners and the effect of laws on private morality are just some of the most obvious topics that related directly to the investigation of prisons.58 Investigating prisons gave Tocqueville insights into individual and social perceptions on private morality. This was something well understood by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers to America, the classic statement of it appearing in the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s, Des prisons de Philadelphie, vues par un Européen. What individual or group acts a society permitted and forbade or punished were central to any penal investigation. Where these insights served a wider social and political study and served a second consideration was in how they revealed the complex relation between private morality, public manners and types of political regime. Tocqueville learned both from his reading of Montesquieu and by diligently following from 1828 to 1830 François Guizot’s lectures on The History of Civilization in Europe and The History of Civilization in France,59 that understanding the relation of individual private morality to public manners gave insight into both the nature of a given political regime and its core principle – virtue for republics, honour for monarchies, and fear for despotisms – what Montesquieu defined as its essence and dynamic. Understanding a country’s penal system, its laws and how it punished individuals who transgressed them, was a first step to understanding the relation between private morality and public manners, the social foundation to any political regime.

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Aside from those two elements, the investigation into prisons and the study of American democracy were rooted in three related theoretical and methodological considerations. The first had to do with the method adopted by the geographers Tocqueville studied, including the comte de Volney, Thomas Cooper, Edme Mentelle and Conrad Malte-Brun. As early as 1829 he acknowledged geography to be ‘absolutely essential’ to the study of politics and society.60 Whether from Volney’s Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis, Cooper’s Reseignemens sur l’Amérique, or Mentelle and MalteBrun’s massive and famous Géographie universelle, Tocqueville extracted details which highlighted the importance of classification of types of national character. This was a taxonomy he was familiar with from his much earlier studies of Bodin and Montesquieu. The results of his own investigations, the way he used this taxonomy, appeared in the second and third chapters of the first part of Democracy in America (1835). From these geographers Tocqueville derived important lessons on the importance climate and physical geography had in contributing to the form of political society.61 Here too, these works served to remind him of Bodin and Montesquieu. And once again Democracy in America (1835) revealed these influences, highlighting the importance of America’s geographical position, its rich soil and abundance of virgin lands, validating the naturalness of its agricultural economy and the beneficent effect this had in ensuring a robust democratic government.62 The second of these considerations had to do with the historical method of Guizot’s Sorbonne lectures, particularly what Guizot called ‘philosophical’ history. Tocqueville learned from Guizot that every social organisation could be treated like a fact, akin to any other fact and hence open to analysis.63 This idea originated in Scottish moral philosophy and was adopted at the end of the eighteenth century by the philosophe Condorcet and the physiologue Cabanais whose own ideas were applied to political economy by the ex-priest Talleyrand and later refined by Jean-Baptiste Say.64 These optimists understood facts as constituting the ‘general fact’ of perfectibility. As empirical proof of progress, ‘facts’ became central to history, the key human science and ‘fount of certain information about the creation of the ideal republic’.65 Whilst Guizot may have accepted Condorcet’s claim that ‘as facts accumulate men learn to classify them’ and through this gain a more exact knowledge of their history and themselves, he would have been sceptical of the philosophe’s optimistic claims about human progress. Tocqueville adopted Say’s and Guizot’s understanding of facts. As we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3, he followed both the political economist and the historian closely by breaking down social organisations into their smallest constituents. Nevertheless, he disentangled their respective characterisations of facts. Like Say and Guizot, Tocqueville distinguished between general facts and particular facts. But whereas Say focused on general facts as the underlying universal regularities of economy and therefore the privileged domain


of political economy, Guizot correlated them with society and civilization. Say believed particular facts to be compilations of evidence which called for an exact science of their own: statistics.66 Guizot, however, had a more general understanding of particular facts, seeing them as constituent elements to the general fact of society or civilization. Say’s distinction between general and particular facts appears to have been motivated by the desire to justify political economy’s independent and scientific status, divorcing it from other social, political and moral studies. Tocqueville rejected political economy’s independent and narrow scientific status. He was also more closely drawn to Guizot’s characterisation of particular and general facts, using the particular facts of social issues to inform his broader understanding of the general fact of democracy. In this way the particular facts of crime and poverty revealed something about the general fact of society. Here, and this point will be analysed in greater detail in the chapters to follow, the distinction between particular and general facts was linked to a further differentiation between the internal and external elements of society. Whereas Guizot had previously used this distinction to describe civilization, classifying the internal elements as ideas, outlooks, attitudes and beliefs, and the external elements as the political and social institutions and economic organisation, Tocqueville applied it to society and his analysis of democracy. What he did with this approach was stunningly original, and would later mark an important difference between the first and second volumes of Democracy in America. Where Tocqueville was influenced by Say was in the political economist’s equating particular facts with statistics. Here lay the third link between the study of prisons and study of democracy. Tocqueville would have seen at once that by equating particular facts not only with the constituent elements of society, but also with statistics he could make use of a new approach to social investigations. This approach was concerned with unearthing statistical connexions between various social phenomena, particularly poverty, crime, disease and death: ‘moral statistics’ as it was called by its originators, Adolphe Quetelet and A.M. Guerry. Both men were highly esteemed by Tocqueville; he knew Guerry personally and was full of admiration for the statistician. Tocqueville found Guerry’s work stimulating and instructive. He regarded the new discipline so highly that he was reported to have said of it ‘that were it not a dishonour to be cast into prison, [I] would like nothing better than to spend [my] years locked up, condemned to study une pareille chiffrerie’.67 Statistics was a discipline that clearly fascinated Tocqueville. When combined with the method of ‘philosophical’ history, the possibilities offered by the two approaches seemed endless. Tocqueville and Beaumont used the latest statistical techniques in their investigation of American prisons. The use of statistics enabled Tocqueville to create a large body of particular facts that could then be integrated into his analysis of the wider general fact of democratic society. This novel combi-

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nation of the method of ‘philosophical’ history and statistics was one of Tocqueville’s great innovations. The examination of prisons and American democracy are also related because they both comprise philanthropy and political economy. The theory and practice of philanthropy in America was an important topic in all the great travel accounts of America Tocqueville read, including La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s, Chateaubriand’s, Basil Hall’s, and Felix de Beaujour’s.68 Philanthropy was also the concern of most of the Americans he met, particularly those in Boston and Philadelphia. Highlighted by the writings of philanthropists like Vaux, Tuckerman and Channing the theory and practice of philanthropy in America received a rigorous analysis in The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France. What is less widely acknowledged, however, is that it was treated in many chapters of both the 1835 and 1840 volumes of Democracy in America. While these volumes examined the theory and practice of philanthropy, their significance to Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy have not been immediately apparent to modern-day readers. Yet philanthropy was important for two reasons. First, philanthropy highlighted the relation of private morality to public manners. Observing the form of this relation in a given society, understanding its many facets, was the key to acquiring insight into, and understanding of, a given society. Because philanthropy was tied to religious practices and beliefs, to perceptions of human nature and ideas on the perfectibility of man, it offered a way into understanding a people’s philosophic ideas and their perceptions of themselves. Philanthropy was significant for another reason: it was integral to discussions in political economy, and this discipline was tremendously important to Tocqueville. In his early studies of the famous political economist Say, Tocqueville gained not only a basic understanding of the workings of the market, but learned that political economy was an important medium to explore the most basic questions surrounding national character, or national identity.69 In this way it served to inform his understanding of American democracy; and the extent to which political economy informed Democracy in America (1835) will be apparent in subsequent chapters. Though Tocqueville never saw himself as a political economist, he understood how political economy could be used to explore questions about democracy. And the study of Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique during the crossing to America was a clear indication of that. But this understanding long predated Tocqueville’s American travels, as his diary of a trip to Sicily in 1826 revealed.70 Tocqueville’s American letters and his travel diaries reveal the considerable extent to which he thought about how Americans’ commercial spirit influenced their democracy.71 His thoughts mirrored considerations that featured prominently in discussions within intellectual circles in America, discussions made all the more animated because of issues


surrounding tariffs and banking. Though these debates served to nourish his thoughts, there were important works that shaped his opinions too. Travel accounts such as Beaujour’s, Hall’s, and James Fenimore Cooper’s Notions of the Americans: picked up by a travelling bachelor,72 examined the relation between commerce and democracy. An indirect knowledge of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population may also have been very influential. They, along with Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, informed Tocqueville’s understanding of how commerce shaped people’s perceptions and expectations of justice. The Spirit of Laws, however, also influenced Tocqueville.73 He was drawn to The Spirit of Laws, particularly Book 20, because of the way in which Montesquieu explored how commerce influenced laws and the principle of political regimes.74 Through his observations on commerce in America and its effects on the nature and principle of democracy, Tocqueville may have believed that he could provide answers to how France could make commerce serve the interests of liberty rather than those of revolution.75 On this point, however, Montesquieu’s analysis required greater depth; a more sophisticated political economy was needed, and Say provided it. By using Say’s Cours complet as a guide to understanding the influence of commerce on society and polity, Tocqueville gained significant insight into American democracy. This was certainly the case when, in analysing the nature of commercial activity in America, he explored the effects of its growing manufacturing sector. This was a relatively new phenomenon in America, discussed but not seriously analysed in the travel accounts he read. Its appearance worried some Americans, particularly old republicans and Jacksonian democrats, many of whom were opposed to the introduction of the tariff for fear of the effects it would have on agriculture. Among more privileged Americans, mostly Whigs, manufactures were welcomed and seen as important to the country’s overall economic development. Their defence of the tariff was robust.76 But some in those more privileged sections of the population, though welcoming the benefits brought by manufactures, worried about their deleterious effects, particularly among the poor. American philanthropists, particularly those in Boston and Philadelphia, highlighted those concerns. Their thoughts on manufactures served to enlighten Tocqueville, later inspiring his own considerations on industry and its relation to democracy – thoughts that appeared in Democracy in America (1840). Tocqueville’s American discussions on manufactures encompassed an important number of related issues, including the importance of international trade, the role of tariffs in protecting nascent manufactures from large foreign competitors,77 and the necessity of an efficient banking system to manufactures. Conversations he had with old republicans, however, stressed how manufactures developed naturally out of what was for decades highly commercialised agriculture. These republicans had long lamented this overcommercialisation, believing it posed too many risks to the wider polity of

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the democratic republic.78 For them, agriculture had an elevated theoretical status: the ancient defenders of republics emphasising its naturalness and its beneficent effects in sustaining the purity of citizens’ manners. The increasing commercialisation of agriculture threatened to undermine the pure manners of the citizenry. This was because commerce directed men toward the accumulation of wealth and material comforts, pursuits that were at odds with the virtues of citizenship, and ones that would ultimately undermine the institutions that secured individuals’ liberty and equality. In America, debates on these developments long predated the founding of the Republic. The defenders and promoters of commerce marshalled arguments from Montesquieu and Hume. Though commerce might pose some dangers, it also offered many more benefits, they claimed. Montesquieu had also shown that commerce ‘cured destructive prejudices’. He even contended that ‘it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores’.79 Commerce promoted both refinement and enlightenment, and where it presented dangers these could be safeguarded against by political and social institutions. European travel writers Tocqueville read, including Basil Hall and Felix de Beaujour, recorded their thoughts on these issues.80 American statisticians such as Adam Seybert, whose work Tocqueville studied in detail, emphasised their importance,81 and American philanthropists from Tuckerman to Vaux expressed their opinions on these issues.82 Jacksonian Democrats, in elevating the virtues of the rural way of life, criticised large manufacturing and commercial interests, particularly advocates of the tariff and banks. For Democrats the tariff impeded the sale of agricultural products and banks drove smallhold farmers and petty merchants in need of credit into debt bondage. The issue for them was simple: the tariff and the banks threatened the liberties of America’s citizens. The Democrats’ opponents, the Whigs, argued that such criticism was unfounded and ideologically motivated. For them a secure banking sector and the tariff were essential to a robust manufacturing sector which contributed to the growth of national wealth and increased employment. Through manufactures luxuries would become more widely accessible and with this development citizens’ manners would become more refined. Wealth and refinement would not only assure the vitality of America’s democracy, they would also contribute to America’s greatness. Philanthropic opinion on these issues tended to divide along party lines, but most philanthropists were members of the élite, and so tended to be Whigs; this was certainly the case of Bostonian philanthropists whose influence on Tocqueville, particularly on issues of poverty, was important. Tuckerman, for instance, was concerned with the destructive effects of the accentuation of the division of labour which caused the classes to be increasingly distanced from each other, weakening the ties which bound society


together. This was one of the principal themes of his introduction to Gérando’s Visitor of the Poor. The remedy he offered was to rethink the principles of political economy in the light of Christian ethics. His brand of Christian political economy sought to unite the elevated virtues of Christian charity with principles of political economy, and thereby strengthen the bonds between social classes.83 This idea also appeared in Channing’s 1835 Ministry for the Poor, a spirited attack on the ‘idolatry of wealth’ and forceful defence of the Christian principle of individuals’ ‘solemn obligation to the less favored’.84 Tuckerman gave Tocqueville and Beaumont a large number of pamphlets and reports setting out his beliefs.85 These became useful to Tocqueville’s own critique of poor relief in the state of Maryland which appeared in The Penitentiary System in United States and its Application in France,86 and to his later reports on pauperism. While the way American philanthropists understood poverty and the wider tripartite relation between poverty, economics and politics may not have been apparent to Tocqueville immediately, for he always considered poverty a providential element of the human condition, the thoughts of American philanthropists caused him to pause and think about how manufactures contributed to an increase in the number of poor in society. Although his thoughts on this issue were often vague and even contradictory at times, he was aware of a number of dangers: the deleterious consequences of the division of labour and its relation to landed property, the basis to individual liberty87 – though on this latter point he, like most American Whigs, believed manufactures furnished skilled workers with high wages which in turn allowed them and their children to acquire land.88 Industry seemed to foster a growth of the middle classes. Yet at the same time, particularly for the unskilled and poor, it made upward social mobility more difficult. In this way, within a democracy industry appeared to spawn a paradox: it created more rigid inequalities in a society governed by equality of conditions. Tocqueville was unable to understand fully this development, but he was conscious that it needed further exploration. As we shall see later, it was immediately upon completing Democracy in America (1835) that he grappled with the issue when he embarked on his own serious studies on poverty; it was through these studies that he was able to appreciate fully the significance of this paradox. Before we can appreciate fully the significance of his investigations to his wider considerations on democracy, however, we must turn to his studies of the principles of political economy.

2 Embracing Liberal Political Economy and then Rejecting it: Tocqueville’s Reading of Say and Malthus

In 1828 Tocqueville read Jean-Baptiste Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique. By now a junior magistrate, Tocqueville had successfully completed three years of legal studies two years before, in 1826. Had Royer-Collard’s 1820 reforms to the law curriculum survived the conservative government of the Comte de Villèle, Tocqueville would have formally studied political economy as part of his legal training. But the ultras scrapped Royer-Collard’s reforms and political economy was dropped from the curriculum, and did not appear as an obligatory course of study until 1871.1 Despite the absence of a formal academic study of political economy Tocqueville did, however, acquire a good knowledge of its axioms from conversations with his father, a former prefect, and his brother Édouard, who was very knowledgeable in the subject. He also developed an understanding of new economic theories and innovations in the discipline from reading the liberal paper the Globe. Founded in 1824 by Paul-François Dubois and Pierre Leroux, the Globe was the most influential paper of liberal opinion, until it became the voice of the Saint-Simonians after they purchased it in 1831.2 From 1824 to 1830 it was committed to the education of ‘generations brought up since the Restoration and tormented with the desire to educate themselves’, young liberals opposed to the Villèle ministry.3 It had an important number of France’s most talented minds writing for it, including the philosophers Théodore Jouffroy and Jean-Philibert Damiron, the journalist and writer Charles Rémusat, the literary great Saint-Beuve and a host of other individuals who would go on to occupy high office under the July Monarchy. Opposed to the policies of the ultras’ reactionary regime and by way of contrast with its conservatism, the Globe embraced liberal values, particularly political and economic liberty. The classic expression of this was found in Duvergier de Hauranne’s credo for the Globe: ‘Laissez faire, laissez passer: here is the fundamental maxim of the nineteenth century; it is the remedy to all ills, and the source for all improvements.’4 Liberal political economy was the embodiment of this credo and the Globe sought to enlighten its readers to the latest developments in this field. To this end it employed the talents 36

Tocqueville and Liberal Political Economy 37

of one of Théodore Jouffroy’s star pupils, the young and brilliant liberal aristocrat, Charles Tanneguy Duchâtel. From 1824 Duchâtel wrote an important number of articles on the latest theories in political economy. He wrote extensively on the works of Smith, Say and Malthus; he also introduced the French to Ricardo’s latest writings.5 Duchâtel’s expositions of the doctrines of liberal political economy were considered classics by his contemporaries. In his defence of liberal political economy he attacked the conservative economic doctrines of the Villèle ministry which were rooted firmly in the outmoded doctrines of physiocracy and inherited prejudices of mercantilism.6 At the same time, however, he attacked socialist economic theories promoted by Prosper Enfantin and other Saint-Simonians in the pages of the Producteur.7 Against the conservatives, Duchâtel presented a robust defence of economic liberalism based on the doctrines of Say and Ricardo. Against the socialists, he called on the works of Malthus and Malthus’s disciple, Thomas Chalmers. Duchâtel’s articles on Say and Ricardo served to promote the interests of free trade and industry. Against old economic doctrines that argued for the maintenance of rental income from land, Duchâtel reiterated Say’s critique of the physiocrat Dupont de Nemours from the Traité d’économie politique and drew on Ricardo’s famous contribution to the English Corn Law debates, Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock. Here Ricardo declared that rent was ‘never a new creation of revenue, but always part of a revenue already created’.8 The implication of this statement was that rent was unproductive and hence iniquitous. Rental income did not serve the interest of the whole economy, it served the interest of a particular class. Ricardo declared bluntly that: ‘the interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interest of every other class of society’.9 Duchâtel agreed. In five long articles he presented to the French for the first time Ricardo’s theory on rents. Like Ricardo, he argued that by protecting rents the price of food would remain high. This would drive up wages which would in turn hinder capital accumulation and the progress of industry. Like Ricardo and Say, Duchâtel sought to promote Industrie, as synonymous with not only industriousness and productivity but also with manufacturing and commerce.10 He portrayed industrie in a favourable light and contrasted it to agriculture, which he associated with the vested interests of large estate owners whose consumption of luxuries did not contribute to an increase in the capital stock of society. In this way he equated industry with the general social interest.11 Duchâtel’s attack on landlords was not the only attack on a vested interest. According to him any class that sought to secure its own interest at the expense of the social interest was acting unjustly. This was certainly true of landlords but it was true of workers too. Here, Duchâtel offered a robust critique of Saint-Simonians and other socialists who argued for workers to be granted a right to employment. Rather than provide employment for all, such a right would cause the increased pauperisation of the working classes.

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This was because in contradicting the laws of political economy, a right to employment would ultimately constrain the operations of the economy, impede its development, and adversely affect those it initially sought to assist. Duchâtel employed the same argument against those who demanded both greater regulation of, and more state intervention in, the economy. He argued against the creation of a form of economic corporatism which would see the state intervene in all aspects of economic life. According to Duchâtel such an economy could serve only a particular interest, that of the state and its administrators. Against this nineteenth-century version of Quesnay’s enlightened despotism, in which economy and society were organised by the state, from above, Duchâtel argued that economy and society only could be organised by individuals, from below. Only in allowing individuals to exercise their own self-interest without hindrance could society’s interest be attained. Not only this, but society itself would prosper. Here Duchâtel introduced his own version of an idea of association which was first discussed by Alexandre de Laborde, Louis-Philippe’s aide-de-camp and influential Orleanist Comte whose ideas ironically became influential within legitimist circles.12 When applied to material interests and industry, the ‘spirit of association’, like the workings of the invisible hand, brought together enterprise and capital, ‘l’intelligence qui invente’ and ‘la force qui exécute’.13 It assured both harmony of interests and the greatest prosperity for society. It served society’s general interest. In his drive to promote the most important interests of society, Duchâtel sought to make known to the French the works of Malthus. In 1825 he wrote a series of four articles on Malthus’s work and in the following year he wrote three articles on Malthus’s most important disciple, Thomas Chalmers. Duchâtel’s interest in Malthus lay in the clergyman’s account of the population principle. Duchâtel believed that the singular most important advance in the sciences of society and political economy was Malthus’s discovery that working-class poverty was a direct result of increases in population that outstripped food supply. Like Malthus, Duchâtel argued that the cause of working-class misery was its large population. The way to eliminate or lessen this was for workers to exercise moral restraint. Only by delaying marriage and restricting numbers of births could the condition of the working classes be improved. These were the ‘inflexible principles of political economy’, according to Duchâtel.14 Like Malthus, Duchâtel also criticised those forms of philanthropy which supplemented workers’ every need. Such assistance was misplaced. It ran counter to the rigid laws of political economy. It encouraged both a lack of individual responsibility and foresight, and ultimately it promoted vice. Duchâtel accepted the need to help the poorest of the poor: orphans, the very elderly and the physically and mentally ill; he even accepted the need for temporary assistance for the poor. But, like Malthus, he argued that only the poor could really help themselves. Here, the principles of political economy served the interests of modern


philanthropy. Philanthropy should work to enlighten the poor to their selfinterest. It should teach them the importance of moral uprightness, hard work and thrift. Only in this way could the poor improve their lot. Tocqueville read Le Globe and was familiar with Duchâtel’s articles for it.15 They were sure to have impressed him. The Globe was the most influential paper among liberals of Tocqueville’s generation, and its cause was actively promoted by Doctrinaire liberals including Royer-Collard, the young Rémusat, and Tocqueville’s ‘guide and teacher’, François Guizot.16 Guizot, who considered Say’s writings to have had a salutary influence on French liberal thought and ensured Say’s promotion to the first chair of political economy at the Collège de France,17 believed the Globe was instrumental in extending the scope of the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood beyond economics to politics. He, like Say, believed that with knowledge of the economy one could discover the ‘regulating mechanisms’ of politics.18 Unlike Say, however, he did not believe political economy to have the same status as a ‘natural science’. Tocqueville was strongly influenced by these beliefs, as we shall see in the following chapter. Many of Tocqueville’s friends were closely associated with the Globe. Some, like the lawyer and conservative deputy, Eugène Janvier, were among Duchâtel best friends.19 Others, like the celebrated jurist and liberal André-Marie Dupin and his younger brother, the political economist and philanthropist, Charles Dupin, had their own writings published in the Globe. André Dupin helped Tocqueville in his studies of the classics of political economy, answering many of Tocqueville’s questions on the writings of Jean-Baptiste Say.20 Charles Dupin’s important statistical study on the relation between education, economic prosperity and public morality for the whole of France’s departments, widely commented on in the Globe,21 was, along with the articles devoted to it, important in shaping Tocqueville’s own views on this relation as they would later appear in The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France.22 Tocqueville’s early ideas on political economy agreed with many of Duchâtel’s own, though as we shall see later there are a number of significant differences. Tocqueville’s critique of modern philanthropy which would appear in all his writings on social problems from prison reform to the care of abandoned children was, in every detail, Malthusian. Here too, Duchâtel’s four articles devoted to Malthus exercised an important influence on Tocqueville. Duchâtel’s attack on conservatives and socialists created a climate favourable to liberal economic ideas, particularly those of Jean-Baptiste Say. As one of Say’s most able proselytes, Duchâtel’s own essays for the Globe attracted such interest in Say’s writings, that when Say presented the lectures that made up his Cours complet d’économie politique at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers in 1828, it was to a large international audience. Tocqueville was swept along by the enthusiasm for Say’s lectures.23 It was in this atmosphere that he and Beaumont began their own serious study of Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique.

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The Cours complet d’économie politique Tocqueville’s notes on Say’s Cours complet are largely descriptive. Organised in alphabetical order, beginning with a description of money (argent) and ending with a description of value and sale (vente), these notes contain a number of points of interest. For instance, the entries on agriculture and commerce refer the reader to the entry on industry. And the entries on industry, production and value are the longest. This type of classification, in which agriculture and commerce were subsumed under a definition of industry, was significant. Say contended that the working of land, whether it was agriculture or mining, was a form of industrial activity. This was equally true for commerce, also a form of industry. His justification for this classification was his principal departure from the work of his mentor Adam Smith. Smith treated agriculture, commerce and manufactures as separate entities. He did so in reaction to what he believed an erroneous assumption of the physiocrats. For the physiocrats, it was possible only in agriculture to achieve a net surplus in the form of rent. For Smith it ‘followed from this error that commerce and manufacturing were barren or unproductive because they were capable of yielding a return only in the form of wages and profits that repaid the original expenses of production’. Smith was prepared to acknowledge ‘that agriculture was more productive and should occupy the topmost position in any natural hierarchy of employments for a nation’s capital. Nevertheless he could not accept that the application of capital and labour in commerce and manufacturing was merely a useful but unproductive appendage to agrarian pursuits.’24 According to Smith commerce and manufacturing were activities that yielded a net surplus which, like rent, was available for future accumulation. Because each of these branches produced their respective surpluses they were classified separately. Say, however, reiterating an earlier argument from the second edition of his Traité d’économie politique (1814), believed such a classification outmoded because it was rooted in the belief that agriculture should occupy the highest position in the natural hierarchy of uses for a nation’s capital.25 Say shared Ricardo’s belief that rent ‘was never a new creation of revenue, but always part of a revenue already created’,26 though he was critical of aspects of Ricardo’s argument.27 For this reason agriculture could not possibly occupy the highest position in the hierarchy of uses for national capital. Rather, as rent did not create revenue, agriculture had to be subsumed into that branch which produced a genuine surplus: industry.28 Say’s classification of the branches of an economy was the exact opposite of the physiocratic classification. Instead of understanding agriculture as the genuine source of all surplus, Say argued that industry was that source. By subsuming agriculture and commerce under industry, he not only affected the decisive break with the physiocrats, challenging accepted economic wisdom in France, but he also attacked the status of large landlords, and by implica-


tion, the old political order. Say’s classification was adopted by his followers, particularly liberals who understood the political ramifications of his arguments. Duchâtel was one of them, and he offered the strongest defence of Say’s theories in the pages of the Globe. Tocqueville’s notes indicate that he endorsed Say’s classification. In the concluding paragraph of his entry on industry he states: ‘Thus, a farmer who harvests his wheat, makes bread from it and takes this bread to market, is obviously at the same time, farmer, manufacturer, and merchant.’29 This is revealing. Tocqueville appears to have understood both the economic and political implications of Say’s classification: that it challenged the principal role of agriculture in the French economy and the power of the landed aristocracy. This was shown a second time in Tocqueville’s entry on the composite elements of all industry (Travaux constitutifs de toute industrie). In that entry he endorsed Say’s account that all industry is composed of three elements: science, enterprise and physical labour. He went on to agree with Say by stating that these three branches are united under enterprise, and that the entrepreneur is ‘the centre of action’.30 Here Tocqueville was united with Say in placing enterprise, industry itself, at the root of economic activity, and the source of value. He revealed the political implications of this when under the entry for wealth (richesse) he reiterated Say’s arguments: that all exclusive property, all large landholdings, ‘assume a state of society where social pressure constrains the great majority of society to bear the privileges of a few’.31 This was a powerful argument against primogeniture and in support of equality. That Tocqueville would later emphasise the beneficent consequences the absence of primogeniture had for equality of conditions in Democracy in America (1835) is indicative of Say’s influence.32 Tocqueville’s assessment of large landholdings was also informed by Guizot’s fourth lecture on the History of Civilization in Europe, which dealt with feudal society.33 Guizot, who endorsed many of Say’s ideas, gave a harsh assessment of the relation of large landlords to the majority of the populace, declaring that the privileges of the few were obtained at the expense of the majority: the majority being smallholders.34 Tocqueville was influenced by Guizot here, but also, in following Say, he appeared to endorse a new liberal political economy that reflected the growth of industry and challenged the preeminence of large landed interests, though he did not accept unequivocally all that was new. While Tocqueville accepted Say’s assessment of industry, his judgement on commodities differed significantly. Unlike Say and Duchâtel who believed that intellectual services, such as medicine, administration, education, or law were commodities exchangeable against other commodities, Tocqueville maintained that commodities could be only material objects capable of being accumulated. He did not view intellectual services as exchangeable commodities; they might be services which could be bought and sold, but they were not strictly speaking commodities.35 In this,

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Tocqueville openly sided with Smith in arguing that services could be exchanged like commodities but not accumulated like them.36 Nevertheless, he was somewhat uncertain on this issue and his notes indicate that he wished to seek clarification on this matter from André Dupin.37 There is no record of Dupin’s response. While Tocqueville rejected Say’s observations on commodities, he endorsed significant aspects of Say’s political economy, particularly, as we shall see in the following chapter, Say’s stress on the importance of self-interest rightly understood to good government and an egalitarian society. Certainly, he and Beaumont thought Say’s work of great importance to their study of American society, and this had much to do with Say’s assessment of America as a large-scale republic whose inhabitants through a judicious combination of laws, customs, manners and civic education successfully united virtue with self-interest. Both men read the Cours complet for a second time during their journey to America. This time the first part of the work, the considérations générales, which discussed the purpose and method of political economy and which did not appear in Tocqueville’s 1828 notes, influenced the method adopted in Democracy in America (1835), serving as a model to understand a republic on a large scale.38 Say’s analytical method and ‘general fact’ approach to political economy, was, as we saw earlier and as we shall see in greater detail in the next chapter, also used by Guizot in his sociological and historical method. It proved critical to Tocqueville’s analysis of democracy. Say’s influence, however, went well beyond Democracy in America (1835). Say vigorously attacked physiocracy. His critique of the physiocrats’ speculative method which ensured that political economy was conflated with the study of politics, and speculative politics with the art of governance, appeared in the concluding section of the Cours complet d’économie politique,39 and, along with Smith’s earlier criticisms of physiocracy, marked Tocqueville’s own powerful critique of the physiocrats in the third part of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. Despite these influences and deep affinities in outlook, Tocqueville later came to reject significant aspects of Say’s thought and in the end he advocated a more traditional political economy rooted in the belief that small and medium scale agriculture rather than industry should occupy the highest position in the natural hierarchy of uses for a nation’s capital. Such a view had greater affinities with Smith and Malthus than with Say. So how did this change come about?

Politics, morals and political economy Tocqueville never saw himself as a political economist.40 While his interest in the study was great, the focus of his attentions lay elsewhere. Where Tocqueville believed political economy to be important was in its capacity to serve a larger purpose: the understanding of society and government.41


Though Say himself argued this,42 the scientific status he assigned it – political economy considered akin to physiology43 – along with its epistemological distinctiveness from other disciplines would not have been endorsed by Tocqueville. Whilst advances in political economy and other moral sciences like statistics excited him, he maintained a healthy scepticism toward some of the more overly optimistic claims made by the advocates of these disciplines. His ideas on political economy were more in tune with those of eighteenth-century thinkers, particularly Smith and Malthus. Smith defined political economy as ‘a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator’. To this end his Wealth of Nations was part of a much larger project promised at the beginning of his Theory of Moral Sentiments on the ‘theory and History of Law and Government’.44 Whilst Smith’s political economy was part of a grand theory and history of law and government, for Malthus political economy was part of a Christian version of a wider science of morals and politics.45 These approaches to political economy corresponded better with Tocqueville’s own understanding of the subject than the new theories offered by Say, Ricardo and Duchâtel. These theories emphasised political economy’s uniqueness, stressing its separation from politics and morality. Say was the first to formally announce the ‘divorce between politics and political economy’,46 arguing first in the Traité d’économie politique and then in all his subsequent works that politics and political economy were distinct subjects with different concerns, laws, and objectives.47 He was followed closely by Ricardo, who as a Cambridge-trained mathematician, argued that political economy, a science grounded in deductive reasoning, should be strictly separated from moral issues and ‘the art of legislation’. Ricardo, the ‘archetypal economists’ economist’, was, as Nassau Senior described him, ‘the first English writer who produced Political Economy in a purely scientific form’.48 Duchâtel gave voice to this strict separation in the pages of the Globe. In commenting on Sismondi’s 1826 reedition of Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, he argued that morality and political economy were entirely distinct and should not be confused.49 While Tocqueville was intellectually inclined to an older understanding of political economy, there was much in Say that he found attractive. It was his love of liberty that caused him to assess favourably important aspects of the new approach. Tocqueville believed, like most liberals, that political liberty could not exist without economic liberty. Though this belief was substantially refined before the composition of Democracy in America (1835), he probably thought that the dominant and old-fashioned political economy in France was too tightly wedded to physiocracy. Because physiocracy emphasised the rational character of the state and its ability to organise economy and polity through the agency of ‘legal despotism’, he believed it deprived individuals of both their political and economic freedom. Though physiocracy as a political and economic movement was dead by the nineteenth century, it had shaped the work of some of the Idéologues like Volney,

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Condorcet and Sieyès,50 and conservative political economists interested in maintaining the privileged status of agriculture, and by implication, large holdings. In these different ways physiocracy influenced the issues considered, and direction taken, by political economy in nineteenth-century France.51 Tocqueville may have been attracted to aspects of Say’s new political economy for this reason. By contrast, however, he would have been repelled by Say’s adherence to many of the Idéologues’ optimistic opinions about the emerging social sciences, his conviction that the natural sciences were the model for social and historical studies, his belief in the truth of utilitarianism, and his attempt to make political economy the principal foundation to a new republicanism for the post-revolutionary world.52 A few months after studying Say, Tocqueville began following Guizot’s lectures on The History of Civilization in France. In these lectures given in 1829 and 1830, Tocqueville may have discovered an important weakness in Say’s political economy. As with his 1828 lectures on The History of Civilization in Europe, Guizot’s lectures on The History of Civilization in France emphasised the importance of individual and political liberty.53 According to Guizot, liberty was ‘the result of the variety of the elements of civilization, and of the state of struggle in which they have constantly existed’.54 This idea emerged from Montesquieu’s account of political liberty and its relation to moderate governments found in book eleven, Chapter four, of The Spirit of Laws. Here, Montesquieu famously argued that for political liberty to prosper ‘power must check power’.55 In his account of the constitution of England in Chapter Six he revealed how the three sorts of power, legislative, executive and judicial, checked each other in such a way as to ensure the flourishing of political liberty. Montesquieu was not alone among eighteenth-century thinkers in holding this belief. Both Smith and Malthus also adhered to it, though they altered its focus: making it ‘the basis for modern conceptions of civil as opposed to political liberty’.56 Smith in his Wealth of Nations and Malthus in the Essay on the Principle of Population shifted Montesquieu’s division of political powers toward social and economic powers, or interests, and here the parallels with Guizot are striking. Just as Montesquieu believed political powers had to be checked to protect political liberty, Smith and Malthus believed economic interests had to be balanced one against the other in order to safeguard both civil and individual liberty.57 Like these eighteenth-century thinkers, Tocqueville believed liberty could be safeguarded only if various social and political interests checked each other. Certainly, his defence of liberty in Democracy in America makes that clear. What Tocqueville may well have recognised from Guizot’s lectures was that Say’s political economy did not subscribe to the idea of balance of powers. Rather, the whole of Say’s political economy which stressed the beneficent effects of industry, its ability to soften manners and strengthen social ties,58 lent a powerful theoretical argument behind the promotion of


industry and industrial interests. His typology of the branches of an economy was singularly instructive here, for commerce and agriculture, as we saw, were subsumed within industry; liberal and utopian opinion reinforced this belief. The launching in 1817 of the Saint-Simonian journal L’Industrie, for instance, had done much to bolster this view, as had the work of Say’s disciples, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. This may have prompted Tocqueville to wonder about important aspects of Say’s political economy, causing him to reassess, after completing the first volume of Democracy in America, his initial favourable opinion.59 Whereas Smith and Malthus understood political economy as part of a wider study, whether of the theory and history of law and government or a Christian version of a science of morals and politics, Say saw it as divorced from other disciplines. This narrowed its focus to the issues of wealth creation and capital accumulation. Where political economy could serve politics was in showing how, by maximising the possibilities for creating wealth, individual independence could be bolstered and with it civil and political liberty. For Say and the advocates of the new political economy, prosperity guaranteed liberty.60 All that was needed here was to follow the natural laws of the economy.61 Political economy revealed those laws, and following them guaranteed liberty. Tocqueville may have recognised something was wrong here. He may have understood that whereas the physiocrats went to one extreme believing individual liberty could be secured by the state, through enlightened despotism, Say and his followers went to a different extreme believing industry secured liberty. In both cases the check on powers that safeguarded liberty was removed in favour of one power, a power which in operating without obstacle ultimately threatened liberty. Though Say believed industry brought prosperity which in turn secured individual independence and liberty, Tocqueville may have felt that such a doctrine, in having wealth creation at its core rather than liberty, ultimately could not secure liberty. Perhaps this explains why there is a certain confusion in Democracy in America about whether economic prosperity assured liberty or liberty assured prosperity. As we shall see in the following chapter, Tocqueville sometimes accepted Say’s proposition that prosperity led to liberty but at other times he inverted the proposition, contending instead that it was liberty that led to prosperity.62

Religion and political economy: Jansenism If Tocqueville did indeed recognise this weakness in Say’s political economy, what influences apart from Montesquieu’s and Guizot’s enabled him to? One important authority here may have been Jansenism, something he shared with other independent liberals, including the Doctrinaire statesman, and later Tocqueville’s mentor, Royer Collard.63 Though it is well known that Tocqueville at this time, and until the end of the 1840s, had serious doubts about his own religious faith,64 experiencing a genuine crisis of faith,65 he

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was not only prepared to accept the existence of God and a future life,66 but he also believed religion necessary to politics and liberty – a belief he shared with other Jansenist liberals including Royer-Collard and Jean Denis Lanjuinais,67 who had been attacked by Say for linking religious considerations to economic ones.68 This motivated him in his attempts to wed the spirit of politics and the spirit of religion. Plans for a new journal, drafted at the end of 1833, reveal the extent to which he considered the matter important. He believed the journal’s editorial policy which had to ‘bring together the spirit of religion . . . [and] the spirit of liberty’,69 would incite prominent liberal Catholics like Montalembert to collaborate in running it.70 Throughout the 1830s he was very interested in how religion could be allied to liberty. He attended and commented on Henri Lacordaire’s famous 1835 Conférences de Notre-Dame,71 and some years later would follow in the pages of the Catholic monthly, Le Correspondant, Lacordaire’s Conférences de Toulouse (1856–7).72 In these lectures given before large audiences, the liberal Catholic sought to accommodate fundamental liberties, such as education, the press and association, within the spiritual sovereignty of the Catholic Church. This attempt to reconcile the spirit of religion with the spirit of liberty established a real and fully acknowledged affinity between Tocqueville and liberal Catholics.73 By the end of the 1840s Tocqueville appeared to devote more time to religious thought, as his correspondence with Francisque de Corcelle testifies. By the 1850s, after he developed a close friendship with the Russian and religious mystic Madame Swetchine, who became his spiritual advisor, he may have renewed his Catholic faith. Certainly this was the claim made by prominent Catholics like Lacordaire and Armand de Melun,74 but its validity was contested by Beaumont who, in meeting with Nassau Senior in August 1860, said: ‘We all know that Tocqueville was a Christian, but a philosophical Christian [un chrétien philosophe]. He never followed the rules of the Church. His faith would never have satisfied a confessor.’75 Whether Tocqueville died reconciled to the Church and its doctrines is a question to which there probably is no definitive answer. What is clear, however, is that he was never able, nor ever sought, to reject fundamental opinions about human nature and the human condition he acquired as a boy and young man under the instruction of his personal tutor, the Jansenist abbé Lesueur.76 The origins of Jansenism lay in the work of Cornelius Jansenius, a Flemish professor of theology at the University of Louvain and later Bishop of Ypres. Jansenius’s massive Augustinus (1640), an exegesis of Saint Augustine’s writings, came, along with the works of the Augustinian Pierre de Bérulle, to influence the Cistercian community at the convent and monastery of PortRoyal-des-Champs. It was from here that Jansenism became an important religious, moral and political force. Through the writings of three individuals attached to Port Royal, Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole and Blaise Pascal,


Jansenism emerged as one of the most controversial and powerful forces within Catholicism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though it lost influence in the nineteenth century, succumbing to a hostile attack from the combined forces of church and state, it remained important for much of the century.77 Even though Jansenists agreed with other sections of the Church on a significant number of issues, they were Gallican and very Augustinian. Jansenists attached enormous importance to original sin. They emphasised the corruption of humanity and the importance of grace. Here, they opposed grace to nature, mistrusted natural processes leading to salvation, and furnished a powerful critique of sacramental and ritual automatism. They proposed a Christian rigorism directed to behaviour and consciousness of ‘the risks involved to any concession to nature and the world’.78 The result was a rigorism and moral austerity that involved both the elevation of the interior life, the life of the mind and the soul, as the true life and the renunciation of the material world. In this way Jansenism embodied the themes of personal austerity, simplification of ritual and a return to the doctrines of the early church.79 It was known for its emphasis on personal integrity, humility and charity. As a political force, Jansenism was identified with the defence of conscience against arbitrary power. It was associated with ‘Richerisme’, the movement advocating democracy within the Gallican church. Under the influence of abbé Lesueur, Tocqueville came to acquire a deep respect and love for Pascal’s work. From Pascal’s Lettres provinciales, a work much in vogue in the liberal press,80 and his Pensées Tocqueville learned the importance of scepticism and the impossibility of both creating a logical order and achieving equitable justice on earth. The religious and moral implications of these beliefs were obvious to him, but they had political ramifications which were also apparent to him. Pascal’s belief in the impossibility of creating a logically ordered society and fulfilling equitable justice lay at the heart of Jansenist resistance to central religious and political authority. In religious matters, Jansenists resisted encroachments by Rome. In political matters, they resisted Louis XIV’s attempts to usurp the powers of the local parlements. For the Jansenists, particularly Pascal, all attempts to impose a unique central authority were rooted in the misguided belief of the righteousness of a central power and its ability to fashion an equitable and just order. For this reason, and because they were attacked by the established religious and political powers, Jansenists were an important force in encouraging groups striving to maintain local independence against the encroachments of an absolutist state. Their influence was felt in the post-1789 works of a number of important liberals including the abbé Grégoire, J.-D. Lanjuinais, Royer-Collard, and Saint-Beuve. For these authors Jansenism justified a strict personal morality which secured moral constancy

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in a constantly changing political environment and it was a powerful motive justifying associations and the role of religion in reinforcing social bonds and maintaining national peace.81 Pascal’s ideas, by the nineteenth century associated with patriotism, religious and political freedom, purity in morals and authentic conviction, marked Tocqueville’s outlook on politics, influenced his harsh and critical assessment of idealist philanthropists in his 1830 and 1833 reports on prisons, his reports on pauperism of 1835 and 1837 and his reports on the plight of abandoned children of the 1840s; it served, too, his severe judgement of the philosophes and the physiocrats in part three of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. Pascal’s attack on attempts to adapt morals to social circumstances, his rigorism and moral austerity, may well have influenced Tocqueville’s understanding of legal punishment and his assessment of prisons in The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France. His insistence on personal morality, humility and charity also marked Tocqueville’s beliefs on the role of private charity in combating pauperism. But it was Pascal’s moral rigorism and his exhortations against excessive attachment to material goods and comforts that, combined with his rejection of the possibility of creating a logical order, may have influenced Tocqueville’s assessment of Say, causing him to reject an important number of Say’s ideas.82 While Tocqueville’s early Jansenist education may have contributed to his reassessment of Say’s economics, other sources might have also had a significant influence here. For instance, Tocqueville may well have been swayed by the work of geographers, even though some of them, like Volney, shared Say’s Idéologue credentials. Certainly, he understood that geography was ‘absolutely essential’ to the study of economics, history and politics,83 but what was special about geography in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was that it emphasised the importance of agriculture and the land to history, historical memory and the manners of a people.84 Tocqueville’s Sicilian diaries of 1826–7, American correspondence, and remarks on primogeniture in Part One, Chapter Three, of Democracy in America (1835) show how he understood this.85 In this context geography played an important role in bolstering economic ideas that agriculture should occupy the highest position in the natural hierarchy of employments for a nation’s economic capital. These ideas were espoused by individuals like Alexandre de Laborde and L.-F. Huerne de Pommeuse, and legitimist organisations such as the Association Religieuse pour les progrès de l’Agriculture en France.86 Tocqueville accepted some of these ideas, though he understood agriculture’s relation to commerce and industry much more like Smith or Malthus than legitimists did. Certainly by the time he wrote Democracy in America (1835) he recognised legitimist claims about the moral benefits derived from agriculture: historical memory and a social peace emerging from man’s proximity to nature.87 He also understood its potential political benefits, though


Say also emphasised these. Small-scale agricultural production could assure the productive capacity of individuals, promoting their self-esteem and ensuring their financial independence. In this way agriculture assured individual liberty.88 From legitimist economic theories, but more importantly from his own investigations into philanthropy and prisons before and during his sojourn in America and his brief journey to England in 1833, and certainly as he made clear in Democracy in America (1835), Tocqueville recognised how manufacturing, when allowed to develop unchecked, spawned social problems.89 In industrial cities like Paris or Lyon working-class neighbourhoods were crowded, unsanitary and morally corrupt.90 Industry spawned political problems too. The ‘spirit of association’ of which Duchâtel and other liberals were so fond of speaking, was spawned by an association between enterprise and capital. Its compass was much narrower than the ‘spirit of association’ referred to by de Laborde or the American philanthropists Channing and Tuckerman, which served as the foundation to a moral and social consensus and was distinct from the association between enterprise and capital which was attacked as serving the interests of industry to the detriment of wider social interests.91 For Tocqueville this was to have revolutionary consequences. But there were other problems with industry he would later highlight in Democracy in America (1840).92 Because of the way industry was organised, and because a large proportion of manufactured goods were for export, Tocqueville believed it was ‘subject to very unexpected and formidable industrial crises’.93 This observation was, as we shall see in later chapters, allied to a harsh assessment of how industries improved their competitive advantages by cutting costs and increasing productivity, particularly through accentuating the division of labour. An important consequence of this was that industry pauperised vast numbers of labourers, subjecting them to a new form of servitude.94

Religion and political economy: Malthus Though Tocqueville was swayed by arguments from legitimist economists, especially Villeneuve-Bargemont and his brother Édouard, who would later publish a number of works extolling the virtues of the rural economy,95 his beliefs were most strongly influenced by Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. Tocqueville probably studied Malthus seriously after finishing Democracy in America (1835) and just before writing his first report on pauperism (1835): a work which, as we shall see later, bears a number of striking similarities with the Essay. Certainly, the first indication we have of him having studying the Essay is in a letter to Count Leon von Thun-Hohenstein of 2 February 1835.96 Even if he only finished studying seriously the Essay by the beginning of 1835, he demonstrated clearly a sophisticated understanding of Malthus’s ideas well before that date, and this suggests he was sufficiently familiar with Malthus before he wrote the first volume of

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Democracy in America. His familiarity with Malthus’s ideas may date from 1825 when Duchâtel published four important essays on Malthus for the Globe. He would also have become sufficiently familiar with Malthus’s ideas from studying Say’s Cours complet, in which Say praised Malthus’s population principle and analysed in detail Malthus’s theses.97 Besides possible French influences, there are also an important number of American sources on Malthus’s ideas. As we saw in the previous chapter, Tocqueville’s prison investigations, the large number of pamphlets he obtained from individuals and philanthropic groups, and his conversations with Tuckerman, Channing, Lieber and other leading American philanthropists would have also exposed him to many of Malthus’s ideas: certainly his account of poor-relief in the state of Maryland in The Penitentiary System in the United States demonstrated a broad knowledge of the Essay.98 Another significant source for Malthus’s ideas before 1835 was Tocqueville’s trip to England in 1833. His correspondence with his father and Beaumont indicate the importance of Malthus’s ideas in his assessment of the English Poor Laws.99 The people he met, Lord Radnor, John Bowring and in particular Richard Whately and Nassau Senior, were keen to discuss Malthus’s ideas with him; Tocqueville’s diaries record this.100 Those diaries also reveal a number of astonishing parallels between Malthus’s theses on population and Tocqueville’s observations on poverty in England, particularly on the deleterious effects of an established system of Poor Laws and on the relation of women to morals and population.101 Similar remarks would appear in the 1840s in Tocqueville’s reports on abandoned children for the general departmental council of the Manche. Whenever Tocqueville read Malthus’s Essay it is clear that the clergyman’s views had a significant effect upon Tocqueville’s thoughts on political economy. Tocqueville probably read Pierre Prevost’s 1823 translation of the 1803 edition of Malthus’s An Essay on the Principles of Population.102 The 1803 edition of the Essay was substantially altered from the original 1798 version. Not only was the work far less polemical, it used statistics derived from Sir Frederick Morton Eden’s The State of the Poor (1797) and the 1801 census to prove the population thesis. Despite these changes, Malthus maintained the core theses of the earlier work. He retained earlier criticisms of the radical philosophers William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet who believed in the perfectibility of human society. He believed their speculations on the unlimited improvement of mankind were fantasy. Facts pointed to the conclusion that the unlimited improvement of humanity was an illusion; population science indicated the limits to human improvement. Against Godwin and Condorcet, Malthus argued that ‘as by that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, population can never actually increase beyond the lowest nourishment capable of supporting it; a strong check on population, from the difficulty of acquiring food, must be constantly in operation.’103 According to Malthus population


increased at a geometric rate when food production increased at an arithmetic rate.104 If a population grew unchecked it would be unable to feed itself. At this point nature variously checked population growth. Its ‘positive’ restraint included ‘every cause, whether arising from vice or misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of human life’. The list of those causes included many ills, ‘the whole train of diseases and epidemics, wars, pestilence, plague, and famine’.105 This was nature’s way of restraining population. But society also had ways of checking population growth. These Malthus called preventative checks. When considered as an innocent restraint on individuals’ ‘inclination’ to procreate, this preventative check was called ‘moral restraint’, but when this check resulted in practices such as abortion or infanticide because of ‘promiscuous intercourse to such a degree as to prevent the birth of children’, it was called vice. For Malthus vice lowered ‘in the most marked manner the dignity of human nature’. Its ultimate consequence was misery. Though moral restraint ‘produce[d] a certain degree of temporary unhappiness’ this was ‘slight, compared with the evils which result from any of the other checks to population’.106 As this point, Malthus sought to present an account of the relation between economy and population which showed that moral restraint prevented misery.107 For Malthus the insurmountability of real and relative economic scarcity emphasised the importance of self-discipline and individual duty. He believed the perfectibilists ignored this because they believed all individual and social ills were rooted in social institutions and their improper organisation. According to Malthus individual and social ills could not be eliminated simply by reorganising and changing these institutions. The perfectibilists made a ‘great error’ in attributing ‘almost all the vices and misery that prevail in civil society to human institutions’.108 Though Malthus recognised that some institutions contributed to vice and misery, the principal cause of these ills lay in the ‘inevitable laws of nature’. Wellbeing could be achieved only if individuals recognised these natural laws and led a moral existence within their limits. According to Malthus the perfectibilists’ over-zealous assessment of the power of scientific progress created conditions in which individuals discounted natural limits and ignored their moral duties, believing instead that advances in science could push back the boundaries to human action or rectify any errors of conduct. This improper understanding of science effectively removed the beneficent power of scarcity. It cultivated an unwarranted optimism which prompted individuals to live imprudently, and ultimately, immorally. In believing that scarcity could be removed, the perfectibilists created the conditions in which an individual was no longer stimulated ‘to remove evil from himself, and from as large a circle as he can influence’. Perfectibility undermined a powerful and efficient moral force. Malthus saw the laws of nature, far from being a restraint upon society, as the stimulus to individual and social

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improvement.109 The natural law of scarcity and the institution of property were powerful driving forces in the refinement of mind and manners. They were the foundation to individuals’ recognition of duty to themselves, others and community. Malthus’s ideas gained a wide following in France among both legitimist and liberal political economists. Among the liberal political economists, Say and Duchâtel shared Malthus’s ideas on population. Like Malthus, they argued that the tendency for individuals to multiply was infinite whilst means of subsistence were limited. They shared Malthus’s understanding of positive and preventative checks. Like him, they argued that the poor could improve their lot by acknowledging and then discharging their duties to themselves and their families. Liberals like Say differed from Malthus on important issues, however, and Tocqueville recognised this. Though Say argued that the principle of population imposed duties on individuals that they ignored at their peril, he had a faith in industry, science, and the progressive efficiency of the market that were as optimistic as the perfectibilist speculations of Godwin and Condorcet. According to Say, entrepreneurial skill and the refinement of scientific know-how were constituents of a model of society in which supply created its own demand.110 This argument hinged on both Say’s belief that industry was constantly innovating, forever creating new markets and that the entrepreneur generated this greater prosperity by innovating and becoming more specialised. The more prosperous a society became, the greater the distinction between entrepreneurship, scientific knowledge and manual labour, with entrepreneurial knowledge taking on more and more prominence as it contributed ever more greatly to the creation of wealth. Tocqueville shared Malthus’s rejection of perfectibilist speculations; no doubt in this he was influenced by Pascal’s belief in the impossibility of creating a logically ordered society. But Jansenism influenced Tocqueville’s gradual estrangement from Say’s political economy, and his acceptance of Malthus’s own version only after completing Democracy in America (1835). Jansenist moralism, a rigorism and moral austerity that involved embracing the interior life as the true life and disregarding the material world, was hostile to economic doctrines that promoted unrestrained self-interest and the pursuit of wealth.111 As Tocqueville’s American diaries and correspondence reveal, he disdained the uncontrolled desire for accumulating wealth and material comforts he observed there, but thought they could be restrained by enlightened self-interest. Say’s political economy which ascribed such an important role to self-interest, also gave licence to the kind of unfettered financial and material pursuits Tocqueville scorned. From reading Malthus, Tocqueville realised industry could well become the driving force behind this greed, particularly, as Say’s remarks on this issue were thoroughly naïve, cupidity being associated with ill-gotten gains only.112 Like Malthus he also realised the corrosive effects this had on indi-


vidual morality and public manners. Malthus would have reminded Tocqueville of Montesquieu’s observations on the corrupting influence of wealth and luxury on democracies and aristocracies;113 remarks Say dismissed believing Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws ‘sowed the most brilliant errors’.114 In this way Tocqueville would have been brought back to his principal concern: the safeguarding of liberty. He would have understood that Say’s political economy, the new liberal political economy, though attractive in an important number of ways, particularly in its assessment of selfinterest rightly understood and as using a method easily adaptable to a sociological and political analysis of democratic society, focused on the concern for wealth creation, privileged the interests of industry above all others, and divorced itself from moral or ethical concerns by adopting a singular scientific character. The new liberal political economy in becoming formalised in this way was fundamentally separated from morality, the spirit of liberty, and important principles of justice. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, justice, whose realisation could never be complete, nevertheless became a key concept for Tocqueville. That the new liberal political economy could not sustain such a concept had important implications for Tocqueville’s assessment of democracy.

3 Equality, Liberty and the Problem of Self-Interest: Democracy in America (1835)

Tocqueville had been interested in writing a book about a republic on a vast scale well before setting off for America.1 His resolution to write such a work became a burning ambition shortly after his arrival in the young republic,2 although he was far from certain about the form it would take.3 America presented a problem for any analyst. The nation’s geography, the sheer size of the territory, the character of its inhabitants, the particular nature of its political and social institutions and many other factors conspired to make writing a political and social analysis that went well beyond the detailed travelogues of previous writers, complex and difficult. But such an ambitious work was what Tocqueville had in mind. To facilitate his task he sought to find those elements or characteristics which were distinct to America and those it shared with France. This approach would give him points of reference, or comparison, to ask the questions that his work on the new republic would set out to answer.4 The result of his enquiries, Democracy in America (1835), was frequently and favourably compared to Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws.5 Tocqueville’s approach to his subject matter and his style of writing lent credence to this assessment.6 He scrutinised the effects of historical circumstances on a nation and its institutions. He was careful to stress the balance of powers between aristocratic and democratic elements in his examinations of the political and civic institutions of America. He concentrated on the institutions, laws, manners, and habits of the citizens of the young republic and he was attentive to the importance of climate and geography. All of these elements bore a striking resemblance to themes in Montesquieu’s famous work. Like Montesquieu, he also adopted the comparative approach. It was an approach he judged to be instructive. In examining America, Tocqueville was able to shed new light on France’s political, social and economic circumstances, and in using France as a point of reference, he was helped in understanding and evaluating America. Its great strength was in giving him the insights with which to analyse and evaluate American democracy, 54

Democracy in America (1835) 55

making that analysis comprehensible and instructive to the French,7 using it to show them the dangers associated with democracy and how best to avoid them.8 These were important aspects of Democracy in America noted by its earliest reviewers. Tocqueville was keenly aware of his debt to Montesquieu. He knew readers would see immediately the influence The Spirit of Laws exercised on Democracy in America, yet he warned them that if they paid ‘more attention to the form than to the substance’ of the work they would fail to grasp its full meaning and significance.9 Many of them did. Early reviewers used the work and its allusions to Montesquieu as ammunition in political feuds.10 This was certainly the case in the heated debate that was conducted in the pages of the Orléanist Journal des débats and the moderately republican Le National. The legitimist press, the Gazette de France and L’Ami de la religion et du roi, was more interested in settling old political scores with liberals than in being mindful of the work’s content. Its assessments of the book were generally malevolent. Though Democracy in America’s ‘lofty significance’ was stressed by Le National and its author hailed as ‘the Blackstone of America’ in the Journal des débats, Tocqueville thought only two reviews conveyed a real understanding of the substance of his work: Saint-Beuve’s article for the liberal Le Temps and Francisque de Corcelle’s essay for the Revue des deux mondes.11 These writers understood the extent to which his work was original. They appreciated, like Tocqueville himself, the extent to which the works of republicans and liberals of the immediate post-Revolutionary period were outdated. The ideas of those who maintained the mantle of republicanism in the beginnings of the nineteenth century, such as Destutt de Tracy, were too closely associated with the optimistic, naïve, and discredited theories of eighteenth-century Idéologues such as Condorcet and the abbé Sieyès. Liberals like Mme de Staël and Constant were also out of favour among the generation of young liberals of the 1820s and 1830s; they were preoccupied with different things and had come to see themselves self-consciously as a generation apart.12 The task for Constant and his generation was to neutralise the effects of ideology which politically polarised French society, rendering the nation both politically and socially unstable. Through the judicious combination of institutional reforms and the encouragement of commercial relations, Constant believed France could achieve political stability and economic prosperity. The task for Tocqueville and his generation was different. They sought to explore the complexity of social relations in order to understand how they might be responsive to free institutions, and they returned to thinkers like Montesquieu to do that.13 Even though Tocqueville and his generation were engaged in a different political enterprise, they assimilated more of the ideas and theories of the older liberals and Idéologues than is generally recognised. At the same time, however, they consciously sought to distance themselves from that older generation and

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this meant that their works acquired a distinctiveness that made difficult the attribution of intellectual debts.14 The focus of Tocqueville’s work meant he returned to Montesquieu for his principal source of inspiration. There was a natural affinity between Montesquieu’s preoccupation with the spirit of a people and its political regime, and Tocqueville’s concerns with the relation between social intercourse and free institutions. Reviewers of Democracy in America saw this at once, but this resemblance obscured the less glaring connexions with other works. Reviewers did not appreciate fully the extent to which Tocqueville, a young, clever, and ambitious man with political aspirations, sought to enhance Democracy in America’s political impact by integrating into his study new scholarly developments in the disciplines of history, political economy, geography and statistics. They also failed to notice the extent to which he had, consciously or not, assimilated the Idéologue conviction that the social and historical sciences were theoretically unified, thereby lending his work a scientific status: but then, as Francisque de Corcelles’ uncle, the liberal deputy François de Corcelles, concluded, in his 1831 Documents pour servir à l’histoire, the influence of the Idéologues was both pervasive and profound, but seldom acknowledged.15 Even distinguished philosophers like Royer-Collard, who hailed the young author as the new Montesquieu, did not comprehend the full extent he made of these new approaches. So what were they?

New approaches to the study of American democracy When Tocqueville was a student he appears to have read Volney’s Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (1791). He imitated this work in recording his own impressions about Rome, Naples, and Sicily in a journey he undertook in 1827 with his brother Édouard.16 Before setting off for America he read Volney once again, but this time the famous Idéologue’s Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (1803). Both this and Les Ruines reinforced the lesson Tocqueville learned from Guizot’s lectures on The History of Civilization in Europe and The History of Civilization in France that through the analysis of historical facts one could unearth general historical principles. Volney, in his 1795 Lectures on History at the École Normale, showed the extent to which he, like other Idéologues, was convinced of the value of analysis. By reducing all ideas to their basic elements and then reassembling them into complex ideas, analysis became the central element to his historical method. Say shared Volney’s confidence in the value of analysis, but rather than make it the central tenant of an historical method, he made it the central principle of political economy. Yet Say interpreted facts in a subtly different way from Volney. As we have already seen, in Say’s Traité d’économie


politique and then later in the Cours complet d’économie politique, he distinguished between general facts and particular facts. General facts revealed underlying universal regularities, the concern of political economy, and particular facts, understood as compilations of evidence, the concern of statistics.17 Tocqueville endorsed Say’s distinction between particular and general facts. The initial approach he took to studying America also showed his faith in analysis. For as he put it in a letter to his father in 1831: ‘We have, in truth, one overriding idea since we have arrived here: that idea is to know the country we are travelling through. To achieve our aim we are obliged to deconstruct [décomposer] a priori the society, to look for those elements it shares with our own in order to formulate useful questions and to forget nothing.’ But as he confessed too, analysis had its limitations: it transformed those who adopted it into ‘machines à examen’ whose findings were often nothing more than ‘sterile impressions’.18 Say’s influence extended well beyond Tocqueville’s use of analysis and assessment of facts. Like Volney’s understanding of geography, Say’s political economy served to reveal the most basic questions surrounding national character.19 It was important too because it stressed Say’s conviction that poverty was one of the greatest threats facing European societies.20 On this theme he joined ranks with Malthus. Malthus was important because his Essay stressed the importance of poverty and social exclusion as threats to individual and political liberty. These themes were central to Tocqueville and Beaumont’s The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France because they related to issues of individual and public morality, the fulfilment of individual and social duties, and their relation to liberty. In Democracy in America they served a more indirect function. They focused Tocqueville’s attention on individual and public morality as particular facts which were central to the general fact of democracy, but the issues of poverty and social exclusion would come to play important roles in informing Tocqueville’s thoughts on concepts like enlightened self-interest which featured prominently in his work. Poverty and social exclusion were also important because they highlighted the role political economy might serve in assisting Tocqueville to evaluate the emergence of a certain sentiment of exact justice as commercial society eroded the traditional bonds of community – an issue that preoccupied both Montesquieu and Adam Smith.21 Above all, Say’s work inspired the method Tocqueville adopted in his study of American democracy. Say’s political economy, which placed such a high explanatory value on the concept of enlightened self-interest, offered a better explanation of the ‘spirit’ of American democracy than Montesquieu’s more abstract and old fashioned concept of virtue. Tocqueville’s written impressions of America, taken when he was travelling down the Mississippi river, confirm this:

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Another point which America demonstrates is that virtue is not, as has long been claimed, the only thing that maintains republics, but that enlightenment, more than any other thing, makes this social condition easy. The Americans are scarcely more virtuous than others; but they are infinitely more enlightened (I speak of the masses) than any other people I know.22 Perhaps one of the most important, and now widely acknowledged, influences on Tocqueville’s analysis of America was that of François Guizot.23 Tocqueville’s enthusiasm for Guizot’s lectures on The History of Civilization in Europe and The History of Civilization in France knew no bounds. As he excitedly proclaimed in a letter to Beaumont, Guizot’s work was ‘prodigious in its analysis of ideas [décomposition des idées] and choice of words, truly prodigious’.24 Like Volney and Say, Guizot placed a high value on analysis. The distinction he made between particular and general facts served as the foundation to what he called ‘philosophical’ history. But Guizot also emphasised the dual character of general facts, particularly that of civilization. In this he followed in the footsteps of many prominent Idéologues who improved on the work of the philosophes and liberals like Constant who stressed the external features of civilization. Guizot emphasised how the philosophes and the post-Revolutionary liberals focused on the ‘state of society’, stressing how it was ‘better regulated’, how ‘rights and property [were] more equitably distributed’; they were concerned to show how ‘the aspect of the world becomes purer and more beautiful, the action of government, the conduct of men in their mutual relations, more just more benevolent’.25 He was also interested, however, in the internal factors of civilization. He emphasised the development of ‘man himself, of his faculties, his sentiments, his ideas’. In Guizot’s mind civilization was the complex interaction between internal and external. As he put it in his first lecture on The History of Civilization in Europe: ‘the inward is reformed by the outward, as the outward by the inward; [. . .] the two elements of civilization are closely connected the one with the other’.26 Guizot’s thoughts on the internal and external factors of civilization had been shaped by the philosopher Maine de Biran.27 The principal disciple of the Idéologue Destutt de Tracy, Maine de Biran became one of the leading critics of eighteenth-century empiricist philosophy. In a critique of sensationalist theories of the mind associated with Locke and Condillac, Biran argued that the self, or will, was essentially active. Voluntary experience was the product of the self and not, as the sensationalists believed, the consequence of external causation. According to Biran voluntary experience, the intentional action of the self, was intrinsically different from externally caused or, as he called it, ‘passive’ experience. His critique of sensationalism appears to have been influenced by Kant’s philosophy, but it was Tracy’s Eléments d’idéologie that had the greatest effect on his thinking. For in this work Tracy distinguished between the two modes of existence which constituted


individual personality: the organic, or, interior life, and the animal, or, exterior life.28 Tracy’s considerations on personality, themselves derived from Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort (1800) by the celebrated anatomist Xavier Bichat, served to inform a complex analysis of private property as the expression of individual will. In this way they represented the underlying basis to his considerations on political economy, thoughts that became central to Say’s conception of industrie.29 But it was their potential to revolutionalise philosophical considerations on the mind which attracted Biran. Tracy’s distinction between two modes of existence was the premise to Biran’s dynamic, or active, conception of mind, which in turn shaped French liberal ideas on freedom, and Guizot’s Histories. Tocqueville was drawn towards this kind of historical writing, but he applied Guizot’s dual conception of civilization to American society,30 and, as we shall see, it also became crucial to Tocqueville’s study of political economy and social issues after 1835. At first, the task he had set himself was to examine the external factors of democratic society and then show how they relate to internal factors, but as his research progressed his ‘urge to carry out this plan . . . cooled off’.31 Instead, the first volume of 1835 focused mostly, though not exclusively, on the external factors of democratic society: climate, geography, laws, institutions and commercial relations. Naturally, Tocqueville did not focus on external factors alone. The important ninth chapter of the second part of the work, ‘the main causes tending to maintain a democratic republic in the United States’ explored the relationship between internal and external elements. His account of the effects of the absence of primogeniture also stressed the interaction between those elements, but generally, as later critics acknowledged and as he himself confessed, the first volume was concerned with external elements.32 It is not entirely clear why Tocqueville’s urge to fulfil the original plan for the work ‘cooled off’. He certainly found writing the second part of Democracy in America (1835) difficult; he complained to Beaumont that mastering the topics it encompassed caused his ‘head to spin’.33 No doubt he grasped the enormity of the task he had set himself and thought it wiser to limit the scope of his work. Certainly, he was justified in this. Guizot himself had limited his History of Civilization in Europe to the ‘history of external events’.34 As Tocqueville made clear in letters written just after the publication of the first volume, however, he thought much more needed to be done and was contemplating how best to do it.35 When he began work on the second volume of 1840 he set out to complete his original plan. That work concentrated much more on internal factors such as ideas, manners and sentiments. Tocqueville’s focus on external elements of American democracy gave the 1835 volume an optimistic tone. He started his study of America with the belief that ancien régime society was dead and that its place was being taken by democracy. In this, he reiterated a conviction held by the Idéologues and Doctrinaire liberals like Guizot. Their works emphasised the progressive

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nature of this development. They stressed the rise of liberty and equality, of civilization itself. And they focused on the positive role external elements had in transforming ideas, sentiments and beliefs, and how these in turn exercised a salutary change on external elements. As we have seen, Tocqueville embraced these ideas. He also adopted the Idéologues’ and Doctrinaire liberals’ favourable outlook on commerce and industry. These two external elements were important to the progressive development of civilization, but Tocqueville was not as sanguine in his assessment of them as Say’s students Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, to go by his pessimistic remarks about the pervasiveness of market values in America. Yet, like Say, he thought that the deleterious effects of these values could be checked by social and political institutions. Tocqueville believed his assessment of democratic society to be both fair and, on the whole, positive. It was an assessment at odds with the judgement of pessimists, and it placed him, as he put it, in a ‘different category’ from them.36 Once he began to focus on the internal elements of democracy, however, his outlook became more pessimistic. As we shall see in later chapters, his study of the political economists Malthus, who viewed human nature sceptically, and Villeneuve-Bargemont, who was scathing in his attacks on the apologists of the unfettered development of market relations, influenced his judgement considerably on the effects commerce and industry had on ideas, manners and sentiments. His thoughts were further influenced by his own studies into the social problems of pauperism and child abandonment. All of these elements, I believe, came to diminish his faith in the power of social and political institutions to check the morally corrosive aspects of commerce and industry. They would darken the tone of the second volume of Democracy in America. In the first volume, however, Tocqueville was firmly in the camp of the optimists. In his efforts to grasp the role of external elements in the evolution of democracy, he remained close to Guizot’s work. He drew on the historian’s categories of atomisation and centralisation in trying to understand the decay of aristocracy and the development of democracy in Europe. He heeded Guizot’s appeal to the generation of the 1820s to undo the excessive centralisation of French government, the main argument of his 1822 Origins of Representative Government in Europe and one of the central messages of his Histories. He was receptive to that message and learned the value of contrasting the development of English and French institutions as a way of illuminating the issue of centralisation. In a revealing and long letter to Beaumont in 1828, he discussed his studies of the English historian John Lingard’s A History of England and showed the extent to which he endorsed Guizot’s thesis that local autonomy in France had been the unintended victim of a weak crown’s struggle to destroy aristocratic power, whereas in England a more powerful crown drove the feudal aristocracy to organise and ally itself with leaders of the Commons in order to check its ambitions. The


result, Tocqueville wrote, was that ‘the Lords nearly always sought out the Commons and supported them on all occasions, which served slowly to unite the two orders which were irreconcilable enemies elsewhere in Europe’.37 In Guizot he found a more rigorous assessment of English institutions than what was presented by Montesquieu whom he believed went too far when he painted ‘the English constitution as the model of perfection’. For Montesquieu to describe the English constitution thus revealed, as Tocqueville lamented, ‘the limits to his genius’.38 Guizot’s historical assessment of the decentralised English state would later serve Tocqueville’s own historical analysis of the French Revolution. But initially it prompted Tocqueville to consider another decentralised state: America. Here, Guizot’s influence was also reinforced by Say’s. For the political economist believed that American federalism was a worthy model for Europe to study.39 Tocqueville was also drawn to Guizot’s understanding of the principle of antagonism as the dynamic force to history and progress. The principle lent Guizot’s Histories a complexity and rigour which enlivened historical writing. Guizot’s Histories had an analytic and explanatory power that was absent from progressive histories modelled on the work of the philosophes. He was able to disentangle complex webs of historical events and reveal their hidden meaning. Yet he never simplified nor made history sterile. His accounts stressed history’s dynamic and complex nature. Tocqueville was enthralled by Guizot’s ‘philosophical’ history. He saw at once how the principle of antagonism, so central to it, could be applied to a study of society, but also a defence of individual and political liberty.40 Here he combined Montesquieu’s political analysis of power checking power with Guizot’s concept of antagonism.41 Tocqueville saw at once how the institutional focus of Montesquieu’s analysis of power checking power could be strengthened by the more social, historical and internal focus of Guizot’s concept of antagonism. He saw too how it would correct shortcomings in other parts of Guizot’s famous History of Civilization in Europe. Whilst Tocqueville enthusiastically embraced Guizot’s analysis of the second lecture which stressed that the principle of antagonism resulted in liberty,42 he rejected an overall conclusion of the History which celebrated the demise of ‘the traditional liberties’ and the rise of a ‘new and more concentrated and regular’ power in the form of the state.43 He thought this legitimised excessive centralisation, the very thing Guizot appealed to the generation of the 1820s to undo. Tocqueville believed the break on centralisation existed in Montesquieu’s thesis on power checking power. Adopting Guizot’s concept of antagonism enabled him to give a portrayal of society and history that was both dynamic and complex. Retaining Montesquieu’s thesis that power checked power allowed him to depict political institutions in a like manner. The combination of both assured that liberty remained at the centre of his work. In support of liberty, Tocqueville was naturally brought back to Montesquieu’s sublime defence of that value in The Spirit of Laws, but he was also

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drawn to the work of earlier moralists such as Pascal, and, to a lesser extent, Montesquieu’s near contemporary, Rousseau. He attached special relevance to how their ideas on individual morality and social discipline were important to a rigorous defence of human freedom. He also found inspiration in Say’s works, not only in the political economist’s advocacy of economic freedom and the ethical value he attached to individual industriousness and thrift as critical to individual independence, but also in Say’s assessment of middle-class moderation as important to political liberty.44 Tocqueville held liberty to be a sacred value, but one under threat. He judged the danger to be real but hidden from view. The providential rise of democracy overturned the ancien régime where liberty was revered as a sacred value but one enjoyed only by a few. While democracy allowed all individuals to benefit from equal liberty, paradoxically, it was the equal right to freedom that undermined its lofty status. What Tocqueville observed was that the hidden threat to liberty in democracy was from the very value that allowed for its universal enjoyment: equality. In order to understand how this came to be we must direct our attention to his analysis of democracy, and for that we must return to Democracy in America.

Equality, the principle of democracy Tocqueville began his study of American democracy with a recollection. In it he emphasised the concept that both anchored his analysis and around which orbited all other concepts that emerged from that analysis. Equality of conditions was the ‘nodal point’ of democracy and of Democracy in America: No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than the equality of conditions. It was easy to see the immense influence of this basic fact on the whole course of society. It gives a particular turn to public opinion and a particular twist to the laws, new maxims to those who govern and particular habits to the governed. I soon realized that the influence of this fact extends far beyond political mores and laws, exercising dominion over civil society as much as over the government; it creates opinions, gives birth to feelings, suggests customs, and modifies whatever it does not create. So the more I studied American society, the more clearly I saw equality of conditions as the creative element from which each particular fact derived, and all my observations constantly returned to this nodal point.45 That Tocqueville should find equality of conditions the central concept of the American republic was not surprising; after all, thinkers well before Montesquieu argued that republics were based on egalitarian organisation. Nor was it particularly surprising that he should conclude that equality exer-


cised dominion over all aspects of political and social life in America. Say had already shown in the Traité d’économie politique that republican manners ultimately depended on the egalitarian distribution of wealth, which enabled citizens to live above a level of poverty and below that of excessive affluence.46 Moreover, Guizot’s historical method, which emphasised the interrelationship between the internal and external elements of civilization, had shown that every social organisation stamped on the human spirit a certain direction, gave it a body of general ideas that reflected its broad principles and underlay and sustained it throughout its existence.47 Tocqueville also learned from both Say and Guizot that societies could be treated like facts, akin to other facts and therefore open to analysis. Just as Guizot considered civilization a general fact, and European civilization as entering ‘into the eternal truth, into the plan of Providence’,48 so Tocqueville understood democracy.49 But if the general fact of democracy was providential, what of its particular elements: were they providential too? To answer to this question was easy, and Tocqueville began his response by analysing democracy’s central concept, equality. In this he imitated Guizot, who had traced equality’s development in the introduction to his Histories. Tocqueville followed suit by sketching equality’s development from the beginning of the first millennium, through the Crusades and the English wars. Equality of conditions developed slowly but steadily. As the principal characteristic of democracy, at times synonymous with democracy itself, equality of conditions affected all classes and all the nations of Christendom. Now universal and permanent, it was the singular characteristic, the discernible trait, in democracy’s ‘irresistible revolution advancing century by century over every obstacle’.50 Despite the striking similarities between Tocqueville’s and Guizot’s sketches of equality’s historical development, Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy and equality of conditions was distinctive in a number of important ways. First, he transformed Montesquieu’s understanding of the relation between equality to its corresponding form of political regime, democracy. Second, he altered the way Guizot characterised civilization. He selected and combined the strongest elements from both thinkers. Just as Guizot understood civilization, so Tocqueville conceived of democracy as a social condition. At the same time, however, he recognised it as a political regime, just as Montesquieu had done. By using democracy to describe, on the one hand, a social state, and on the other, a political regime, he was able to draw the distinction between the political and social meanings of the term and thereby emphasise its external and internal elements. While, as we have already seen, there were important methodological reasons for this, there was also an important ideological reason. Democracy as a political regime was understood as equating political right with sovereignty of the people. However, the failure of the French Revolution meant democracy became equated with anarchy and despotism, perverted forms of popular sovereignty. Democracy was feared for its revolutionary potential and acquired pejorative connotations, but

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Tocqueville believed in the high ideals of 1789. He believed political right sprang from popular sovereignty. He shared these ideals with liberals like Benjamin Constant and Doctrinaire liberals like Royer-Collard. For this reason he sought to dispel the pejorative connotations democracy acquired.51 His strategy here was first to follow the Doctrinaires by highlighting the social meaning of democracy, like them, he characterised democracy as a new egalitarian society. With it came a new configuration of manners, sentiments, customs, laws and institutions. This new society, defined by equality of conditions and equality before the law, was radically different from the small democratic republics of the ancient world. Ancient democracies were rooted in the sovereignty of the people, but modern democracy was defined by equality of conditions and equality before the law, not as sovereignty of the people.52 The great advantage of defining democracy sociologically, as a new type of society, was that the fundamental criticism marshalled against political democracies by reactionary conservatives such as Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald, that popular sovereignty led to anarchy or despotism, was not relevant to modern democratic societies.53 Yet Tocqueville’s method required that he not abandon a political definition of democracy. And for that he returned to Montesquieu. Though Tocqueville drew much from the Doctrinaires, he did not imitate them. He went further than them in the way he understood both the social and political meaning of democracy. His initial analyses of social issues which featured in The Penitentiary System in the United States contributed to deepening his understanding of the social meaning of democracy and, therefore, of its internal elements. This served to enhance his understanding of the relation between private and public morals and political virtues, thereby contributing significantly to his understanding of the political meaning of democracy.54 His analytical method and early investigations into social issues served to justify his use of Montesquieu’s older concept of popular sovereignty over the Doctrinaire theory of representative government based on the concepts of the sovereignty of reason and political capacity.55 He thought these latter concepts were too closely wedded to the state, a state which would ultimately corrupt private and public morals, undermining political virtues, an idea he expressed in his judgement of the events of the 1830 Revolution and one he would later point to as the cause of France’s long series of revolutions.56 The kind of link Tocqueville established between democracy’s social and political meanings was an important departure from Doctrinaire liberals like Guizot whose own sociological definition of democracy had enabled him both to subsume democracy to the wider social state of civilization,57 and later, upon becoming Louis-Philippe’s chief minister, to advance a conception of a rational state able to transform, and ultimately organise, society on rational principles.58 Tocqueville, as we have seen, sensed the theoretical possibility of this in Guizot’s work. He was sure to have noticed that Guizot failed at crucial points in his Histories to distin-


guish clearly between political and administrative centralisation. This was the case in Guizot’s eleventh lecture on The History of Civilization in Europe in which the historian argued that administrative and political centralisation were crucial to the civilising process. Tocqueville certainly agreed that political centralisation was important to civilization,59 but he believed excessive administrative centralisation eroded local liberties, undermined individual independence, and ultimately destroyed political virtues by eroding individual and public morality.60 It was in this that he was closer to Montesquieu’s work. Montesquieu had argued that all political regimes were governed by a particular principle: tyrannies by fear, monarchies by honour, and republics by virtue. Tocqueville understood this but, in drawing on Guizot and the method set out in Say’s Cours complet, he showed how the governing principle of a particular political regime could be better understood if one ascribed greater relevance to social conditions that governed social states than Montesquieu had done. In America Tocqueville observed the way political institutions and laws combined the political principle of republics, virtue, with the political principle of monarchy, honour. America showed how both virtue and honour were combined in democracy. Whereas Montesquieu contended that virtue in the republic was most strongly displayed in a passionate love of country, and that honour in monarchy was attached to codes of conduct defined by rank, Tocqueville showed how social conditions influenced political principles. He argued that in a democracy, because of equality of conditions, honour lost its association with rank and virtue became less passionate. Honour became generalisable throughout society. At the same time it became vague and was reduced to general maxims. It lacked the kind of very strong influence it possessed in monarchies. Virtue was affected no less differently. Equality of conditions ensured it became softer, less passionate.61 This softening of virtue and honour, the softening of the principles of political regimes, was a consequence of the development of commercial relations which eroded class barriers and promoted equality and individual liberty. This was something described by Montesquieu,62 but it was an important point made by Say who, in making it the focus of political economy, used it in defence of modern republicanism.63 As we discussed earlier, Tocqueville learned a great deal from studying Say and the extent of the political economist’s influence in shaping Democracy in America (1835) is significant. Tocqueville’s description of American democracy resembled uncannily Say’s description of the market economy in the Cours complet. America embodied the spirit of commerce and industry, it permeated the whole society and marked the entire population.64 Americans, were, as Tocqueville described them, heroic traders.65 The spirit of commerce and industry was an important element in ensuring that individual Americans were capable of governing themselves and resisting attempts to be governed by a central authority. This went some way to

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explaining why the young republic was ‘the land of provincial or township government’, par excellence.66 It was an astonishing example of a nation whose citizens governed their own affairs, and where public administration was extraordinarily decentralised. Like the movements of an invisible hand, America appeared to work of its own accord.67 Say’s political economy was tailor-made to Tocqueville’s analysis of American democracy. In Say, however, Tocqueville would not have found, as he was later to do in Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont, that Montesquieu’s thesis on political checks and Guizot’s sociological principle of antagonism extended into political economy. Say’s influence would at first eclipse what Tocqueville later recognised in Montesquieu, Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont. This was that liberty could be secured in a context where the branches of the economy, agriculture, commerce and industry, were checked one against the other.68 Say’s early influence ensured that Tocqueville failed to make significant use of this idea until he began work on Democracy in America (1840). Once he had begun writing it he realised that the assumptions about political economy he had been working with had serious limitations when applied to an industrial society that he judged to be different from Say’s idea of industrie. Democracy in America (1840) used concepts and a framework of analysis that took account of that transformation, and it made important use of Malthus’s and Villeneuve-Bargemont’s analyses of the branches of the economy and their relation to liberty. In Democracy in America (1835), however, it was Say’s influence that was determinant. His method and description of the market economy were perfectly suited to an study of America. His political economy, which focused on the general underlying principles to the nation’s economy, also directed Tocqueville’s attention to the external factors of American democracy. These factors ensured both the commercial prosperity of the young republic and its political and social achievements. It is to an analysis of these that we must now turn.

The institutions of American democracy In Chapter Nine of the second part of Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville summarised the three principal causes that made American democracy great; it was a distillation of the central themes of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws. The first causes were geography and climate. The second was the particular nature of America’s laws and political institutions. The third was the customs and manners of the Americans. The ‘accidental situation’ in which ‘providence’ had placed Americans referred to the nation’s geography, climate, and natural resources. He stressed the importance of her geographic position: territories bordering on America had no hostile intentions and America itself was a vast and ‘empty land’. The ‘limitless continent’ gave Americans both the means to remain ‘equal and free’ and it also freed the nation from the pressures of population growth which haunted European states which Malthus so vividly described in his Essay. Easy access to land


insured Americans were ‘continually leaving their birthplace and going forth to win vast far-off domains . . . into the central solitudes of America’.69 The ready access to land and wide distribution of property contributed to Americans’ fierce spirit of independence and their liberty. In addition to being blessed with a vast territory, America had no great capital city to speak of. This, for Tocqueville, was a great advantage for any federal republic. A weak capital ensured that its direct or indirect influence could not be ‘felt through the length and breadth of the land’. With a weak capital city public administration could remain very decentralised, guaranteeing that ‘every village is a sort of republic accustomed to rule itself’.70 A feeble capital city was one of the principal reasons why republican institutions were so vigorous throughout the United States. This contrasted sharply with his assessments of Paris in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.71 Whilst Tocqueville repeatedly emphasised that providence had blessed America with physical circumstances conducive to republican government, he was keen to stress the important role laws, the constitution and political institutions played in maintaining the vitality of the republic. This occupied most of Part One of Democracy in America. His analysis revealed the extent to which he made use of Montesquieu, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and Jean-Louis De Lolme’s The Constitution of England. The chapters of Part One indicate the extent to which he understood how the tension between liberty and equality was mirrored in a tension between aristocratic and democratic elements in a nation’s constitution. For Tocqueville, as for Montesquieu and De Lolme, the political success of any just regime depended on the proper balance between aristocratic and democratic elements within it. In this he was also influenced by The Federalist Papers and James Kent’s Commentaries on American Law.72 He was impressed by Kent’s account of how the founding fathers of the American republic were careful to achieve the exact balance between aristocratic and democratic elements in fashioning the republic’s laws and constitution.73 This successful balancing was crucial in his analysis of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and was one of the great strengths, as he saw it, of American democracy. Tocqueville found instructive the way democratic and aristocratic elements were balanced in the legislative branch. His analysis of the relation between the two houses of congress in Chapter Eight of Part One and Chapter Five of Part Two offered an unflattering portrait of the House of Representatives. He was ‘struck by the vulgar demeanor’ of this assembly of ‘obscure people whose names form no picture in one’s mind’, and lamented its ability to make laws, but in contrast to the democratic House of Representatives, Tocqueville praised the aristocratic Senate. It contained ‘a large proportion of the famous men of America . . . eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and noted statesmen. Every word uttered in this assembly would add luster to the greatest parliamentary debates in Europe.’74 The genius of the American constitution lay in the way it com-

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bined within the legislative branch a coarse, untutored, democratic House of Representatives with an elevated, enlightened, aristocratic Senate. That these two regimes should exist side by side in the legislative branch was the result of the genius of an electoral system that ensured members of the House of Representatives were chosen by direct universal suffrage, while members of the Senate were elected indirectly, chosen in two stages: ‘All citizens together appoint the legislature of each state, and then the federal Constitution turns each of these legislatures into electoral bodies that return the members of the Senate’.75 Though both assemblies were the result of universal suffrage, the senators elected were the result of an indirect choice, one mediated through state legislatures. According to Tocqueville this was the beauty of the American electoral process. In choosing senators the popular will ‘passed through’ the state assemblies. This ensured it became ‘in some sense refined’, emerging ‘clothed in nobler and more beautiful shape’. The result was ‘the men elected always represent exactly the ruling majority of the nation, but they represent only the lofty thoughts current there and the generous instincts animating it, not the petty passions which often trouble or the vices that disgrace it’.76 The workings of the judiciary as an aristocratic check on democratic assemblies, particularly the federal judiciary’s ability to strike down laws it deemed unconstitutional, was another characteristic of the American constitution that attracted Tocqueville’s attention. It was ‘one of the most powerful barriers ever erected against the tyranny of political assemblies’.77 The workings of the jury system in civil and criminal law, discussed in Part Two Chapter Eight, was also important to Tocqueville’s analysis of the relation between democratic and aristocratic elements in America’s laws and institutions. It may also have been important to him as a lesson to the French for whom the jury, subject to many changes from the time of the Revolution, was the most unstable element in their system of justice.78 Whereas his analysis of the legislative and judicial branches praised the judicious balancing of aristocratic and democratic elements, however, his assessment of the executive branch was critical. Here he highlighted how the balance was lost. Tocqueville’s analysis of the Presidency underscored a weakness of the office. He showed how the role of head of state was increasingly subject to the will of the majority. It was severely undermined because it anticipated the majority’s ‘complaints’ and bent ‘to its slightest wishes’. This development contrasted sharply with what the founding fathers had envisaged for the Presidency. They believed the office would act as an aristocratic check on the democratic impulses of the nation. The President would guide the majority. He would fulfil the aristocratic role of leader and educator. Instead, the President had become ‘a docile instrument in the hands of the majority’. This loss of an important aristocratic check on the democratic majority ‘exposed the country to dangers every day’.79 Whilst much of Part One of Democracy in America dealt with geography,


laws, and political institutions, the second part was concerned with the customs and manners of the Americans. This section was important to Tocqueville’s analysis for two reasons. First, because the customs and manners of a people mark their political and social institutions; internal elements influence the external ones. Second, because he perceived that there was an intimate connexion between customs and manners, and ideas and beliefs. In this way the preliminary analysis of internal elements he began in 1835 he later deepened in 1840, customs and manners being more readily observable than ideas and beliefs. Whilst Americans were a democratic people who, like all democratic peoples, loved equality before liberty, Tocqueville discovered that Americans shared a number of characteristics which were more commonly associated with aristocratic peoples than with democratic ones. He observed that America was a nation whose surface was ‘covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through’.80 Why was this? And what were those characteristics America shared with aristocracies? In the second chapter of Part One Tocqueville contended that the early English settlers of America had a much more developed ‘acquaintance with notions of rights and principles of true liberty than most European nations at the time’. From the time of the first immigrants the institutions of local government, ‘that fertile germ of free institutions’, were cherished by America’s settlers.81 He noted that puritans were among the largest group to emigrate to America, and he thought their religious convictions embodied the ‘most absolute democratic and republican theories’.82 He concluded that the American colonies, particularly those in New England, acquired a homogeneous population that resulted in a democracy ‘more perfect than any of which antiquity had dared to dream’.83 The results of this were twofold: first, New England ensured that the principle of liberty was applied more completely than anywhere else on the globe; and second, the application of the principle of liberty was one of the main reasons for the prosperity of these colonies. Ensuring that the principle of liberty was thoroughly applied in New England was not difficult. The puritan settlers had a fierce love of independence, but one that did not verge on anarchy, nor one that precipitated a fear of being alone; in this they were unlike the French, as he had already observed in The Penitentiary System in the United States.84 American independence was tempered by strong religious conviction.85 Anarchy was avoided because religion led to ‘enlightenment and the observance of divine laws which leads men to liberty’. And religion ensured that men transcended their fear of being alone because it focused their minds on another world, offering them peace and inner strength. Two distinct elements ‘which elsewhere have often been at war with one another’ had somehow become incorporated into each other, ‘forming a marvellous combination’. Here Tocqueville was reminded of Montesquieu’s account of the English ‘who ha[d]

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best known how to take advantage of . . . religion, commerce, and liberty’ by marrying the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.86 It was a union Tocqueville believed instructive to the French. He had sought to promote it in 1833–4 when, in contemplating establishing a new review, he set out his thoughts on its editorial policy which was to ‘promote the spirit of Christianity in politics’.87 Though this enterprise failed he remained faithful to this idea, which was to become one of the most important ambitions of his political career.88 This powerful combination of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom ensured that the liberty Americans enjoyed was more akin to a fierce individual independence, the kind of liberty Tocqueville ascribed to aristocracies rather than democracies. Here Guizot’s fifth lecture on the History of Civilization in France could not have been far from his thoughts. In Guizot’s discussion on the fierce spirit of independence among feudal lords and their life of isolation, he stressed that in their solitude the feudal lords acquired a singularity of spirit that erupted with energy.89 Tocqueville asserted the same of the Americans of New England. But whereas the feudal lords of the Middle Ages spent their energies in grandiose enterprises, for instance the construction of castles or cathedrals, or in destructive engagements, such as war, Americans expended their energies in the much more mundane, but decidedly democratic, pursuits of commerce and industry. New England presented a clear picture of the origins of a market society, and this was of great interest to Tocqueville. Understanding the origins of market economies was a way of comprehending their development and attendant difficulties.90 In a move that owed a great deal to Pascal and Rousseau, Tocqueville added a significant dimension to liberal analyses of the relation between liberty and commerce. Liberals like Smith or Say argued that commerce prepared men for liberty. Tocqueville endorsed that opinion but he also endowed liberty with the autonomous power to create the conditions for commercial prosperity. Here, liberty was conceived as independent of its associations with manners, customs, modes of thought, and laws. At the same time, however, Tocqueville never abandoned the belief that commerce was the foundation of liberty. He frequently reiterated Montesquieu’s dictum that commerce prepared men for freedom;91 he also agreed with its principal conclusion: the middle classes were the body of the nation in which its liberty, public spirit and good government was rooted.92 But he also believed, like Rousseau, liberty to be a value independent of market society.93 He frequently understood liberty ‘in the same spiritual terms’ Rousseau ‘reserved for virtue’. As he put it: ‘Liberty is, in truth, a sacred thing. There is only one other thing that merits more that designation: that is virtue. But then again what is virtue, if not the free choice of what is good’.94 By thinking of liberty as a supreme moral value, Tocqueville endowed it with an evaluative potential it did not have in the works of liberals like Smith or Say. Societies which did not have liberty as their supreme value were, in Tocqueville’s


mind, judged harshly. And as we shall see in the chapters to follow, this idea drove him to assess the very society that prepared men for liberty more critically than either Smith or Say could have imagined. This would prove to be one of the most original and innovative aspects of Tocqueville’s thought. It enabled him to stress presciently dangers attendant in democracy.

Liberty and commerce Liberty and commerce were the source of America’s prosperity. Liberty ensured commercial activity and prosperity, and commerce prepared men for liberty.95 It was this mutually reinforcing relationship that featured so prominently in the pages of Democracy in America (1835), ensuring the work was judged optimistic and classically liberal in its assessment of democracy. However, Tocqueville’s exposition of this relation was not without problems. He frequently worked with the arguments put forward by liberal political economists like Say that commerce and industry secured liberty, but, as we have just discussed, at other times he presented liberty as an independent value which alone secured commerce and industry.96 His frequent declarations that he loved liberty above all other values, that he was ‘disposed to worship it’, are indications of this.97 Important influences contributed to elevating liberty to a supreme value. Pascal and Rousseau ensured that he regarded liberty like virtue. They believed commerce corrupted virtue, that it was a threat to liberty. Yet Tocqueville continued to contend that commerce prepared men for liberty. This oscillation between understanding liberty as independent of commerce and liberty as stemming from commerce reveals the extent to which Tocqueville struggled to unite aspects of pre-Revolutionary liberal thought with the new doctrines of liberal political economy. That he was unable to effect this union satisfactorily was perhaps the result of his letigimist beliefs which made it difficult for him to embrace fully the kind of liberal-republicanism so powerfully shaped by the Idéologues. Nevertheless, he did try to formulate a way in which liberty and commerce formed a virtuous and reinforcing relationship. In order to do this he began by breaking down the relationship into its constituent elements, employing the analytical method he applied to the whole society, deconstructing a priori that relationship. Tocqueville set out to develop an account of how commercial activity ensured the vitality of liberty by highlighting both the puritan and middle class origins of the American colonies, particularly New England. Just as Montesquieu and Say had done before him, Tocqueville worked with the assumption that property guaranteed personal independence and hence was fundamental to individual liberty.98 Property ownership was widespread in America. The easy accessibility to land, intelligent laws on inheritance, and widespread acceptance of puritan morals which elevated industriousness and shamed idleness, all coalesced to ensure both that property was put to productive use and ownership was widespread: providing the conditions for

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liberty and equality. The analysis not only drew on important elements from Say’s Cours complet, it also endorsed Say’s political and social ideal.99 That liberty and equality were enjoyed by the majority made the United States unique among nations. America represented something entirely new. Never before had citizens of a nation enjoyed the high degree of liberty and equality Americans did. It was a context very different from that which eighteenth-century thinkers like Montesquieu and Smith were familiar with. They could not conceive of this level of liberty and equality. Indeed, Smith had almost no ‘place for equality within his frame of reference’.100 But it was a context and argument of which Idéologues like Tracy and Say were fully cognisant. Tocqueville attached great importance to Say’s thoughts on manners and wealth as being ultimately dependent on a certain degree of egalitarian distribution, which in turn was the consequence of individual industriousness. Say believed Smith’s Wealth of Nations was the key work and inspiration to toil and industry. What aspect of Smith’s work was so attractive to Say and Tocqueville? It was emulation as the driving force behind the desire for individuals and classes to improve their condition. Emulation served as the foundation to an egalitarian commercial society characterised by affluence generated by toil. According to Smith the middle classes were driven to become highly industrious in their desire to emulate the wealth and status of the aristocracy. This, in turn, created the conditions for human improvement and extended civility. Despite important negative consequences attached to class emulation, a positive principle was clearly discernible: the middle classes were the driving force behind social improvement and general civility, or, as Malthus later put it, they were ‘that body on which the liberty, public spirit, and good government of every country must mainly depend’.101 Whereas Smith dealt with societies marked by significant class divisions, Tocqueville observed something different in America. There, the principle of emulation worked differently. Because America was governed by equality of conditions, the divisions between classes were neither fixed nor insurmountable. Democratic ‘laws and habits hinder[ed] the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few individuals’.102 While there were important inequalities of wealth between Americans, there was no particular class which could hinder the advancement of others, nor were there unbreakable social barriers preventing individuals from seeking their personal advancement. The whole society was directed to accumulating riches. The ‘road to riches and fortune [was] open to everybody no matter from where they start[ed]’. A ‘restlessness of spirit and a greed for wealth’ drove all Americans.103 In America emulation was narrowed to the accumulation of wealth. Tocqueville, like Say, acknowledged that there were important economic and social benefits to be derived from the accumulation of wealth. Unlike the political economist, however, he worried about a society driven by the narrow consideration of accumulating riches.


Tocqueville understood, as Smith had recounted in The Wealth of Nations, and Say in both the Traité d’économie politique and the Cours complet, that private parsimony and capital accumulation were key ingredients to human progress.104 He also recognised, however, just as Pascal and Rousseau had, that individuals’ single-minded quests for wealth corrupted individual and civic virtues. Yet by the time he started writing the second volume of Democracy in America he gave this moral and political critique greater impetus than either of them by linking it to Guizot’s sociological concept of antagonism, but in a way unimaginable to the historian. Whereas Guizot believed the principle of antagonism was the dynamic force behind the forward movement of history, Tocqueville thought the principle could be extinguished if a single element came to dominate all others. This, he concluded, was what happen to the middle classes. In their triumph over other classes – and Tocqueville believed the Revolution of 1830 was the sign of their definitive triumph105 – their ambition to accumulate wealth would become a universal social value, and thereby narrow the human spirit. Tocqueville feared this development would render society mediocre. The end of the historical process, as he saw it, would be the triumph of mediocrity over greatness.106 Remarks in the first volume of Democracy in America suggested that the United States showed signs of this development.107 At the same time, however, there existed a sufficient number of constitutional and legal barriers embodying aristocratic principles that acted as a check on this development. The union of religion and liberty was also an important obstacle. However, as early as 1831 Tocqueville expressed in a letter to Kergorlay his anxieties about greed’s corrupting power over public morality. As the desire for wealth increased, the aristocratic, legal and religious checks on middleclass power would gradually weaken.108 The issue reappeared frequently in Tocqueville’s writings, and was the overriding theme of his 1847 essay The Middle Class and the People. As we have already seen, Tocqueville highlighted the egalitarian and middle-class origins of the American colonies. What presented itself as confirmation of Montesquieu’s remarks on the spirit of commerce within democracy was the fact that for Tocqueville the society had neither become entirely mediocre nor dominated by an aristocracy. Earlier writers like Volney had offered theories to explain this. Their accounts were far from satisfactory, resting on ideas about Americans lack of conviviality, or the nation’s climate, or, more intelligently, her laws.109 Tocqueville thought the answer lay not only in the characteristics singled out by Montesquieu or Say, the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquillity, order and rule,110 but also elsewhere. With the large numbers of European immigrants arriving daily no dominant aristocracy could emerge in America; the society remained overwhelmingly middle class. How was this egalitarianism and middle-class homogeneity sustained? There were a number of important factors, some of which I have enumerated; others

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cannot be explored in depth here, but will be dealt with later.111 As we have already seen, the country’s geography, Americans’ strong Protestant work ethic, and laws which made inheritance easy, were important to the wide distribution of property in America. All of these contributed to ensuring property was both widely distributed and put to productive use, but another factor, one relating to America’s geography, was also crucial. In Chapter Nine of Part Two, Tocqueville highlighted an important cause which maintained democracy in the United States. Migration westward whose ‘ultimate results’ might be ‘hidden in the future’ created ‘immediate consequences’ that were ‘easily seen’.112 Migration was the valve that released population pressures and assured a wide distribution of landed property. The analysis Tocqueville proposed here was perfectly in tune with what had been discussed by Malthus in his Essay. Tocqueville dismissed the claim made by previous visitors to America that ‘the wildernesses of America are peopled by European immigrants arriving annually on the shores of the New World, while the American population grows and multiplies on the soil occupied by their fathers’. Instead, he contended that it was Americans themselves who were inhabiting the interior whilst European immigrants were acquiring industrial employment ‘in a half-filled country where industry is perpetually short of manpower’. Where the European immigrant ‘becomes a comfortably off workman, his son goes to seek his fortune in an empty land and turns into a rich landowner. The former accumulates the capital which the latter puts to good use, and neither foreigner nor native suffers poverty’.113 Tocqueville was eager to show that this was a practice widespread throughout the republic. Though laws in the United States favoured as wide a division of property as possible, a powerful motive influenced beliefs and customs that favoured primogeniture. According to Tocqueville ‘providence’ had re-established primogeniture ‘without complaint from anybody, and just for once it does not offend equity’.114 The consequences of this, as Montesquieu made clear in his analysis of commercial republics, was a wide distribution of useful property which ensured a father’s children were ‘led to flee luxury and work as he did’.115 This desire for Americans to move westward, sustained by their fierce spirit of independence and psychological fearlessness in the face of extreme solitude, was a phenomenon entirely new to Tocqueville: ‘Nothing in history is comparable to this continuous movement of mankind except perhaps that which followed the fall of the Roman Empire’.116 But what incited and maintained it? The answer was remarkably simple, although what it implied was both complex and new. Americans flocked to the interior of the country to make their fortune: Millions of men are all marching together toward the same point on the horizon; their languages, religions, and mores are different, but they have


one common aim. They have been told that fortune is to be found somewhere toward the west, and they hasten to seek it.117 Though there was nothing new in individuals seeking their fortune, what was novel for Tocqueville was the extent to which the whole of the society seemed to be directed to that enterprise.118 In European societies with which Tocqueville was familiar, the single-minded pursuit of wealth was usually confined to the middle classes. At the bottom of the social scale there were the poor and at the top the aristocracy. The poor, ignorant and oppressed by their condition, found themselves locked in a kind of stupor from which they could not emerge. The consequence was that their material conditions hardly improved. At the other extreme, however, the aristocracy was much too concerned with maintaining its honours and status than to be driven to accumulate fortunes. Thus it was the middle classes, desirous of emulating the aristocracy, who were driven to accumulate fortunes – and they directed all their energies to that end. America, however, presented something entirely new. Americans lived with a rate of circulating wealth that was rapid and constant. This ensured that most fortunes were equal. Though there might be a ‘few rich men in America’ wealth circulated ‘with incredible rapidity’. The consequence was ‘that two successive generations seldom enjoy its favours’.119 This ensured society remained characterised by equality of conditions. Tocqueville observed that in emerging democratic societies, such as England and France, where social conditions were still marked by caste and class divisions, wealth operated to some extent as a lubricant for social ascent. In America, however, these kinds of divisions did not exist. One could not ‘trace any family or corporate influence’ to which the lower classes might aspire. The result was that all individuals were ‘more nearly equally powerful, than in any other country of the world or in any other age of recorded history’.120 He concluded that all individuals concentrated their efforts in a single direction, that of acquiring wealth.121 The result was that in America emulation was more akin to imitation. Americans’ incessant quest for wealth Tocqueville found unsettling.122 Whilst his Jansenist inspired beliefs and his aristocratic sensibilities ensured that he regarded with disdain the unrestrained pursuit of wealth, he was unable to formulate exactly what it was about the relentless acquisition of wealth that was so threatening; after all, Say positively welcomed it, and Montesquieu himself believed the spirit of commerce ensured that the wealth it produced had ‘no bad effect’.123 What worried Tocqueville was that those admirable elements of the spirit of commerce – frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquillity, order and rule – were corrupted by a spirit of greed. But how? It became one of Tocqueville’s most important

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concerns and one which took up much of his intellectual energies after completing Democracy in America (1835). While he understood a number of the difficulties that accompanied Americans’ relentless quest for wealth, Pascal, Montesquieu and Rousseau having helped him appreciate its dangers, he was not entirely satisfied with lessons he drew from these thinkers, nor was he entirely content with his own analysis. There appeared to be so much more that escaped his framework of analysis, and this made him uneasy. Yet his understanding of democracy as a social state enabled him to see where the limitations to his framework of analysis lay. Already by the autumn of 1834, when he continued to be engaged with Beaumont and Kergorlay in establishing a political review, he insisted that the paper should attack financial greed and the narrow materialism to which commercial democracies were prone.124 Most importantly, understanding democracy as a social state drove him to examine those issues that eroded individual and public morality. By the beginning of 1835 he applied himself fully to examining social issues. The knowledge he acquired from these studies he used to overcome the shortcomings of the first volume of Democracy in America. In 1834 and 1835 he studied Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont. The latter’s Économie politique chrétienne was a devastating attack on liberal political economy, particularly Say’s; it was also one of the most robust nineteenthcentury critiques of unfettered capitalism. In 1835 Tocqueville wrote his first report on pauperism, and he travelled to the industrial cities of England to better understand the effects of industry and the conditions of the poor. These studies enabled him to theorise the relation between democracy, social justice and revolution, a theme central to his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution. They contributed significantly to a more thorough understanding of the threat posed by materialism and greed to democracy. His observations appeared in the pages of Democracy in America (1840), his political writings of the 1840s and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.125 Whilst the differences between the earlier and later volumes of Democracy in America are great, it is clear that in the early work Tocqueville struggled to reach a firm conclusion about democracy. His method, which stressed the external elements of that social condition, made any conclusion impossible. It was not until 1840, after he studied the internal elements of democratic society, that he was able to offer a clear judgement. Nonetheless, in 1835 he singled out an important element that would assist him in linking the two works, and that was self-interest rightly understood. This point needs emphasising, for though scholars have focused on the concept of selfinterest rightly understood, they have not readily acknowledged that Tocqueville, through his studies of political economy and social issues, was able to show how self-interest rightly understood could be perverted. In this way he was able to stress with remarkable prescience and clarity the hidden dangers within democracy.


Instinct and reason: self-interest and safeguarding liberty As we have already seen, Tocqueville emphasised those internal and external elements that made America a successful republic. The strength of religious belief among Americans was successfully allied with their spirit of liberty and the vitality of religion and liberty were assured by an important number of other elements. America’s constitution, the administrative organisation of the national and state governments, the legal organisation of the nation, the role of a free press and the large number of active associations all contributed to both a highly developed public spiritedness, a spirit of association, among Americans and active individual participation in the political process at all levels. These elements also coalesced in a way that allowed Americans to live by a doctrine of self-interest rightly understood.126 Tocqueville’s understanding of this doctrine can be traced directly to his study of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and Say’s Cours complet. Like them, he understood how individuals’ perceptions of their own interests were frequently faulty. Conceit, love of dominance and the love of ease were the most important factors that rendered individuals’ understandings of their interests flawed. This was a working assumption throughout Democracy in America (1835), made explicit in a number of instances.127 And though it was not until 1840 that he gave the doctrine a thorough treatment in Chapters Eight and Nine of Part Two, it did receive a serious examination in the earlier work. There is therefore at the bottom of democratic institutions some hidden tendency which often makes men promote the general prosperity, in spite of their vices and their mistakes, whereas in aristocratic institutions there is sometimes a secret bias which, in spite of talents and virtues, leads men to contribute to the afflictions of their fellows. In this way it may come about that under aristocratic governments public men do evil without intending it, and in democracies they bring about good results of which they have never thought.128 Tocqueville’s understanding of the unintended consequences of pursuing self-interest was an inventive adaptation of Montesquieu’s principle of false honour in a monarchy.129 While virtue, the love of law and community, the principle of the republic, was Montesquieu’s favoured value, it was not a value required of subjects of a monarchy. In direct reference to Aristotle’s discussion on the perfect state,130 Montesquieu contended that well-regulated monarchies ensured that almost every citizen was a good citizen, but they could almost never ensure that good citizens were good men.131 Rather, the monarchical state subsisted ‘independently of the love of our country, of the thirst of true glory, of self-denial, of the sacrifice of our dearest interests, and of

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all those heroic virtues which we admire in the ancients’.132 Its principle, honour, was the feeling of what each man knows he owes his rank and station, ‘the prejudice of each person and each condition’. Honour was tied to codes of conduct attached to rank, but false honour involved the clever manipulation of these codes to the ends of the state. What was peculiar about false honour was that in manipulating the true honour useful to private persons, false honour became useful to the public. False honour acted in a manner akin to ‘gravitation’ drawing every individual ‘toward the public good, while he was thinking only of promoting his own interests’.133 The emergence of false honour and its beneficent effects showed how the qualities of private morality could be turned to public benefit. False honour was a conscious manipulation of individual ambition to the ends of the state. Here the monarch and his advisors made use of individual ambition in a way that benefited the state; they could even manipulate the character of courtiers, ‘ambition in idleness, meanness in arrogance . . . desire to enrich oneself without work’ to the public good.134 Tocqueville’s inventive adaptation of the principle of false honour lay in the way he linked it to commercial society. Montesquieu contended that commerce evened out differences between manners, debasing pure ones but polishing and softening barbarous ones.135 He also argued that it was ‘against the spirit of monarchy for the nobility to engage in commerce.’ For commerce corrupted the principle upon which monarchy rested: honour. This in turn weakened monarchical government.136 In undermining honour, it also weakened the monarch’s ability to manipulate honour; it eroded the potential for false honour. At the same time as the monarch’s ability to manipulate honour to public benefit was weakened, however, it was replaced by a providential, or mysterious, force. In this way private interest was directed to public benefit but without the intervention of the monarch or state. Through reciprocal dependence and the satisfaction of mutual need, the spirit of commerce according to Tocqueville, but not for Montesquieu, united individuals.137 Thus Tocqueville used Say’s description of self-interest and its unforeseen consequences in the workings of the invisible hand to complete his innovative interpretation of false honour: The common man in the United States has understood the influence of the general prosperity on his own happiness, an idea so simple but nevertheless so little understood by the people. Moreover, he is accustomed to regard that prosperity as his own work. So he sees the public fortune as his own, and he works for the good of the state, not only from duty or from pride, but, I dare almost say, from greed.138 Just as Say had recognised, so Tocqueville also understood there were limits to self-interest. Say believed self-interest was one passion that could be taken


for granted. He shared this conviction with Smith.139 They believed self-interest to be entirely natural. Tocqueville accepted this idea uncritically, but like his predecessors he understood that there were severe limits to the uncontrolled exercise of this natural passion. This primitive instinct that ‘comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave’, as Smith described it,140 created important difficulties for any society which placed a high value on liberty.141 An individual driven by this natural passion might, if he were powerful or crafty, secure his independence, but self-interest could not safeguard the liberty of all individuals in a society. As a natural passion self-interest might, as Smith recognised, be the seed of individual liberty but nothing more. In order for a free society to emerge from individuals’ pursuit of their own interests, their conduct needed to be tempered. Reason was the faculty that ensured this. According to Say self-interest could secure liberty but it could do so only if it was allied to reason, if it was rationally pursued. Tocqueville understood this immediately. He recognised self-interest could act as the foundation to liberty only if it was informed by enlightenment and experience.142 He appeared to have discovered this rational pursuit of selfinterest in America. Its citizens avoided anarchy, secured liberty, ensured peace and order, and achieved prosperity for the nation: Nothing strikes a European traveller in the United States more than the absence of what we would call government or administration. One knows that there are written laws there and sees them put into execution every day; everything is in motion around you, but the motive force is nowhere apparent. The hand directing the social machine constantly slips from notice.143 What was it that ensured Americans rationally pursued their self-interest? Why did self-interest in America take the form of a rationally informed passion rather than an uncontrolled natural passion? Tocqueville believed the answer lay in the origins of the republic. Americans had, by the time of their revolution, acquired the experience and enlightenment necessary to ensure self-interest was rationally informed. A long apprenticeship in the exercise of liberty with its love of order and legality had guaranteed that Americans had the maturity necessary to ensure the rational rather than instinctually informed fulfilment of their self-interest: The Revolution in the United States was caused by a mature and thoughtful taste for freedom, not by some vague, undefined instinct for independence. No disorderly passions drove it on; on the contrary, it proceeded hand in hand with a love of order and legality.144 There were, however, other factors that caused self-interest to be rationally informed among Americans. What were they?

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The cultivation of self-interest rightly understood Americans’ political maturity, their love of law and order, their common sense, were all part of their long apprenticeship in the exercise of liberty which, in turn, was sustained by a number of important elements. When these elements were combined judiciously they ensured individuals pursued their self-interest rationally.145 Tocqueville’s choice and analysis of these elements did not vary considerably from what had been done before him. From Montesquieu and Say he used the idea that democracies founded on commerce could temper coarse egotism because the spirit of commerce, as we have already seen, ‘brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquillity, order, and rule.’146 Equally, according to Montesquieu, religion cultivated between individuals sentiments of fellow feeling, sympathy, and benevolence. It also directed individuals’ attention to spiritual concerns, obligations and considerations, and these took them beyond their daily and material preoccupations. In this way religion acted as a foundation for association.147 But above all Tocqueville thought religion led to ‘enlightenment and the observance of divine laws’ and this led ‘men to liberty.’148 Like his predecessors, especially Smith and Say, Tocqueville stressed the role of education in fashioning the manners and customs of a people. Like religion, it acted as a break on commerce’s unwanted effect at undermining the civic bonds of association. Along with teaching the importance of civility, good manners and public spiritedness, Tocqueville found education in America within everyone’s reach. It created a middling standard for all human knowledge, and served to foster ‘a vast multitude of people with roughly the same ideas about religion, history, science, political economy, legislation, and government’.149 Though this kind of uniformity in belief Tocqueville judged oppressive, he was heartened by the extent to which education prepared individuals for public life and good citizenship.150 This, for him, was one of its chief benefits. Like education, associations also served to draw individuals into public life and away from their private concerns.151 The marrying of these elements – religion, reason, education and association – ensured that in America ‘every village is a sort of republic accustomed to rule itself’.152 Tocqueville believed the spirit of association important, and that the spirit which emerged from associations was akin to a social bond, an interclass fellowship. His observations here may have been intended to influence political debates during the early years of the July Monarchy on the nature and importance of associations to social and political life.153 Along with emphasising the importance of reason, education and association, Tocqueville also signalled the role personal introspection, patriotism and civic virtue served to curb the instinctive character of self-interest, rendering it more moderate and rational. In directing self-interest toward rational ends all of these factors were part of the Jansenist canon. That they


should be rigorously examined in Democracy in America is not surprising. What is interesting in Tocqueville’s treatment of them is the extent to which he never lost sight of his aim: to show how the instinctive passion of selfinterest could be made rational, mature and moderate, thereby serving the ends of liberty. What was new in his analysis was the way he saw liberty itself as something that could transform self-interest into a rational pursuit.

Liberty and self-interest rightly understood The extent to which liberty ensured a rational pursuit of self-interest was emphasised in Tocqueville’s analysis of the American system of townships, particularly in Part One Chapter Five. Making important use of essays by Chabrol and Blosseville, but particularly Jared Sparks’ Observations on the Government of Towns in Massachusetts and his father’s Coup d’œil sur l’administration française, Tocqueville focused on the concept of local, or communal, liberty.154 He began his account of local liberty by stressing its origins in communal society or the township. These forms of association were both natural and providential: The township is the only association so well rooted in nature that wherever men assemble it forms itself. Communal society therefore exists among all peoples, whatever be their customs and their laws; man creates kingdoms and republics, but townships seem to spring directly from the hand of God.155 After observing that communal society was natural, providential and ‘coeval with humanity’, he went on to comment on how local liberty was ‘a rare and fragile thing’.156 As an ancient value, local liberty was embraced by the freest peoples of the globe, the English and Americans, but as society became less natural and more civilised the difficulties safeguarding local liberty increased rather than diminished. He believed a ‘very civilised society finds it hard to tolerate attempts at freedom in a local community; it is disgusted by its numerous blunders and is apt to despair of success before the experiment is finished’.157 This impatience of older and enlightened peoples with communal or local liberty was entirely understandable. Local liberty needed the participation of all individuals in society. This ensured that the coarsest and most uneducated elements were given a voice in public affairs. The consequences of this, as Tocqueville noted, were frequently disheartening; republican governments ‘frequently behaving badly’.158 Individuals in democracies were driven by self-interest which interfered with their ability to discern the public interest. Habitual inattention to such things was ‘reckoned the great vice of the democratic spirit’ and this led the republic to make mistakes.159 Individuals in democracies were easily susceptible to flattery and demagoguery, they were frequently seduced by despots eager to dis-

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pense with their liberties. Yet despite these concerns and the frequent misadventures of local liberty, Tocqueville firmly believed that it was a value to be cherished above all others. Local liberty ensured the prosperity, durability and ‘strength of free peoples’. Above all, it spawned the spirit of liberty: Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.160 Local liberty was interesting and instructive. It served to direct self-interest but at the same time acted in accordance with it. It rendered self-interest rational, but was aided in doing so by appealing to self-interest itself. The curious nature of local liberty Tocqueville stressed in his discussions on the principle of sovereignty in townships and on administrative decentralisation in America. He showed that as each individual shared equally in exercising political power he learned to obey society because he benefited directly from that participation and obedience. Each person obeyed ‘society not because he is inferior to those who direct it, nor because he is incapable of ruling himself, but because union with his fellows seems useful to him and he knows that union is impossible without a regulating authority’.161 Having shown that local liberty was useful to individuals, Tocqueville showed the extent to which it served as an ideal as well. Local liberty, anchoring itself in individual self-interest, tended to make individuals more altruistic. Starting with, and appealing to, individuals’ self-interest, local liberty acted to create a socially beneficial outcome. As with false honour, individuals’ attention, though firmly tied to their personal concerns, was subtly, cleverly, and almost mysteriously directed toward the interests of others and society at large: In the United States the motherland’s presence is felt everywhere. It is a subject of concern to the village and to the whole Union. The inhabitants care about each of their country’s interests as if it were their own. Each man takes pride in the nation; the successes it gains seem his own work , and he becomes elated; he rejoices in the general prosperity from which he profits. He has much the same feeling for his country as one has for one’s family, and a sort of selfishness makes him care for the state.162 Local liberty was able to direct self-interest to wider social, altruistic, ends. This was its great strength, but Tocqueville believed local liberty also offered other important benefits. It worked to educate individuals in their own independence. With individuals participating in matters of state and the administration of their own affairs, local liberty revealed how Americans had


shown that ‘the collective force of the citizens will always be better able to achieve social prosperity than the authority of the government’.163 Local liberty also worked to strengthen individuals’ independence of spirit and at the same time their adherence to the laws. As each participated in government, the law and the public officials who administered it were seen by individuals as the people’s servants whose powers were bestowed through consent rather than imposed by authority or power. The contrast to continental Europe could not have been greater. There, the ‘public official stands for force’, but in America he stood for right and it was ‘fair to say that a man never obeys another man, but justice, or the law’.164 This gave the law an almost sacred quality. Local liberty strengthened individuals’ obedience to laws because the laws sprang from the individuals themselves. It made individuals’ spirit of independence strong. It imbued all of their undertakings with ‘striving and animation’. Extinguishing local liberty by subjecting it to a rational and centralising administration, what Tocqueville later ascribed to the way in which Roman law served the interests of European states,165 might ensure a more refined orderliness and ‘check slight disorders and petty offences’ but it also detached individuals from their own fate and rendered them indifferent to everything around them. Subject to ‘those little details of social regulations which make life smooth and comfortable’ and deprived of the right to shape one’s destiny, the individual, under ‘administrative tutelage’, was rendered both helpless and indifferent such that, as Tocqueville put it, his ‘detachment from his own fate goes so far that if his own safety or that of his children is in danger, instead of trying to ward the peril off, he crosses his arms and waits for the whole nation to come to his aid’.166 Deprived of the power to govern himself and participate in the governance of his community, this same individual is reduced to the status of an infant who, deprived of enlightenment and reason, knows only his narrow self-interest: this same man who has so completely sacrificed his freedom of will does not like obedience more than the next man. He submits, it is true, to the caprice of a clerk, but as soon as force is withdrawn, he will vaunt his triumph over the law as over a conquered foe. Thus he oscillates the whole time between servility and licence.167 Tocqueville believed administrative centralisation, which deprived individuals of their communal freedom, might ensure they remain subjects but it did not make them citizens. Worse, administrative centralisation created ignorant and indifferent subjects governed by passion and force alone. It was for him a form of despotism that could ‘maintain nothing durable.’168 Tocqueville’s praise for local liberty was an appeal to the French to consider seriously its value, a concept and practice now ‘contrary to our ideas and opposed to our habits’169 but one, as he would later show in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, held dear by the French in the distant past.170

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His critique of administrative centralisation was informed by his Jansenism and Malthusian attacks on the English Poor Law and its imitation in the state of Maryland. Tocqueville, like the Malthusians Channing and Tuckerman, believed a Poor Law system deprived individuals of the habits of self-reliance, prudence and industriousness. His ideas may also have been informed by his observations of prison regimes. Prisons, in disciplining and ensuring order and regularity in every aspect of a convict’s life behind bars, strove to break the prisoner’s will and were systematic in depriving individuals of every opportunity of exercising their own initiative. While this may seem an extreme form of centralised and disciplined regime, it must be remembered that Tocqueville all too often spoke of administrative centralisation and despotism as though they were synonymous.171 Tocqueville’s assessment of administrative centralisation was made harsher than it might have been because centralisation contrasted so starkly with the clear benefits offered by the local liberty he observed in the New England system of township government. Sparks’ assessment of township government clearly appealed to Tocqueville. New England was a useful model for him, though it was frequently conflated beyond its bounds, Tocqueville more than once mistaking what was specific to New England as generally American. Whilst local liberty offered numerous and clear benefits, there were also severe limitations to it. If left reliant upon unenlightened and undisciplined self-interest, local liberty posed considerable dangers. Yet these hazards were more the consequence of unenlightened and undisciplined self-interest than natural outcomes of local liberty itself. Local liberty was a value that needed to be preserved, for it spawned the spirit of freedom, the root of individual liberty itself. As Tocqueville made very clear: ‘Those who fear license and those who are afraid of absolute power should both, therefore, desire the gradual growth of provincial liberties.’172 It was an opinion he reiterated throughout all of his work, including his Souvenirs and particularly The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. Nonetheless, local liberty was anchored in individual self-interest and this was its weak point; it could be easily swayed, corrupted and undermined. As we shall see, Tocqueville foresaw a number of causes weakening enlightened self-interest, rendering it immoderate and undisciplined. Over all, however, Democracy in America (1835) offered a positive assessment of the relation between self-interest and local liberty. If the favourable assessment of that relation was to endure, however, the hazards threatening freedom had to be pointed out.

Instinct and self-interest: the threats to liberty America presented the spectacle of a country in which local and state legislative assemblies were ‘constantly absorbing various remnants of governmental powers’ and appropriating them ‘all to themselves, as the French Convention did’. This meant that the power of society, the authority of the


majority, not only became more centralised, but also, because it was invested in representatives and therefore ‘subject to the people’s power’, more fluid because it was ‘constantly changing hands’.173 The consequences were both numerous and dangerous. The first was the way citizens’ opinion of themselves and their own judgements moved from being ‘often exaggerated but almost always salutary’ to becoming exaggerated and damaging. Tocqueville was aware that there was a fine line between a people’s healthy opinion of themselves and one that was pernicious. Two factors in particular contributed to rendering that conviction deleterious, but a fuller discussion will have to follow later. Briefly, as the ancients had shown, demagogues overinflated a people’s opinion of itself by constantly flattering and manipulating it. In such a case people then came to see its interests as the same as the interests of politicians. Related, though different from demagogic flattery, was the emergence of the courtier spirit. This spirit, salutary in monarchies, was entirely destructive in democracies. It came to penetrate the minds of the great mass of the population, creating the conditions that ‘put the spirit of a court within reach of the multitude and let it penetrate through all classes at once’; this planted the seeds of despotism.174 The other corrosive influence, and this was much newer, although it had been highlighted by seventeenth-and eighteenth-century moralists, was that of wealth and material comforts. By equating their self-interest with prosperity and material comforts, citizens came to see their civic duties and obligations as irritating intrusions into what was really important to their lives: acquiring wealth and possessions. The long-term consequence of this was that citizens began to neglect their civic duties leaving more space for their representatives and the state to acquire greater functions and act with greater impunity. There was another danger associated with this. Montesquieu argued that the pursuit of wealth and material comforts undermined the bonds of community and created a condition whereby ‘traffic in all human activities and all moral virtues, the smallest things, those required by humanity, are done or given for money’.175 The consequence of this was that individuals developed a ‘certain feeling for exact justice’, directing their attention to the state in order to settle disputes. This was confirmed by Tocqueville in his observations of the American judicial system.176 But where the quest for wealth and material comforts threatened democracy itself was when, as Montesquieu had shown, the interest of commerce and industry coalesced with the interest of the state.177 In ‘countries of liberty’ commerce and industry found ‘innumerable obstacles’, but in ‘countries of servitude’ the ‘laws never thwart[ed]’ them.178 It was a conclusion Tocqueville endorsed.179 When self-interest ceased to be rational and moderate, the lawmaking authority became unstable, representatives changed frequently and the laws themselves were constantly altered. These were clear signs indicating the corruption of a democracy. They were features Montesquieu singled out,180

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and ones Tocqueville emphasised. The state of France during the Revolutionary period was a classic example of a democracy becoming corrupt. American democracy revealed the ‘difficulty in conquering the passions and silencing momentary requirements in the interest of the future’.181 While Tocqueville believed Americans had mastered this problem thus far, the French had not. For this reason it was important to show how instability in the law-making authority resulted in increased administrative centralisation. To this end he focused on weaknesses and developments within American democracy that might be instructive to the French. With political power in America concentrated in the hands of the people, its representatives were subject to its changing opinions. Tocqueville observed that representatives who looked forward to the community’s long-term future and enacted legislation that was far-sighted seldom remained representatives for long and their legislative enactments were quickly reversed. Worse, he saw that judicial power in several states tended to fall into the hands of the general populace. Judges, subject to election and the interference of the electorate, lost their independence. Driven to maintain their jobs, they based their legal opinions less on the principles of justice than on the demands, perceived or real, of the electorate; an important aristocratic check on democracy was lost. Whilst these American developments were worrying and analogous to changes in France, what concerned Tocqueville most was the principal issue discussed at length in Chapter Seven of Part Two: ‘The omnipotence of the majority in the United States and its effects’. This chapter, one of the most famous of Democracy in America, is also the least rigorous.182 Tocqueville treated a number of diverse elements. His analysis oscillated between factual and legal issues, and between political concerns and sociological considerations. This required the reader to work hard to discern whether he was speaking of the faults and failures of democracy in general or whether he was dealing with the observable excesses in certain states of the American republic.183 These limitations were almost certainly due to inadequacies in a framework of analysis rooted in Montesquieu’s work, but they were also due to his attempts to combine such a framework with elements he derived from the sociological approach of the Doctrinaires. It is clear that his analysis of the omnipotence of the majority revealed the extent to which he exceeded the bounds of Montesquieu’s framework which could not help him understand fully what was qualitatively new about a form of tyranny that was long understood as an ancient phenomenon. What is not clear is the extent to which Tocqueville was fully aware of that by the time he completed Democracy in America (1835); he certainly recognised those limits well before the completion of the second volume in 1840.184 Despite these limitations, Tocqueville offered one of the most far-reaching and prescient accounts of the dangers posed by, and inherent within, democracy. In his account of the omnipotence of the majority, Tocqueville described it as having ‘gone even beyond the laws’. It had grown to such strength that


it weakened the constitutional and legal barriers erected against it by the founding fathers: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This threatened liberty and all that made America great: ‘A custom is spreading more and more in the United States which will end by making the guarantees of representative government vain.’185 Tocqueville examined all of the facets of the omnipotence of majority rule, from its effects on the law to its repercussions on individuals’ ideas and thoughts. In every instance he described how the majority had ‘degraded’ itself, its enlightened self-interest reduced to a coarse, untutored passion. His analysis of the omnipotence of the majority was startling and innovative. He began by characterising it as a custom, a social phenomenon, an internal element of democracy. This was an important consideration because it enabled him to move beyond more traditional accounts of majority rule which focused exclusively on majority political power or authority. By identifying the omnipotence of the majority as a social phenomenon, he was able to examine its moral authority upon individuals and society at large. He justified this consideration thus: The idea that the majority has a right based on enlightenment to govern society was brought to the United States by its first inhabitants; and this idea, which would of itself be enough to create a free nation, has by now passed into mores and affects even the smallest habits of life.186 In revealing how majority right had passed into ‘the smallest habits of life’, Tocqueville was able to direct the reader’s attention to the complex relation between private and public morality and the laws and institutions of democratic government, and between the internal and external elements of democracy. It was in this way he made an original adaptation of Montesquieu, Say and Guizot. Though Tocqueville and Guizot understood democracy as a social state, the historian tended to neglect the role of the individual in society, and failed to discern the important relation between individual and public morality. Tocqueville never lost sight of this important relation. The influence exercised by eighteenth-century moralists like Montesquieu and Rousseau upon his thought ensured that. But the way in which he adapted Guizot’s historical method and that of Say’s political economy to society meant that he was able to give real depth to the relation between the spirit of a people, which placed a considerable emphasis on individual morality, and the principle of its government. This was the first step in defining a liberal spirit within democracy. After the publication of Democracy in America (1835) it would help Tocqueville to distinguish between what the writer Charles de Rémusat already characterised in his 1818 La Révolution française as the two spirits within democracy: liberal and revolutionary.187 Already in Democracy in America (1835) we can discern in Tocqueville’s analysis of the omnipotence of the majority a vague awareness that there

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was more to the phenomenon than what he was able to describe. Lapses in his argument, but more importantly a lack of clarity at crucial points in his discussion, reveal that there was more to the phenomenon than he then recognised. Perhaps this was the origin of the conceptual distinction he made in 1836 between revolutionary spirit and the noble spirit of the Revolution.188 At important points in Democracy in America Tocqueville described the omnipotence of the majority in terms similar to the way he described revolutionary fervour: an unstoppable power. The institutional guarantees limiting majority power, guarantees he spent so long describing and praising, seemed impotent against this new social power. In his chapter on the omnipotence of the majority, and contrary to earlier and later pronouncements, Tocqueville asserted that in the face of majority power there were no institutional checks, a vast and revolutionary force having swept them away.189 Where he was normally careful to distinguish between the governments of individual states and the federal government, the two were confused in this chapter, the crucial distinction relegated to a footnote at the end. In that note he contended that in the governments of the individual states ‘a despotic majority is in control’. The federal government, however, offered sufficient institutional guarantees against despotic power.190 The lack of clarity and the lapses in his argument here may indicate he believed these federal checks would also succumb to majority power. Tocqueville’s thoughts on the French Revolution could not have been far from the front of his mind. For he would, within a year of Democracy in America’s publication, make that link between extreme equality and the revolutionary ‘spirit which is very easily combined with the love of an absolute government’.191 Having determined the historical origins of majority rule, Tocqueville proceeded to argue that its political and ethical legitimacy lay in ‘the principle that the interest of the greatest number should be preferred to that of those who are fewer’.192 He contended that this principle was reinforced by the general condition of equality that existed amongst the inhabitants of the United States. As individuals were roughly equal, there was ‘no natural or permanent antagonism between the interests of the various inhabitants’;193 nor was there a powerful minority, such as an aristocracy, that could oppose and effectively resist the power of the majority – though as we shall see in Democracy in America (1840), Tocqueville revealed how a new aristocracy and powerful minority would emerge from conditions of equality, and, in perfecting the courtier spirit, a spirit that was both ‘vile’ and ‘corrupt’, ensure that majority rule served its exclusive aims.194 Having determined the immense political power and authority of the opinion of the majority, Tocqueville was quick to show how this power was also capricious. Americans were restless, in a constant state of agitation; when allied with an omnipotence of majority rule the consequences for the lawmaking authority and the laws themselves were entirely predictable. So, too,


were the effects upon public administrative activity. As the majority in America acted in a rapid and absolute manner, Tocqueville noted the extent to which Americans undertook certain improvements with a zeal and energy that was unparalleled anywhere else. But he also noted that as soon as the majority’s attention turned to something else, its previous vigorous efforts ceased and energies were directed to something new. Administrative authority, which had no independent existence in relation to the legislator, the majority itself, was constantly subject to this kind of changing preoccupation. So, in presenting the example of prison reform in America, with the American public roused by the exhortations of various prison reforming societies to reform criminals, resulting in a ‘happy revolution in which the public cooperated with such eagerness and which the simultaneous efforts of the citizens rendered irresistible’, Tocqueville presented the striking paradox of a ‘majority preoccupied with the idea of founding a new establishment’, forgetting the already existing ones which continued to be used housing a great number of the guilty. The resultant spectacle was startling: ‘beside some prison that stood as a durable monument to the gentleness and enlightenment of our age, there was a dungeon recalling the barbarities of the Middle Ages.’195 Instability in the legislative authority, the laws and administrative execution of the will of the majority all pointed toward one possible outcome of the omnipotence of the majority: anarchy. It was an alarming conclusion. According to Tocqueville anarchy stemmed from either tyranny or democracy. This was an ancient and undisputed opinion. But what Tocqueville also concluded, and it was reminiscent of Montesquieu’s analysis of corruption of the principle of democracy, was that anarchy was not the consequence of a deficiency of political power but was the result of too much political power.196 In the case of democracy it was the result of too much power concentrated in the hands of the majority. Whereas ancient democracies collapsed because of conflicts between various factions or the ill use of their wealth and resources, America could be seen as an example of the dangers that threatened modern democracies. In this case, anarchy was a potential consequence of majority rule because the majority was both powerful and too capricious. Constantly changing the focus of its attention, its undertakings, and its laws, the American majority rendered politics, law and administration all unstable. Rather than leading to anarchy as a possible outcome, however, Tocqueville believed another outcome possible – administrative centralisation, or even despotism itself: ‘Moreover, I am convinced that no nations are more liable to fall under the yoke of administrative centralization than those with a democratic social condition.’197 How would this administrative centralisation come about in a nation which had neither perfected the art of administration nor ensured that administrative undertakings were free of legislative interference? Tocqueville considered a number of points here. For example, he examined the extent to which public officials in America were given much more freedom than

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their European counterparts to fulfil their duties within the sphere marked out for them, and frequently with the majority’s consent to go beyond those limits. Their scope was so wide that they were able ‘to do things which astonish a European’. There was, however, a deeper and more important consideration that attracted his attention. This was to show how the omnipotence of the majority touched individuals’ perceptions of their rights and liberties; how it undermined their ‘independence of mind and true freedom of discussion’, and how this created the conditions for the ‘general lowering of standards’ so that self-interest was divested of its enlightened and moderate character and reduced to a passion. In this way Tocqueville gave voice to an ancient criticism of democracy, but also warned of future dangers. In a remark all too reminiscent of Machiavelli or Montesquieu, he asserted that ‘nothing is more absolute than the authority of a prince who immediately succeeds a republic’.198 In a radical departure from both of them, he believed that prince to be the modern-day state. In his discussion on the omnipotence of the majority, Tocqueville showed the extent to which majority rule refused to recognise any limits to its power or authority. What was both striking and worrying about this was the extent to which the omnipotence of the majority undermined that ‘boundary to each people’s right’; how it undermined justice. His account of the tyranny of the majority revealed the extent to which he understood justice both in the non-utilitarian terms of natural right and as the embodiment of liberty. Utility, which anchored the ‘moral authority of the majority’, was ‘founded on the principle that the interest of the greatest number should be preferred to that of those who are fewer’.199 It served as the justification for the majority’s power which found ‘no obstacles that can restrain its course and give it time to moderate itself’.200 This placed freedom in danger. The great threat here was that majority rule contradicted the very principle upon which it originally rested, for individuals’ participation in the making of the laws, in their own governance, was anchored in the right of freedom and independence. Liberty, founded in right, was threatened by the very thing it spawned, majority rule. In placing itself above right and justice, majority rule disregarded the principle of individual independence, and in consequence developed in such a way as to undermine its own foundations. From this, it was a short step to administrative centralisation and despotism. By undermining right, individual independence and local liberty, the roots of the spirit of liberty were destroyed. The majority, having overrun individuals’ rights, extinguished their independence of spirit, and, in consequence, extinguished the source of its own vitality and power. Tocqueville thought this was why majority rule led to administrative centralisation. Deprived of their independence of spirit, individuals lost the initiative to engage in those undertakings which did not serve their narrow self-interest. While administrative centralisation was ‘almost unknown’ in America because of the nation’s size and constitutional and administrative arrangement which saw so many municipal bodies and county administrations acting


‘like so many hidden reefs retarding or dividing the flood of the popular will’, there were internal elements, other characteristics of majority rule, that might some day render administrative centralisation unstoppable. The consequences were grave, and in a clear warning to the French, a nation with a powerful central state, Tocqueville signalled what those hazards were: If ever a democratic republic similar to that of the United States came to be established in a country in which earlier a single man’s power had introduced administrative centralization and had made it something accepted by custom and by law, I have no hesitation in saying that in such a republic despotism would become more intolerable than in any of the absolute monarchies of Europe. One would have to go over into Asia to find anything with which to compare it.201 Tocqueville never forgot the reference to Oriental despotism. His assessment in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution of administrative reforms undertaken in France at the behest of the physiocrats was proof of that.202 But in Democracy in America he was keen to direct the reader’s attention to what he perceived as the most sinister and entirely new aspect of the omnipotence of the majority: its power over thought. Majority rule in the United States, with its irresistible strength and freedom to do what it wished, had, in one important area, gone ‘beyond all powers known’ to Europeans by influencing and controlling that ‘invisible power . . . which makes sport of all tyrannies’: the power of thought.203 This presented a bizarre display. America represented a nation which attached great value to liberty and independence; at the same time, however, Tocqueville knew of no other country ‘in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America’.204 Whilst there were no legal or political impediments preventing individuals from voicing their opinions, the power of majority opinion, its moral authority, a sort of ‘theory of equality applied to brains’ acted as a ‘formidable fence’ constraining individuals’ thoughts and actions. Tocqueville harboured a fear of this modern democratic tyranny well before completing Democracy in America.205 But upon investigating America’s prison system, and in particular the solitary prison regime of Philadelphia with its ability to isolate prisoners and prevent any communication between them, the full force of this tyranny was made apparent to him: Formerly tyranny used the clumsy weapons of chains and hangmen; nowadays even despotism, though it seemed to have nothing more to learn, has been perfected by civilization. Princes made violence a physical thing, but our contemporary democratic republics have turned it into something as intellectual as the human will it is intended to constrain. Under the absolute government of a single man, despotism, to reach the soul, clumsily struck at the body, and the

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soul, escaping from such blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics that is not at all how tyranny behaves; it leaves the body alone and goes straight for the soul.206 Majority rule created the conditions of intolerance to criticism and exercised power over thought. Unprepared to portray the vices and absurdities of the republic because ‘the least reproach’ offends the majority, the critic, writer or social commentator was obliged ‘to sprinkle incense over his fellow citizens’. With an absence of criticism, particularly edifying criticism, the majority found itself living in ‘a state of perpetual self-adoration’.207 Majority rule, rather than improving individuals’ enlightenment and self-interest, worked to degrade it, furthering the development of a narrow, coarse and instinctual self-interest. Tocqueville thought that this had already penetrated the habits and manners of the Americans, affecting their national character, but he believed that political society had felt its influence ‘only weakly’. Though this influence was weak it was strong enough to be corrosive, and he discerned its already apparent characteristics. The narrowing and coarsening of self-interest acted to lower standards in political life according to him – though as we shall see, commercial activity which he observed the Americans pursue with heroism, because of its intimate relation with self-interest and its deep rootedness in the customs and manners of the Americans, escaped the general lowering of standards which affected most other aspects of life in America.208 Tocqueville was concerned to show that with a general lowering of standards, America found itself with no great politicians to speak of – an assessment at odds with his judgement on the American Senate. President Andrew Jackson he found ‘a very mediocre man’.209 The lack of great statesmen had a deleterious effect upon political life. With no ‘outstanding men on the political scene’, men whose ‘renown brought honour to the nation’, individuals had no one to emulate, no higher standard to strive for. This transformed political life by degrading it. As with individuals in the rest of society, politicians pursued their narrow, coarse self-interest. The consequence of this was the creation of a class of courtier politicians. These men ‘never say “Sire” or “Your Majesty,” as if the difference mattered; but they are constantly talking of their master’s natural brilliance; they do not raise the question which of all the prince’s virtues is most to be admired, for they assure him that he possesses all virtues, without having acquired them, and, so to say, without desiring them; . . . but they do sacrifice their opinions to him and so prostitute themselves.’210 Flattering the citizens, bolstering their ‘state of perpetual self-adoration’, politicians ensured that ‘the spirit of the court was within reach of the multitude’. Tocqueville foresaw catastrophic consequences from this development, which he later stressed in his political writings of the 1840s.211 His condemnation of the lowering of politics to narrow self-interest was


rooted in his belief that this kind of politics resulted in three possible and depressing outcomes: either tyranny of the majority over minorities, administrative centralisation, or both. Tocqueville only really developed a full account of the first outcome of the politics of majority omnipotence and narrow self-interest in Democracy in America (1835). His analysis and account of the crucial elements that made up the second and third outcomes were discussed at length, particularly in Part Four Chapter Six in the 1840 work, although important elements of that discussion can be found in the earlier volume. It was not until after his study of Villeneuve-Bargemont, his investigations into social issues like poverty and his considerations on the nature of industrial society that he developed a clearer idea of how those elements fitted together. This allowed him to draw a pessimistic conclusion about democracy and its relation to industry. It was a judgement he reiterated forcefully in both his Souvenirs and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. At the end of his account of the omnipotence of the majority in Democracy in America (1835), Tocqueville contended that if majority rule and narrow self-interest were able to run their course unimpeded, liberty would be lost. He reiterated the ancient critique of democracies: by exercising its power narrowly and without restraint, the majority would split the democracy by spawning an antagonistic faction that would rise up against it: If ever freedom is lost in America, that will be due to the omnipotence of the majority driving the minorities to desperation and forcing them to appeal to physical force. We may then see anarchy, but it will have come as the result of despotism.212 If his understanding of administrative centralisation in democratic societies was incomplete, his dread of it was real. He understood that the combination of democratic social conditions and administrative centralisation was something for the French to fear, for they had a complex and highly centralised administration that had firmly rooted itself in the nation. Indeed it was fully accepted by the French populace, which, increasingly subject to the effects of equality of condition, saw state intervention as an extension of its national character. Of America, however, he believed there were important elements such as its constitution, laws, and political and social institutions, that slowed its unimpeded development. Yet Tocqueville was clearly aware of the intimate relation between the omnipotence of the majority and administrative centralisation, and the ordering of his chapters in Democracy in America (1835) makes that clear. In Chapter Seven of Part Two he discussed the omnipotence of the majority. In Chapter Eight he examined the important elements that tempered majority rule. It is significant that here he should begin with a discussion on the absence of administrative centralisation in the Union, rather than some other element. Here he drew the link between administrative decentralisation and the checking of majority

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rule. In stressing this relation he signalled its antithesis: the sinister combination of administrative centralisation and majority tyranny. This combination would banish freedom entirely.213 Tocqueville was diligent in indicating those factors important to tempering the power of the majority, including the legal profession with its aristocratic love of liberty; the jury as a political institution that was both instructive and edifying to the general population; and numerous related elements including Americans’ fierce spirit of independence, love of local liberty, and even geography, which ensured that the agents of central government could not ‘be given directions every minute’; but there was still cause for him to be fearful for liberty. For as he was well aware, Americans’ commercial spirit and their love of money appealed to their immediate selfinterest. He found this aspect of their national character dangerous. He was struck by the extent to which the entire society was animated by the quest for making money. And as we shall see later, this particular characteristic of American democracy he generalised to democracy itself. Greed was most destructive to liberty because it drew individuals away from their civic duties, it enticed them away from political life. This was particularly important when linked to his considerations on a courtier class of politicians; for that class, supplanting the general population, would come to dominate the nation’s political life. Though Tocqueville did not make his thoughts explicit in Democracy in America (1835), nonetheless he feared the development of a courtier class of politicians. This was because it would, in playing to the majority’s every whim, degrade the majority to such an extent that slowly and almost imperceptibly citizens would withdraw from political life. Reduced to understanding nothing but their immediate self-interest, individuals engaged in more attractive, readily gratifying, pursuits had abandoned their civic responsibilities to their elected representatives. As we shall see in our discussion of the 1840 volume, this would prove a powerful combination in creating a new ‘milder’ but more pervasive form of despotism that would ‘degrade men rather than torment them’.214 Whereas in the first volume Tocqueville was able to discern and analyse many of the influences within democratic society that both elevated and degraded individuals’ selfinterest, his attention was directed to the external elements of democratic society. This was partly the result of the sources of his intellectual inspiration: Montesquieu, Say, and Guizot. These thinkers were predominately interested in examining the external elements of society or civilization, which imposed an important limitation to his analysis. It was not until he deepened his analysis of the internal elements of democratic society and how they interacted with external elements that he could offer a truly comprehensive study of democracy. His studies on social issues and his analyses of the works of important social reformers and Christian political economists like Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont, proved crucial to that task.

4 Legitimism and Political Economy: The Influence of Villeneuve-Bargemont

In the autumn of 1834, shortly after he completed Democracy in America, Tocqueville began studying the work of the legitimist political economist Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont as a prelude to his own investigations on poverty and its effects on democracy.1 As an important colleague of Hervé de Tocqueville, Villeneuve-Bargemont was well known to Tocqueville.2 Tocqueville had long been aware of the legitimist’s work as a prefect and of his significant contributions to agriculture and public health. Though he did not share all of Villeneuve-Bargemont’s royalist beliefs,3 his interest in his work was significant, lasting, and it was probably encouraged by his father and brother Édouard, who was an admirer of Villeneuve-Bargemont.4 As the owner of a large estate at Baugy in the department of the Oise, Édouard was very interested in agricultural issues and Christian political economy, and had written extensively on these issues.5 Villeneuve-Bargemont exercised a considerable influence on Tocqueville’s opinions about economic and social issues. Curiously Tocqueville kept no notes from his study of the former Prefect’s famous Économie politique chrétienne, nevertheless, in that work he found a great deal with which he agreed. His reports on pauperism of 1835 and 1837 for the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg contain extensive extracts from Économie politique chrétienne, and his reports on abandoned children for each of the years from 1843 to 1846 engage directly with theses from it. Yet Villeneuve-Bargemont’s influence went beyond that work. Tocqueville probably read the legitimist’s 1841 classic Histoire de l’économie politique, certainly he owned a copy.6 He also participated as a founding member in organisations directly inspired by Villeneuve-Bargemont: the Annales de la Charité in 1845 and the Société d’économie charitable in 1847. Clearly Villeneuve-Bargemont’s beliefs had an important and lasting influence on Tocqueville. Villenueve-Bargemont’s Économie politique chrétienne provided a rigorous theoretical framework and a battery of arguments that shaped Tocqueville’s opinions about important economic and social matters. It justified his belief that economics and politics had to be married to moral and religious con95

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siderations, and it was important to him because it marshalled a vast amount of empirical evidence that would confirm many of his ideas about social issues and their relation to democracy. Villeneuve-Bargemont made extensive use of the latest statistical studies from French, European and American sources; he also undertook numerous statistical studies of his own during his nearly twenty years of distinguished public service as an administrator and prefect. It was during the last six years of his service, first as prefect for the LoireInférieure from 1824 to 1828 and then as prefect for the Nord from 1828 to 1830 that Villeneuve-Bargemont became very interested in social issues, including poverty and public health. In his time as prefect of the LoireInférieure he took a leading role in the development of public hygiene by creating the first public health board for any department in France.7 During his time in the North he established the department’s first health council at Lille, along with secondary councils in other towns in the department. These councils enabled him to acquire data on rates of illness, numbers of industrial accidents and levels of poverty for the whole of the department. This in turn enabled him to develop a comprehensive account of the state of public health for the whole of northern France. His findings made for depressing reading: nearly half the population of Lille was poor enough to be classified as indigent. Almost half the entire workforce of the North, some 163,453 individuals were so poor they were registered with bureaux de bienfaisance.8 Villeneuve-Bargemont’s work in these areas was cut short when he resigned his post as prefect shortly after the establishment of the July monarchy. Soon after his resignation he devoted his time to writing articles on economic and social issues for the Catholic newspaper L’Avenir.9 He also helped found the Université Catholique along with other leading legitimists including the political economist Charles de Coux, and the founder of the charitable Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Frédéric Ozanam.10 In addition to all these activities he devoted most of his time to writing a large work on political economy, the three volume Économie politique chrétienne. Subtitled Enquiries on the nature and the causes of pauperism in France and Europe, it was published in 1834.

Precursors to Économie politique chrétienne Économie politique chrétienne was not an entirely original work. It was written in response to Forces productives et commerciales de la France (1827) by the eminent political economist and philanthropist Charles Dupin11 and it reiterated opinions antithetical to the new industrial economy which had already been expressed in Pierre Bigot de Morogues’ De la misère des ouvriers et de la marche à suivre pour y remédier of 1832, and was modelled on the 1825 classic Essai historique et moral sur la pauvreté des nations by the legit-

Legitimism and Political Economy 97

imist François Emmanuel de Fodéré. This work was among the first, and was certainly the most important, of legitimist responses to the new liberal political economy as represented in France by the works of Say and Duchâtel. Fodéré set out to challenge the scientific character of the liberal political economy. He argued that by separating political economy from morality, by concentrating on the issue of wealth creation, liberal political economy not only failed to promote general wealth and wellbeing, it produced a host of social evils. According to Fodéré, liberal political economy endorsed exploitation and greed. It furnished a theoretical and ‘scientific’ justification for the affluent to abandon the poor. In opposition to liberal political economy he argued for a moral economy rooted in Christian precepts that favoured an equitable distribution of wealth. He attacked Say’s market liberalism in which supply created its own demand, and endorsed Sismondi’s theory that economic equilibrium and social justice could be achieved only when aggregate demand was strong enough to stimulate a steady supply of goods. This led him to call for direct state intervention in the economy with massive public works programmes for the poor. These programmes would stimulate demand, establish economic stability, and fulfil the needs of social justice. According to Fodéré, liberal political economy’s emphasis on market competition and wealth creation encouraged an accentuation of the division of labour and the development of modes of production that were increasingly mechanised. Its emphasis on mechanisation, its faith in technical innovation, what Fodéré condemned as ‘the curse of machines’ (la maladie des machines)12 and what Bigot de Morogues denounced as ‘economic and illusory work’ (le travail économique et fictif )13 resulted in the destruction of craft industry and skilled employment and, as Smith had warned in the Wealth of Nations, a growing mental mutilation of the industrial workforce. An important consequence of this was a widening of the division between property owners and workers. As factory owners kept abreast of the latest technical developments and manufacturing techniques, as they employed greater numbers of workers, their knowledge of every facet of their business deepened. But for the workers, technical innovation and the increased division of labour resulted in a narrowing of their intellect, contributing to their intellectual and moral degradation. The two classes grew further and further apart, becoming entirely alienated from each other.14 Fodéré argued that liberal political economy justified conditions which created an ‘aristocracy worse than that of birth . . . which, despising all those who are poor, looks upon a worker as nothing but an instrument of its power’15 before Villeneuve-Bargemont attacked liberal political economy’s participation in the creation of a new ‘feudal aristocracy of money and industry’;16 this was also well before Democracy in America (1840) in which Tocqueville lamented the consequences of industrial science which ‘constantly lowers the standing of the working class’ and ‘raises that of the

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masters’ creating a ‘manufacturing aristocracy’ which was ‘the hardest’ to have ‘appeared on earth’.17 According to Fodéré liberal political economy exonerated a new and cruel feudalism which threatened disastrous consequences for modern nations. He was convinced the new feudalism was, and would continue to be, the cause of France’s numerous revolutions.18 For Fodéré the new liberal political economy was not only ethically and politically unsound, but it also failed to make economic sense. In its efforts to promote the interests of industry and the production of luxury items, it neglected the true source of wealth: agriculture. Fodéré argued falsely that industry was synonymous with luxury production, contending it made very poor use of the nation’s resources. As its domestic market was very limited, industry could expand only if it were directed overseas. International markets, however, were highly volatile and this meant industry was always subject to periods of rapid expansion followed by dramatic contractions. Because its resources were directed overseas, and because these markets were so volatile, industry could never ensure high and steady levels of employment. The social and moral consequences of this were severe. Industry was the cause of innumerable physical and social evils including disease, mental illness, alcoholism, prostitution, adultery, child abandonment, crime and social unrest.19

Aspects of Christian political economy Fodéré’s answer to industry and the new liberal political economy was to argue, like a true legitimist, for the creation of a moral economy based on the principles of Christian charity and the development of agriculture. The kind of agriculture he had in mind, however, did not involve large estates employing agricultural labourers. This kind of agriculture, he observed, was inefficient and had been politically discredited.20 Rather, what Fodéré had in mind was agriculture centred on smallholdings,21 an idea already proposed by Sismondi in his Nouveaux principes d’économie politique of 1819.22 To achieve his aim Fodéré argued that large unproductive and communal holdings be broken up and the land distributed to those in need. He also proposed a number of grand schemes employing poor labourers to reclaim unused land, including draining marshes, building canals and roads, and investing in new agricultural techniques.23 By directing resources to agriculture, economic prosperity and national grandeur could be regained. Agricultural production provided food, clothing and full employment for the population. It also ensured a wider distribution of property. This offered individual security and acted as the foundation to individual independence and liberty. Fodéré’s vision of a harmonious society based on Christian charity and agricultural production was informed by his research into model farms established by pioneering agronomists like C.-J.-A. Mathieu de Dombasle who, with Villeneuve-Bargemont’s


help, created a model farm at Roville in the department of the Meurthe.24 According to legitimists like Fodéré, these farms were natural to France, assuring both the superiority of agriculture over industry and furnishing important social and moral benefits.25 They gave poor peasants an alternative to industrial employment and encouraged them to become industrious, self-sufficient and achieve individual independence. There were also important political reasons why legitimists eagerly endorsed model farms. Their creation gave a new social and political role to the nobility, enabling it to foster closer ties with peasants. Any alliance that might result would act as a check on the growing power of the industrial and commercial classes. In this, legitimists like Villeneuve-Bargemont who admired aspects of Malthus’s work, shared with him an important aspiration bound to the defence of primogeniture. Within the new bourgeois political configuration of the July Monarchy, primogeniture would secure an independent landed order which could check arbitrary power. Much of their activity in the first half of the nineteenth century was devoted to creating and promoting model farms and agricultural societies as a means of maintaining agriculture’s status in the face of growing industrial and commercial power; farming interests were promoted as an impediment to bourgeois power.26 Tocqueville too recognised the importance of these farms, and he was associated with their promotion.27 Like these legitimists he believed model farms could forge closer ties between nobles and peasants and check bourgeois power,28 but his aspiration for this kind of alliance was less politically motivated and more firmly rooted in a political theory that emphasised checks and balances between various social and political forces as a means of safeguarding liberty. Model farms, and agriculture in general, had another important purpose. Legitimists and some liberals like Louis Villermé who were interested in social issues were troubled by what appeared to be a connexion between levels of industrialisation and rates of disease, vice and crime. Villermé attributed these social ills to declining moral standards of workers. He argued these ills would disappear only when workers became moral. Legitimists like Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont, however, observed that social ills and declining moral standards were a direct consequence of industry.29 Here their beliefs were in tune with a strand of philanthropic opinion rooted in statistical studies. Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont made important use of statistics in their respective works. Both drew on studies by Villermé, Quetelet, Guerry, ParentDuchâtelet and a host of other statisticians. Like these statisticians, Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont believed they could improve the lot of the working classes through a new kind of social control. They thought this could be done by discovering what statistical laws governed disease, vice, crime and social unrest and then find ways to alter the conditions under which those laws applied.30 The creation of model farms and the promotion

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of agriculture were ideal ways to change those conditions.31 Tocqueville may well have found this approach very attractive, not least because of its potential to create a healthy associative culture, though unlike the legitimists he was more inclined to side with liberals in placing the burden of moral rectitude on individuals. Nevertheless he also came to recognise the deleterious effects of industry, and, as we shall see in Chapter 6, his trip to the industrial cities in England in 1835 exposed him to many of its horrors.32 Tocqueville shared with legitimists like Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont the belief that there was an intimate relation between economy and morality. This belief separated them from liberal political economists like Say who, in divorcing themselves from the inspiring works of Smith and Malthus, declared a strict division between the two. What Tocqueville seized on in the works of the legitimists was the belief that economic activity influenced private morality and this, in turn, affected public manners and customs. But whereas Fodéré attacked Malthus’s Essay as at the root of theoretical justifications for exploitation and the moral degradation of the working classes,33 Villeneuve-Bargemont and Tocqueville proclaimed their shared debt to Malthus.34 Fodéré’s analysis of Malthus was limited and ideologically motivated. He sought to discredit liberals like Say, Duchâtel and Villermé by pointing to both their favourable remarks on Malthus’s population principle and their contention that political economy should be separate from morality. Fodéré contended that Malthus’s stress on moral restraint as a way of limiting population was a patronising commandment devoid of any real moral or spiritual foundation.35 Villeneuve-Bargemont, however, was much more intelligent in his analysis of Malthus’s Essay, and he developed a number of Malthus’s propositions in important ways. Contrary to Fodéré, VilleneuveBargemont showed the extent to which Malthus’s beliefs rested on a solid religious footing. Here, he followed the same path as Malthus’s English disciples. These clerical political economists, Thomas Chalmers, Edward Coplestone, John Davison and Richard Whately in Oxford, and William Whewell and Richard Jones in Cambridge, sought in the late 1820s and early 1830s to improve on Malthus’s work by establishing a firmer link between political economy and theology. It was the principal objective of their Christian political economy, and it set them apart from economists like Ricardo and his disciples.36 Villeneuve-Bargemont engaged in the same enterprise, a matter that distinguished his political economy from Say’s. He argued that Malthus’s Essay was rooted in Christian principles which were fundamentally at odds with the new liberal political economy.37 Using Malthus’s work as an important foundation to his own thesis, he argued that Christianity presented a new kind of political economy which assured the right to property and the foundation of individual liberty. Such a belief was not very different from that held by liberals. What was different was the contention that Christian political economy, because of its solid moral foundation, was des-


tined to eliminate poverty and foster a spirit of association between individuals, the essence of ‘universal civilisation’.38 In the opening chapters of Économie politique chrétienne VilleneuveBargemont sought to show that political economy was always tied to Christian principles but was also influenced by advances in philosophy and science. Whereas Fodéré argued that these influences culminated decisively in Malthus’s works, Villeneuve-Bargemont contended that political economy became detached from its Christian roots in the writings of Adam Smith. Smith, he believed, sought to make political economy into a science by separating it from religious and moral considerations.39 The consequence was that political economy, as it evolved in England, and as it was coming to be understood in France, became fundamentally materialist, concerned exclusively with wealth and its creation. In this form political economy became fundamentally contrary to human nature.40 This kind of political economy, what Villeneuve-Bargemont called ‘English political economy’ or the ‘English system’, was entirely divorced from moral and religious considerations. Its governing principles were greed and exploitation and it rested on, as he put it, ‘the concentration of capital, commerce, land, industry; on indefinite production; on universal competition; on replacing human labour with machines; on lowering wages; on perpetually exciting physical needs; on the moral degradation of man’.41 The moral, social and political consequences of this system were disastrous: the English system worsened the plight of the working classes and the poor. Against the narrow materialism of English political economy, Christian political economy offered a moral and truly humane alternative, one that was ‘indisputably the only foundation to a society in tune with human nature’.42 To justify this claim Villeneuve-Bargemont presented his readers with a history of political economy that portrayed its liberal pedigree as an historical aberration at odds with human nature, but depicted Christian political economy as humane and divine. Villeneuve-Bargemont conceded that the accumulation of wealth and material comforts was important to any economy, as they contributed to material progress, but when political economy divorced itself from religious and ethical considerations and focused narrowly on these elements it failed to bring about real human happiness and moral progress.43 English political economy was bankrupt. It focused on narrow materialist ends. It excited material passions and justified the sole end of production as more production.44 Its logic was entirely circular and justified the conditions for a level of mechanisation and division of labour that assured that most of the working classes were engaged in repetitive, dangerous and soul destroying work. Like Fodéré, Villeneuve-Bargemont observed how mechanisation and an extreme division of labour created terrible unemployment because machines replaced workers; for labourers with jobs they degraded them physically, mentally and morally.45 Unlike Fodéré, however, he drew on


numerous statistical studies analysing the effects of mechanisation. His judgement was thoroughly negative: mechanisation reduced individuals to the condition of beasts; it corrupted their morals and rendered them unfit for social and political life.46 Like Fodéré, Villeneuve-Bargemont believed that mechanisation created an important and unforeseen consequence. As it developed, the numbers of unemployed increased while a small minority of individuals acquired wealth and power on a scale so vast nothing like it had been seen before. He believed English political economy contributed to the creation of a new and powerful class. This industrial aristocracy was driven by a logic of relentless production and accumulation, and this made it the most rapacious in human history. It was wealthy, powerful and small in size; it was, he observed, really more like an impenetrable caste than a class.47 The new aristocracy was blinded by greed. Its relentless quest for greater wealth created a reigning atmosphere of selfishness within society. This, in turn, undermined any spirit of association and created an environment in which social antagonism thrived. Like Fodéré, he argued that the new aristocracy fostered the conditions for social upheaval and revolution.48 While he acknowledged that inequalities were natural,49 he believed the exploitation of individuals was not.50 He condemned the kind of exploitation that, through the pauperisation and mental mutilation of the working classes, created rigid inequalities within society.51 The core of this judgement corresponded with an observation Tocqueville made in Democracy in America (1835) on slavery’s corrosive effects on individuals and society. While Tocqueville was careful to show that slavery in the modern world was based on race, his description of its effects on slaves was very similar to VilleneuveBargemont’s portrait of the industrial working classes. Both slave and worker were ‘born in degradation’ and, as Tocqueville put it, both appeared as strangers ‘hardly recognized as sharing the common features of humanity’, their intelligence was limited, their ‘tastes low’ and they appeared as ‘some being intermediate between beast and man’.52 Slavery and rigid inequalities weakened individual morals and public manners. They spawned an array of damaging consequences, the most important being civil war, in which conflicting groups have been entirely alienated from each other.53 The similarity between Villeneuve-Bargemont’s observations and Tocqueville’s 1835 assessment became explicit in Democracy in America (1840)54 in which Tocqueville extended the scope of his earlier comments on slavery to class.55 Like Villeneuve-Bargemont and Fodéré, he concluded that the large and rigid inequalities that emerged between classes would result in revolution.56 It was a conclusion he would later reiterate in both his Souvenirs and the Ancien Régime et la Révolution.57 According to Villeneuve-Bargemont Christian political economy offered a real alternative to a liberal political economy divorced from moral precepts. It was a humane alternative in tune with human nature and the divine; it


embodied the principles of Christian morality which were the foundation of civilisation; and it rested on two fundamental pillars: agriculture and charity. Villeneuve-Bargemont’s analysis of both attracted Tocqueville’s serious consideration and shaped his own investigations into poverty – investigations that were to have an important bearing on Democracy in America (1840). Like most legitimists Villeneuve-Bargemont highlighted the importance of agriculture to France’s economy. He declared eighteenth-century French economists to be right when they observed that land was the source of all wealth,58 but he also thought that this truth was defended by Christianity long before it was professed in the works of eighteenth-century economists. By unveiling the link between Christianity and agriculture, he tried to show how agriculture both promoted high morals and conformed to the true movement of civilisation. He believed agriculture ‘spawned the desire for property, softened manners, gave men greater dignity, helped to develop men’s physical and moral strength, bound them closely to the soil of the nation, and thus becomes the most powerful element of social order’.59 He drew attention to the moral and social benefits of agriculture by contrasting France’s rural and urban populations. Whilst the industrial working classes suffered from high unemployment, poor wages, little or no education, lax morals, severe population pressures and engaged in criminal activity which contributed to social unrest, rural inhabitants enjoyed good opportunities for employment, greater wealth, received better education, had high morals and were well ordered.60 Villeneuve-Bargemont believed the moral and physical condition of the working classes could be improved if agriculture was given pride of place in the nation’s economy. Encouraging agriculture was, he said, the ‘principal and surest way of improving the condition of the working classes’.61 The kind of agriculture he had in mind, however, was very different from the industrial farming he observed in England which, governed by materialist considerations, saw nothing in nature except financial profit. Like Fodéré, he believed French agriculture should be dominated by small to medium holdings. Here he argued in favour of a wide distribution of property.62 He thought economic decentralisation, the wide distribution of land and capital, produced beneficial moral, social and political outcomes, and these included the pillars of individual liberty: high morals and respect for the law.63 His considerations were supported by Tocqueville’s American observations on the relation between agriculture, society and politics, but whereas in America land was readily available and the culture favoured industriousness and condemned idleness, in France conditions were different. So how would small and medium holdings be encouraged to develop? How would agriculture be guaranteed its dominant position in France’s economy when industrial development there was gaining momentum? For Villeneuve-Bargemont the answer lay in the creation of model farms


and agricultural societies. This answer was entirely predictable in a legitimist. He believed the nobility was a class both ‘devoted to the maintenance of order’ and the assurance of ‘patriotism and charity’.64 Though, the nobility had an important social role to play; it had a duty to encourage the development of agriculture. For the individual ‘who possesses a piece of land, who cultivates it, who applies his industry and intelligence to it, appears to us more or less in tune with the real condition assigned to man by the creator of the universe’.65 Villeneuve-Bargemont gave new life to the ancient and paternal relation between noble and peasant by arguing it was a moral and social duty of the landowning class to encourage peasants to remain in agriculture and industrial workers to return to the land.66 Like Fodéré and Tocqueville, he was aware of the political benefits to be accrued from a relation between peasants, workers and nobles.67 Not only did it ensure a level of social control over a labouring population that was becoming less and less governable, it solidified a relationship between the nobility, peasants and the working classes that would check bourgeois power. Agricultural colonies and societies were the centrepiece of that enterprise, and Villeneuve-Bargemont devoted most of the third volume of Économie politique chrétienne to offer one of the most thorough accounts of any political economist on their origins, governing principles and development. Agricultural colonies and societies fulfilled important educational and moral as well as political functions. They were conceived as places which could attract the working poor away from centres of industry and back to the land. By educating individuals in the latest agricultural techniques and good practices these colonies served to both improve the working poor’s moral and physical condition and to teach them the value of work. They also enabled individuals to join communities which were free of merciless competition and served as formative environments, encouraging community co-operation and an ethos of self-help. For legitimists, agricultural colonies and societies created a genuine spirit of fellow feeling and association between their members. At the same time, they could act as an example to industry, gradually transforming the reigning industrial ethic of competition and exploitation into one of co-operation and mutual benefit harmonious with Christian principles. Within some industries there were already signs of this kind of change, and Villeneuve-Bargemont highlighted the development of institutions in an industrial context which promoted the wellbeing of the working classes and encouraged them to work toward self-sufficiency and independence, to act morally and responsibly toward themselves and others. A number of institutions were worthy of analysis and emulation: they were mutual societies and savings banks and charitable pawnshops, or monts-de-piété. Villeneuve-Bargemont began his analysis of these institutions by tracing the historical development of mutual societies and savings banks from banks first created by William Forbes in Edinburgh to those developed in Holland,


Germany, Switzerland and France. Here his commentary relied on the liberal Alexandre de Laborde’s De l’esprit d’association and like Laborde he treated mutual societies and savings banks as the same kind of phenomenon: institutions that encouraged workers to save for future provision.68 Among the important French savings banks he focused on were those created by social reforms like La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and Benjamin Delessert; he believed these banks were best able to encourage workers to adopt the laudatory qualities of industriousness and thrift. Some ensured that workers invested a part of their income by deducting a portion of their wage and depositing it in a savings bank. Others were less paternalistic and relied instead on workers’ enlightened self-interest. Here, generous rates of interest were offered as inducements to encourage workers to save. Both schemes sought to ensure that workers accumulated sufficient savings to guarantee their self-sufficiency and independence. Savings banks were able to teach workers the values of responsibility and foresight. Their governing principle of maximising the growth of savings served as an important ingredient to investment, expansion and increased wages; this, in turn, increased savings, augmented investment and furthered expansion. In this, labourers’ and employers’ respective interests were allied and the mutualist principles and co-operative organisation of savings banks fostered a sentiment of fellowship between these classes of individuals, fortifying the spirit of association. Despite these clear benefits, and those stressed in Tocqueville’s own examinations into poverty, there were few savings banks in France. VilleneuveBargemont, like other legitimists and some liberals like Laborde, thought this was because industrialists failed to set an example and take the lead in developing these banks. Though there were some notable exceptions, most industrialists were regrettably too preoccupied with making profits.69 The small number of savings banks created by industrialists, however, was contrasted with the large number of charitable societies which created their own savings banks. Yet the scale of these developments was also small. Christian political economy could set an example, but more was needed, and for this legitimists like Villeneuve-Bargemont appealed to government to establish a large number of these banks.70 Allied to his account of savings banks was Villeneuve-Bargemont’s assessment of an old and well established charitable institution, the monts-de-piété. These had a long existence in Italy, the Netherlands, Austro-Hungary and France. Monts-de-piété gave loans on objects pawned. Once the loan and a small amount of interest were repaid within a fixed period, the object pawned could be reclaimed. The moneys accumulated from interest payments were then donated to various charities, usually hospitals or hospices. When first introduced into France monts-de-piété were exclusively charitable institutions, with loans given at very low rates of interest and all profits donated to charity, but later many of these charitable pawnshops became businesses instead. Though they still donated some money to charity, the


sums were much smaller than those given by charitable monts-de-piété. As businesses, pawnshops charged high rates of interest, usually twelve per cent, and accumulated substantial profits. Villeneuve-Bargemont was highly critical of this transformation of a once charitable institution. As montsde-piété obtained their profits from the needy and the destitute, they collaborated in the worst kind of exploitation. His judgement on these new businesses was scathing:71 they were antithetical to Christian political economy. Rather than adhering to their founding principles of charity and Christian morality, monts-de-piété had moved away from them, becoming allied instead to the principles of greed and exploitation.72 Tocqueville passed an equally scathing judgement on pawnshops in his second investigation on poverty of 1837.73 He also argued, along with VilleneuveBargemont, that in order to stop this kind of profiteering a radical reorganisation of pawnshops was necessary. To this end both called for a lowering of interest rates and a halt to all loans with a repayment schedule of less than fifteen days. They also called for pawnshops to be linked to a system of savings banks.74 With these reforms, Tocqueville and Villeneuve-Bargemont agreed, monts-de-piété could be returned to their charitable origins and contribute to enhancing the working classes’ ability to become self-reliant. In Économie politique chrétienne Villeneuve-Bargemont argued that the second pillar of Christian political economy was charity. Though institutions like savings banks and monts-de-piété were important to charity and featured in his description of various charitable institutions, he sought to present his readers with more than descriptions. Rather, the second and third volumes of his great work were devoted to a lengthy historical account of charity and a thorough moral and philosophical justification for it. In the opening chapters of the second volume he offered a history and analysis of poverty in France and the rest of Europe. He drew on the works of prominent geographers including Malte-Brun, Mentelle, and Adriano Balbi for statistics on the number of poor in Europe. For France he was able to use figures he had compiled as a prefect and confirm these with studies conducted by other legitimists, including Benoiston de Châteauneuf. From French data he divided France into three zones. The poorest zone contained twenty departments with a total population of over ten million. This zone had the largest number of poor people, with one in fifteen individuals classified as indigent. The second zone comprised thirty-eight departments with a population of almost nine million. One in every twenty-five people was classified as indigent here. The third and wealthiest zone was made up of twenty-eight departments. Here, one in every thirty-three individuals was classified as poor.75 He refined these figures further and showed that among France’s urban population one in ten people was poor whilst in the rural population that number declined to one in thirty. He concluded by showing that where industrialisation was most


advanced poverty was highest, where agriculture was most developed the numbers of poor were small.76 What was true for France he was able to confirm for the whole of Europe by comparing French data with data compiled by geographers for other European nations.77 After his lengthy historical account and statistical analysis of poverty in France and Europe, he then investigated the moral and philosophical issues raised by poverty. He contended that both natural sympathy and Christian morality imposed an obligation on individuals to ease the suffering of the poor.78 He also believed that individuals’ moral obligation was extended to society and government. And this was particularly true when poverty highlighted the importance to society of social justice and peace.79 Both assertions Tocqueville readily accepted. Though charity was important to lessening the effects of poverty, he believed its benefits failed to last when its ethical foundation was not Christian. In the same way that he distinguished between Christian political economy and liberal political economy, he categorised forms of ‘scientific’ charity based on modern philosophical ideas about natural sympathy and moral sentiment derived from the works of Hume, Smith and the philosophes, and charity rooted in ancient Christian principles. He believed ‘scientific’ charity failed on two counts: first, it was governed by modern philosophical ideas about natural sympathy and moral sentiment which were premised on an understanding of individual self-interestedness that was fundamentally at odds with genuine charity which was selfless and motivated by a profound knowledge of duty and obligation toward one’s fellow man and God;80 and second, it was motivated by the optimistic belief that, through efficient management and organisation, it could eliminate all future need for charity.81 Villeneuve-Bargemont used this distinction as the foundation to another: this time between English and French charity. Whilst he admired the works of English philanthropists like Howard, Hanway and Bentham, he criticised the materialist premises of their ideas and their optimistic pretensions. The kind of charity that emerged from these ideas was concerned solely with improving the material condition of the poor. Because English philanthropists adopted what was at heart a materialist conception of human nature, they were disposed to accept liberal political economy’s strict demarcation between economics and morals. This undermined their attempts to admonish industrialists and landed aristocrats to help the poor; since philanthropy was now considered an inferior branch of political economy, philanthropic acts which interfered with profits made bad economics. The ‘icy theories of political economy, the calculations and combinations of personal interests’ dominated the ‘philanthropic enterprise in England’.82 The result was that ideas of English philanthropists failed to arouse individuals to acts of self-sacrifice motivated by a genuine sentiment of responsibility and duty


to others, particularly those in need.83 Tocqueville sympathised with this opinion; the influence of his Jansenist education on his critique of materialism and materialist doctrines would have been important with its beliefs in austerity and moral rigorism, stressing individual duties and responsibilities. Nonetheless, he would have found Villeneuve-Bargemont’s characterisation of English philanthropy crude. Christian charity was, according to Villeneuve-Bargemont, the real alternative to English philanthropy, and it was perfected in Catholic countries like France. To prove his point he examined thoroughly the voluntary institutions the French had created to help the poor. Hospitals for the elderly and infirm, asylums for the insane, hospices for abandoned children, charitable schools for impoverished children, night schools for workers, mutual societies, savings banks and monts-de-piété were all studied. Most of these institutions had been run and financed by the Catholic church and donations from the well-to-do, but the schemes which attracted most of his attention were those connected to agriculture, and in particular agricultural colonies for ex-convicts and the poor. These colonies were important not only for economic, social and political reasons already discussed, but because they also embodied a fundamental moral consideration. This was the idea that agricultural labour revealed something moral about labour itself. Working the land provided food and the material conditions of existence, it also ensured that individuals found themselves in a peaceful environment. Here he understood the agricultural way of life in the same way as had seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moralists like Fleury and Fénelon: as the foundation to community and civilisation. Agriculture brought individuals in contact with nature and the divine, but it was also important for the economic reason that nature rewarded hard work with a good harvest. Nature taught the value of labour and, according to Villeneuve-Bargemont, hard work was the route to moral and spiritual salvation.

Tocqueville, Christian political economy and charity Tocqueville agreed on both the importance of labour having a moral purpose and also recognised its political and social benefits, particularly in the cultivation of historical memory, which he believed was so important in democracies because their citizens had a very weak knowledge of the past.84 Villeneuve-Bargemont confirmed his ideas on how materialism and a belief in work directed solely to material ends reduced human action towards material enrichment alone, undermining individual morals and public manners; he sanctioned the important political consequence of labour with a moral purpose. This Tocqueville highlighted. He understood work in the context of agriculture and on smallholdings. Already in Democracy in America (1835) he stressed the importance of agriculture and particularly


smallholdings to democracy and political liberty. This belief he vigorously defended against narrow economic criticisms voiced by economists such as Nassau Senior. For him these economists, and the liberal political economy they espoused in which moral and political considerations were divorced from economic ones, were incapable of seeing other important ‘political, moral and intellectual’ benefits derived ‘the possession of land’. Any narrow economic disadvantage derived from smallholdings was more than ‘thoroughly’ and ‘permanently’ compensated for by these other benefits.85 Smallholdings were tied to labour in such a way as to furnish the important moral and political benefits of individual integrity and independence: foundations of liberty. Tocqueville also agreed with Villeneuve-Bargemont’s contention that the real purpose of charity was to help individuals to become self-sufficient and independent. Both believed the English system of poor laws eased the suffering of the poor but failed to deal with the root problem of poverty. Tocqueville probably also accepted Villeneuve-Bargemont’s assertion that for charity to be effective it had to be founded on spiritual principles. Where Tocqueville parted company with the legitimist, however, was on the importance of a legal right to charity. Villeneuve-Bargemont approved of a legal right to charity and argued against liberal political economists like Duchâtel who contended that such a right only encouraged the poor to remain idle. This, he believed, was really the cause of ‘scientific’, or English philanthropy. Because this kind of philanthropy rested on principles of selfinterest it encouraged the poor to become narrowly self-interested themselves, taking advantage of charity on offer. This was particularly true of beggars and the itinerant poor.86 Against this opinion Villeneuve-Bargemont praised the virtues of Christian charity, asserting it was the ‘great virtue and foundation of societies’. For him governments, which were the agents of societies, were ‘not really useful but as ministers’ of public, or legal, charity.87 He thought private Christian charity had been effective in the past, but it was no longer sufficient because industrialisation had added to the number of poor. In order for it to become successful again, government had to adopt its principles and apply them to society. He believed this could be done by governments financing existing charitable institutions and contributing to new ones, such as savings banks. Though Tocqueville accepted the Christian foundations of VilleneuveBargemont’s analysis of charity, he ultimately rejected the legitimist’s conclusion that governments had to be ‘ministers’ of public, or legal, charity. Tocqueville did accept governments could play a limited charitable role, he even granted that an English poor law might be useful to France in times of severe economic crisis,88 but he rejected the kind of charitable role assigned to it by Villeneuve-Bargemont. Rather, like Malthus, he believed governments were ineffective in providing genuine relief, unwittingly encouraging the able-bodied poor to become idle and dependent. He was


confirmed in his belief by his 1833 observations of the poor law system in Maryland, his studies on the English poor laws, and his knowledge of liberals like Duchâtel and Villermé. Unlike many liberals who argued charity per se encouraged the poor to be idle, however, Tocqueville saw an important role for private charity. He believed it more effective than public, or legal, charity because it sprang from individual initiative, which he thought always more effective than government enterprise.89 Because it was organised and managed locally, it was more personalised and this made it better both at educating the poor to become independent and fostering the spirit of association between the poor and the other classes in the community. Like Villeneuve-Bargemont, he believed private charity to be most effective when it was founded on Christian principles, though he did not reject as ineffective other forms of private charity, as the legitimist had done. Tocqueville thought Christian charity and political economy were important because of their moral foundation. As he made clear in Democracy in America (1835) a morality rooted in Christian principles was a powerful influence on a just polity.90 This opinion he shared with Villeneuve-Bargemont. But unlike the legitimist, he believed that an important element of Christian political economy could be married to a fundamental concept of liberal political economy. The liberal concept of individual self-interest rightly understood required more than the Smithian idea of sympathy to sustain it and prevent it from slipping into egoism. Religion was the natural ally of sympathy, but its moral force was far greater; it could check the corruption of enlightened self-interest. This idea remained in essence the same but was formulated differently when he returned to the belief that religion contributed to high individual morals, exercised a direct influence over political passions and was salutary to public manners.91 He shared with Montesquieu the belief that without religion no polity could remain great for long.92 The new liberal political economy emerging in France undermined religion and the Christian impulse to charity; for this reason he saw it as a threat to liberty and democracy. While Tocqueville shared with liberal political economists the ideal of a society that gave the largest possible scope to individual activity and personal initiative, he shared with legitimists like Villeneuve-Bargemont a ‘great respect for justice, a true love for order and laws, and a deep and rational attachment to morality and religious beliefs’.93 These general ideas made up what he called his ‘political programme’, but they were ideas which the French of his day believed incompatible. Between those who believed in morality, religion and order, and those who professed a love for liberty and equality before the law, there was a great divide: one which Tocqueville found extraordinary and deplorable.94 Yet because he believed these ideas ‘indissolubly united in the eyes of God’, he thought it important to show


the French just how they were combined. Uniting ideas from the works of liberal political economists like Duchâtel and Say with those Christian political economists like Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont was integral to that task. It was this what convinced Tocqueville he was a ‘new breed of liberal’.95


Part II Democracy and Social Reform


5 Tocqueville and Beaumont on Prison Reform

The examination of America’s prisons became more than just a pretext for a wider study of American democracy. Though it served admirably as the ideal ‘passport’ which enabled Tocqueville and Beaumont to ‘penetrate everywhere’ into American society and learn ‘exactly what a vast republic’ consisted of, it was also carefully considered for other reasons.1 In the 1820s the public and the government acknowledged France’s penitentiary system was in need of urgent reform. A great many books and pamphlets were published on the subject. Some found inspiration in the works of various philosophes and proposed utopian schemes. Others looked to different countries for model examples; republics like Geneva and Lausanne attracted a great deal of interest, but the United States attracted most attention. The publication of the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s Des prisons de Philadelphie, vues par un Européen in 1796 fostered considerable interest in American prisons and served as the foundation to important theoretical studies which examined developments in the United States. The legal scholar Edward Livingston drew on it in writing one of the most important legal documents of the nineteenth century: Rapport servant d’introduction au code de discipline des prisons de l’Etat de Louisiane (1828), and J.-M. Charles Lucas used it in crafting his landmark work Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux Etats-Unis (1828). Yet, curiously, no one had undertaken a thorough and serious investigation of America’s penitentiary system. Tocqueville and Beaumont saw this as an opportunity to restore their political fortunes. Though Tocqueville believed the prison study to be a prelude to a more important work on American democracy, he understood how an investigation into prisons could inform a wider study of democracy because of the important theoretical and methodological considerations associated with it.2 The study of prisons offered insights into the relation between citizens and government. It revealed something about a society’s governing customs, laws, religious beliefs and philosophical ideas including ideas on human nature and the perfectibility of man. It gave insights into the relation between individual morals and public manners, civil and criminal laws 115

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understood, by Idéologues such as Pierre-Louis Roederer and Destutt de Tracy, as exercising an important influence upon manners because of the system of punishments and rewards they instituted.3 It brought to light social perceptions about the threat posed by crime to public morality and body politic.4 It also unveiled something about the class dynamics of society, and the potential class rivalries or antagonisms within it. These elements were true of all societies whether prisons were conceived solely with revenge in mind and used only to punish, or understood as institutions necessary to uphold society’s integrity by punishing and reforming criminals.5 As Tocqueville discovered, however, the study of prisons became an important facet to a wider examination of democracy. It encompassed considerations on political economy, statistics, and investigations into poverty, education and religion.6 It lent itself readily to the analytical method, contributing to an enhanced knowledge of the basic facts that made up the general fact of society. It illuminated the relation between external social elements, such as laws or the economy, to internal elements, including ideas on correction or sentiments on retribution. It was tied to the development of civilization, to the rise of democracy itself.7 The book to emerge from their investigation, The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, published in 1833, achieved not only the political objective of their journey, but it also became part of the foundation of Tocqueville’s great works: Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.

A brief history of French prison reform Prison reform dominated political and intellectual debates in France for many decades. In the second half of the eighteenth century Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments gave rise to the study of the moral and intellectual regeneration of criminals. This was a new development at odds with established practices which used prisons like dungeons. Convicted felons and those awaiting trial were thrown into large and unsanitary cells, discipline was non-existent and prisons served to corrupt inmates rather than reform or punish them. These barbarous conditions were condemned by English prison reformers such as Jonas Hanway and John Howard. They believed prisons should not only punish, but also reform. It was a fundamental shift in opinion on prisons. Various plans for prisons were designed with these ideas in mind, such as those based on the work of the seventeenth-century Benedictine monk, Jean Mabillon. His Réflexions sur les prisons des ordres religieux advocated principles of redemptive imprisonment based on the ideal of a Carthusian cloister in which a special penitential rule of strict solitude was observed. It served as a model for what John Howard called ‘the more rational plan for softening the mind in order to its amendment’.8 There were plans proposed by leading architects including William Blackburn, Étienne-Louis Boullée

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and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, and there was Jeremy and Samuel Bentham’s famous scheme for the Panopticon, a prison designed to accomplish, as they put it, ‘the joint purposes of punishment, reformation, and pecuniary economy’.9 These projects were rooted in a new and optimistic understanding of individuals and society. They all presumed human conduct could be reformed through intricate and sophisticated systems of classification, specialisation and rationalisation. Human actions could be scrutinised and regulated in order to teach prisoners obedience to social norms. But in France the advance of these proposals was halted abruptly by the Terror and not given new impetus until the creation in 1819 of the Royal Society of Prisons.10 The Royal Society offered a forum for philanthropists, magistrates and administrators. Leading contributors to discussions on prison reform and the death penalty included the prison reformers Louis Villermé, E. Danjou, J.-F.T. Ginouvier, A.-H. Taillandier, and L.-P. Baltard.11 Prominent Doctrinaires like Guizot and Rémusat wrote on the abolition of the death penalty.12 But the most important contributions were made by Benjamin Appert, known as the ‘French Howard’, and a young lawyer, Charles Lucas. Appert’s Rapport sur l’état actuel des prisons, des hospices, des écoles (1824) was favourably appraised by liberals. The twenty-four-year-old Lucas was given a fine encomium by Rémusat in the Globe for his Du système pénal et du système répressif en général, de la peine de mort en particulier (1827) and awarded first prize by the general assembly of the Société de la morale chrétienne in April 1827 for the best work treating the issue of the death penalty.13 His second book followed a year later. Entitled Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis it was awarded the Montyon prize in 1830 by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. French discussions in this period were dominated by supporters and detractors of many different systems of correction. Some believed penal colonies effective in punishing and rehabilitating criminals. Others saw the advantage in combining transportation and penal colonies as a cheap and effective way of ridding the country of criminals. Still others believed this could be better achieved by using prison-hulks located off the French coast. But the majority of reformers focused on the penitentiary as an institution which could punish and rehabilitate best. Four broad categories of prison dominated discussions. The first was known as système en commun. In this, prisoners lived, worked, ate and slept in the same quarters. This was the established system of France’s maisons centrales de détention or maisons centrales de correction – the state penitentiaries. They were very cheap to run but ineffective at maintaining strict discipline. The second, originally advocated by Mabillon in the seventeenth century and then by Hanway, was of absolute solitary confinement. The Walnut Street Gaol in Philadelphia was the best example of this type of regime. Prisoners were held in solitary confinement day and night. The prison’s construction made any form of communication impossible. Denied any distraction, prisoners were left to


contemplate their wrongs. In this way, it was believed, they would come to repent of their crimes. What really happened was that isolation and inactivity drove most prisoners mad. The third scheme was partial solitary confinement, better known as the Pennsylvania system. The Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia was considered the best example. Prisoners were placed in solitary confinement day and night, but were allowed visits from members of the clergy and were encouraged to work. Advocates believed it punished inmates effectively and brought about their successful moral regeneration. The fourth scheme, named after the state penitentiary at Auburn, in New York, placed prisoners in solitary confinement at night but in the day they engaged in communal labour in absolute silence, firmly enforced through strict surveillance and corporal punishment. Prisoners ate meals together and attended religious services once a week. By the time Tocqueville and Beaumont undertook their study of American prisons opinion among reformers was divided between those who believed the Pennsylvania system should be adopted and those who contended that Auburn offered the best example for the French to emulate. The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France did much to clarify important issues raised in selecting the best system for France; it also contributed to the vitality of discussions.

The making of The Penitentiary System in the United States Tocqueville and Beaumont were very well prepared to evaluate America’s prisons. Their official employment as magistrates allowed them access to official documents and visits to prisons, and this gave them a practical foundation to undertake serious research. They complemented this practical experience with detailed studies of theoretical works. They analysed Edward Livingston’s Report serving as an introduction to a code of reform and discipline in the prisons of the State of Louisiana (1828) and his introduction to the Report serving as an introduction to a code of reform and discipline in the prisons of Pennsylvania (1828). They read Howard’s books, Étienne Dumont’s translation of Bentham’s The Rationale of Punishment, Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811) and Dumont’s writings on Swiss prisons, Francis Cunningham and Thomas Buxton’s Notes on the Prisons of Switzerland and on others of the European Continent (1820), and Lucas’s Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis.14 They were rigorously prepared by Tocqueville’s older cousin, the parliamentarian and leading prison reformer, the baron Le Peletier d’Aunay.15 Tocqueville and Beaumont believed statistics and new research methods to be ideal tools to test the claims of theory; they often reiterated the need to verify theory through practice,16 a belief fundamental to Tocqueville’s thoughts on democracy. Techniques used by Howard in his eighteenthcentury investigations were well established, but the young magistrates were

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attracted to new developments initiated by social investigators like Villermé and Parent-Duchâtelet. Villermé’s seminal article for the first edition of the Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, ‘report on mortality in prisons’ and his earlier Des prisons telles qu’elles sont et telles qu’elles devraient être par rapport à l’hygiène, à la morale et à l’économie (1820) were important for their assessments of mortality rates and prison hygiene.17 ParentDuchâtelet’s studies on prostitution in Paris, conducted from 1827 to 1835, established a refined and sophisticated research method.18 He drew on police archives, inspected brothels and prisons, and interviewed prostitutes. And though the results of his enquiries were not published until 1836, his methods were well known by the late 1820s.19 Tocqueville and Beaumont were the first Europeans to apply Parent-Duchâtelet’s techniques, especially the interview based on a questionnaire, to prison investigations.20 Developments in statistics also attracted their attention. Quételet’s and Guerry’s studies were at the forefront of these developments. The young magistrates were friends of Guerry and shared many of his beliefs. They studied and praised his masterpiece Essai sur la statistique morale de la France (1832),21 and later planned to collaborate with him on a number of projects.22 Given Guerry’s extensive correspondence with Quételet and the rivalry that existed between them,23 it seems improbable that Guerry failed to introduce them to Quételet’s work. Yet Tocqueville and Beaumont’s fascination with these novel developments did not blind them to their potential difficulties. They were aware of the limits to statistics and never succumbed to the temptation to view statistics as social laws. Tocqueville’s education and his love of individual liberty imposed strict limits on how he and Beaumont interpreted the new science. They rejected forms of determinism such as Comte’s social statics described in the Système de politique positive and Quételet’s conclusion that since the relative proportions of different sorts of crime remained the same he could tell in advance, as he put it, ‘how many individuals will dirty their hands with the blood of others, how many will be forgers, how many poisoners, nearly as well as one can enumerate in advance the births and deaths that must take place’.24 They repudiated in large measure what lay in Quételet’s conclusion: the beginnings of both ‘a new objective measurable conception of a people’ to which ‘social policies could be used to either preserve or alter the average qualities of that people’,25 and an understanding of statistical laws no longer as ‘descriptive of large-scale regularities’ but as ‘laws of nature and society that dealt in underlying truths and causes’.26 Knowing the limits to statistics, Tocqueville and Beaumont were also aware of their wider possibilities, particularly their potential to lend scientific status to the study of society. It was readily compatible with Guizot’s thesis from The History of Civilization in Europe and The History of Civilization in France that society could be studied as a fact, and like any other fact could be broken down into its constituent parts which could be studied in greater


detail. In this way statistics became central to Tocqueville’s intention ‘to examine in detail and as scientifically as possible all the springs [ressorts] of that vast American society of which so many speak but so few understand’.27 They became pivotal to the study of democracy itself. Tocqueville and Beaumont made a very important contribution to statistics by providing a statistical foundation to their own research. In 1825 the French established a national standard for data on crimes and convictions with the Compte général de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France. The jurist and member of the Genevan intelligentsia Pellegrino Rossi was the first to comment extensively on the Compte général in the second issue of the Revue française of 1828. He underscored the importance of these data and emphasised that the republic of Geneva had, since 1816, been publishing statistics of a kind that the French were only now starting to accumulate. He contended that the creation of the Compte général gave the French a basis upon which to conduct comparative analyses which, he believed, helped them evaluate the effectiveness of different prison régimes. To this end he proposed comparing data from the Genevan Tableaux annuels des opérations des tribunaux with data from the French Compte général.28 French followers of Dumont, Bentham’s disciple and builder of the Geneva prison, were quick to see potential in Rossi’s ideas; Rossi too must have recognised this potential, his own ideas having been promoted by Dumont.29 They drew on data from the Tableaux annuels and the Compte général to demonstrate that Swiss prisons were better than French ones, and concluded that France should adopt Dumont’s model prison.30 Tocqueville and Beaumont, however, believed Swiss prisons inappropriate to France – a judgement confirmed by their own inspections of these institutions in 1832.31 Not only were they expensive to construct and run, they were small in scale – Geneva housing 56 inmates and Lausanne 80 – and conceived for small republics whose inhabitants had particular customs and manners which were different from the French.32 The young Frenchmen believed America offered better examples to study and perhaps emulate.33 To this end they adopted Rossi’s arguments on comparative analyses except that they compared data from the Compte général with similar data from America; by highlighting moral and cultural differences between France and America they placed limits on this approach.34 America had no national standard for data on crimes and convictions: individual states all had data on different things.35 Accumulating these data and establishing a basis for comparison with France was what Tocqueville and Beaumont proposed to do. They revealed their intention in their report to the Minister of the Interior submitted in October 1830,36 and they devised a questionnaire which, like those prepared by Parent-Duchâtelet’s for brothels, would give them a clear picture of the state and effectiveness of various prisons.37 These were sent to American prison governors. The young investigators found the overwhelming majority of their questionnaires completed.38 Their success

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prompted Beaumont to declare ‘we will be indisputably the first prison investigators of the universe.’39 Despite the bravado, The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France was the first example of a comparative study using American data compiled by Europeans.40 As a prelude to their American studies, they undertook in 1830 a series of smaller investigations into French reformatories and penitentiaries. These inspections served as the basis for their preliminary report to the Minister of the Interior which, as we have just mentioned, they submitted at the end of October. In August Tocqueville visited the reformatory at Versailles and in September he and Beaumont inspected the penitentiary at Poissy. Both institutions revealed the dire state of French prisons. At Versailles remand prisoners, juvenile delinquents, debtors, convicted robbers and murderers were housed together. Tocqueville condemned the regime as ‘immoral’.41 His remarks on the state of the penitentiary at Poissy were even more damning. Instead of an orderly and disciplined regime, what they saw was more akin to ‘a banquet given by Satan to his minions’. ‘Wine flowed freely’ throughout the institution – prisoners were allowed to purchase up to three litres per day – and inmates spent their time in ‘cynical merriment’. Poissy was a veritable ‘theatre of orgies and celebrations’.42 Even before pursuing these minor investigations Tocqueville and Beaumont were convinced of the urgent need to reform France’s prisons. Their inspections only confirmed their earlier beliefs. Versailles and Poissy strengthened their doubts about proposals made by reformers who spent all of their time working on theoretical projects premised on overly optimistic ideas about human nature and the infinite malleability of human character.43 In remarks suggestive of Malthus’s criticisms of Godwin and Condorcet, Tocqueville and Beaumont asserted philanthropy was ‘a matter of imagination’44 and philanthropists’ thoughts were ‘fed on philosophical reveries’ and their ‘exaggerated sensibilities need[ed] illusions’;45 they had no understanding of practice. Obsessed with improving the material conditions of prisoners, making prison ‘an agreeable sojourn’,46 philanthropists failed to understand inmates ‘must find in imprisonment all the severe punishments which are not repellent to humanity’.47 They attacked vested interests, those for whom prison reform ‘had become a sort of profession’.48 They believed ‘false philanthropy’ encouraged the construction of grand and symbolic penitentiaries, tributes to the great advances made by civilisation and deterrents to those in the wider population who might wish to commit crimes.49 But institutions like these failed to punish and reform inmates and had no effect on the wider population. They served only to line the pockets of ambitious architects and greedy entrepreneurs; they also enhanced the role of central government in the organisation and administration of prisons, making local participation impossible.50 Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s attack on ‘false philanthropy’ was appropriate to their legitimist opinions. They sought to inject an element of


realism into French discussions on prison reform by bringing discussions back to their proper focus which was how best to punish and correct criminals.51 They believed punishment was obtained by depriving criminals of their liberty, correction through physical incarceration, and moral reform through education and religious instruction.52 According to them, the French had lost sight of these fundamental issues. French prisons were run by ‘speculators’, ‘vulgar’ and ‘small-minded’ individuals.53 Vested interests impeded any real reform. But America had no such problems: it was an example of a country whose government was responsive to public opinion rather than vested interest. America’s penitentiaries were run by ‘notables’ and individuals of ‘the highest intellect’.54 Unlike ‘detestable’ and ‘disastrous’ French prisons which ‘corrupted’ inmates, American prisons were effective in disciplining and correcting them. Tocqueville and Beaumont intended to ‘examine in detail and as scientifically as possible’ the American prison system, but their investigations were not free of important political considerations. They believed the French government was out of step with public opinion, and though officials wished to keep French prisons as they were.55 Where change occurred it was through the state and initiated by ‘false’ philanthropists. Lacking any independent and municipal political life, departments were uninterested in local initiatives. Prison reform became the exclusive domain of central government enabling it to develop at the expense of local and municipal government.56 The young magistrates hoped their investigation into American prisons might raise public opinion to undertake local initiatives and halt the growth of central government in this sphere.57 This objective was at odds with the interests of the established order, administrators associated with prison reform, and most especially the prison theorist and Inspector General of French prisons, Charles Lucas. Lucas’s ideas were the polar opposite of Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s. He held optimistic assumptions about human nature and was convinced of the reforming powers of Bentham’s utilitarianism. He fought hard for the creation of French versions of Dumont’s ideal Swiss prisons. Rémusat, in articles for the Globe, and Victor de Broglie, in the Revue française, judged him dogmatic and ambitious, but extremely clever.58 He was a known member of the charbonnerie, a secret society organised along Masonic lines, which stressed the brotherhood and equality of man. It was opposed to the Bourbon monarchy and attracted young idealists as well as republicans and Bonapartists. Lucas, who was Tocqueville’s contemporary, instantly opposed the young magistrates’ plans to investigate American prisons. He believed little could be gained from studying America.59 Though he argued that the perfection of a ‘science of prisons’ would be achieved only when there was ‘an exchange of ideas and experiences of the two hemispheres’, this dialogue was decidedly one-sided. Americans had ‘already borrowed much from Europe’ and had much more to ‘borrow from her still’.60

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Tocqueville and Beaumont, however, disagreed. In their 1830 report they criticised works by French authors ‘who wish to inform us about what exists in America, but who have themselves never seen with their own eyes that of which they speak’ – Lucas had never gone to America.61 Tocqueville saw Lucas as part of the problem with French penitentiary reform. He complained that Lucas was wedded to vested interests, having made reform ‘his industry’ off which ‘he lives . . . as if it was a vast estate from which he draws a huge yearly income’.62 Lucas was Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s bête noire. But the Inspector General felt an equal antipathy toward the young magistrates. The differences between them contributed much to the spiritedness of debates on which prison regime was most appropriate to the needs of France.

The American penal system Tocqueville and Beaumont eagerly applied the latest techniques of social investigators, interviewing penitentiary staff and asking detailed questions of prison governors. They did something no one had done before and questioned inmates themselves. They gathered material of every kind: data on the number of criminals imprisoned for crimes against property; individuals imprisoned for debt; and those incarcerated for crimes against persons; statistics on the number of reoffenders, data crucial to evaluating the effectiveness of any regime; figures on rates of illness and prison mortality and information on prison hygiene, prisoners’ diets, and the kinds of work prisoners did; and, crucial to their conclusions, statistics on the construction and operating costs of American prisons. The two magistrates sought to verify these data by thorough prison inspections, a central tenant of their justification to go to America.63 They believed that with their own inspections they could answer important questions about how prison discipline was established and how different systems went about educating and obtaining the moral regeneration of prisoners.64 Their tour of America’s major penitentiaries and minor houses of correction enabled them to stress the difference of French practice. In France there was an enormous gap between the enlightened classes which showed a zeal for prison reform and the lower classes which were totally uninterested in the issue. In America, where the majority of the population was better educated and more religious, there was near universal interest in reform.65 The young magistrates were struck by how government and public opinion in America were closely allied, and how this made penitentiary reform rapid and effective.66 In France the situation was different, the gulf between government and the people wide, the burden of administrative centralisation heavy, and the process of reform slow and fruitless.67 Though equality of conditions was thoroughly entrenched in America, it was developing rapidly in France. Yet as their investigations into prisons revealed, America’s politi-


cal regime was more egalitarian and better suited to respond to public pressure. France’s government, more centralised, was out of step with the public. Here lay the foundations to Tocqueville’s judgement in Democracy in America (1840), the Souvenirs, and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution on why in the democratic age revolutions were so frequent in France.68 Though decentralisation encompassed wider issues about democracy, centralisation and revolution, it was crucial to the narrower issue of the success of prison reform. In America prison reform was a matter for individual states and municipal governments. In New England where ‘every village is a sort of republic accustomed to rule itself’,69 prison reform was very successful. In those states which permitted slavery, however, reform was non-existent, slavery having corrupted public manners and retarded the development of a spirit of association.70 As we have seen, these observations served as an important foundation to the final chapter of Democracy in America (1835) where Tocqueville showed how slavery slowed economic development.71 They were used by Beaumont in a speeches given in January 1835 to the société française pour l’abolition de l’esclavage and later that year to a large abolitionist assembly in London.72 In both talks he comparing the efficiency of free labour in the state of Maryland to the backwardness of slave labour in southern states. These views were reiterated by Tocqueville as secretary to the 1839 parliamentary report on the abolition of slavery.73 The success of prison reform in New England owed much to the involvement of local communities. Tocqueville and Beaumont believed this was instructive to the French. A locally constructed and administered prison, they emphasised, ‘eagerly excited the interest of its founders’, the local community.74 Each city or town with a prison had its own prison association. Membership of these voluntary organisations included local businessmen, notables, administrators, teachers and members of the clergy. Through these associations local communities became wedded to the success of their prison. The young magistrates believed the best American prisons involved the whole of the community in the administration and efforts to reform inmates, for businessmen furnished prisoners with work and instruction in a trade. Once their term was complete, ex-convicts often found employment with the same businessmen. This was an important factor in ensuring former inmates did not reoffend and were reintegrated into society; unemployment and idleness were seen as important causes of crime and not tolerated by society. Economic circumstances favoured employment, with jobs in manufacturing or agriculture relatively easy to find, according to Tocqueville and Beaumont.75 In France, by contrast, entrepreneurs saw prisoners as a cheap source of labour.76 They resisted all attempts to allow inmates to receive moral and religious instruction, arguing that it would interfere with prisoners’ hours of work. The wages prisoners were paid could then be spent on alcohol and tobacco sold from what Tocqueville and Beaumont described as ‘those vile

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canteens where disreputable speculators trade in the vices and passions of prisoners and sell them at a usurious price which completes their depravity’.77 In contrast to France where businesses exploited prison labour, in America the link between local businessmen and prisons ensured inmates could find work easily at the end of their sentences. Businessmen also co-operated closely with teachers and members of the clergy. As members of a very religious society, entrepreneurs overcame their immediate self-interest and acknowledged the importance of education and moral instruction for prisoners. The inmate ‘breath[ed] in the penitentiary a religious atmosphere which comes at him from all parts’.78 Tocqueville and Beaumont emphasised the importance of religion for the moral regeneration of inmates, but the example of the prison also revealed religion’s effect on the general populace. From his study of Montesquieu, Tocqueville understood religion as an important element in sustaining enlightened selfinterest. He noted the manner in which entrepreneurs’ understanding of religion, as important to the moral regeneration of prisoners, highlighted the extent to which their own self-interest was enlightened. The young magistrates lamented conditions in France. Unlike its American counterpart, the French clergy were not involved in the administration and running of prisons. They had long alienated themselves from public opinion and seemed incapable of participating in the process of reform and fostering an attitude to self-interest that was enlightened.79 This judgement Tocqueville made in his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.80 And it was an assessment he would later apply to the middle classes themselves. He believed that the government in being subject to vested interests and animated by a ‘detestable spirit’ of ‘trickery, servility, and corruption’, drew the clergy and middle classes toward itself, just as it had done with the nobility. In this way it isolated these classes ‘completely from the people’. He asserted this was ‘the general and profound cause’ of France’s revolutions.81 Like religion, education had a similar effect on self-interest. It served inmates but it was important to the wider population as well. It created ‘a vast multitude of people with roughly the same ideas about religion, history, science, political economy, legislation, and government’ because education was within everyone’s reach.82 Its value was universally recognised in America and its development encouraged. This was especially true in the case of juvenile offenders. Houses for juvenile offenders created within their confines ‘a little society in the image of the larger’, and here, as in the wider society, education played an important role, occupying many hours in the day.83 But education also had a bad effect, though this was of less significance than the benefits it bestowed. Tocqueville and Beaumont were among the first to show how education contributed to rises in certain kinds of crime and recidivism.84 In his 1828 study of Say, Tocqueville learned how economic progress raised individuals’ material expectations, creating new


desires.85 And when he and Beaumont studied Say for a second time during their ocean crossing to America, they paid particular attention to it. But this time it was applied to a new context. Tocqueville and Beaumont showed how education increased people’s material expectations. This was to have important consequences for any prison investigations, for what it revealed was that as prisoners became more educated they expected more upon release. If these expectations could not their be fulfilled, their frustration was frequently translated into new criminal acts.86 These observations became important to the work of legitimist political economists like Bigot de Morogues.87 While this was a negative consequence of education, it was minor compared to the benefits to be derived from an education: the alternative, general ignorance, was far worse. The tendency for religion and education to foster enlightened selfinterest contributed to the success of American prisons. This role of religion and education also contrasted starkly with what existed in France. The centralised French prison system, secularised and in a close relationship with business, ignored the need to educate prisoners and, had a very poor record in reforming its prisoners. Whereas only one in every thirty-two prisoners reoffended in America, in France the average was one in three and in some penitentiaries like Soissons it was as high as sixty-two per cent.88 Americans understood that the combination of work, education and religious instruction served their communities. The same admixture was used to combat an important source of crime, poverty; Americans had created an important network of voluntary associations to help the poor. The results of their achievements were impressive. Whereas levels of crime increased in France and other European countries, in America they declined.89 Although Tocqueville and Beaumont doubted the claims made by many Americans about the capacity of their penitentiaries to reform the morals of inmates,90 they believed American penitentiaries served to instil in the inmate ‘honest habits . . . and if he is not any more virtuous, he is at least more reasonable: his morality is not honour but self-interest’.91 Other advantages could be gained from ensuring that the construction and administration of prisons fell within the powers of local governments. They realised that the most effective American prisons were small. Wethersfield penitentiary in Connecticut was the smallest and the best in America.92 Small prisons were more effective at maintaining discipline among prisoners. The small number of inmates made supervision easy and this ensured that no form of communication could take place between prisoners. Small prisons were also easy to construct and administer. Tocqueville and Beaumont believed this to be an important benefit. The low cost of construction and administration could serve as an incentive to French departments to emulate American townships and wrest the construction and administration of prisons from central government.93 In the introduction to the 1836 edition of The Penitentiary System in the United States Tocqueville

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and Beaumont acknowledged with approval that this was the ambition of many regional general councils.94 As construction and administration of prisons was the preserve of individual states and local governments, a mosaic of different systems appeared in America. This gave a wide range of regimes to investigate, an enticing prospect for any thorough study, as Tocqueville and Beaumont highlighted in their 1830 report.95 In it their stated objective was to determine ‘the best system . . . which reconciles the principle of moral reform of inmates with savings in expenditures’.96 The general principles designed to achieve moral reform were: absolute isolation at night, common labour in the day under strict surveillance and discipline, and education and moral and religious instruction.97 These were the principles of the Auburn regime and their excellence was emphasised throughout the early report. Yet when Tocqueville and Beaumont began their inspections their theories were confronted by reality, and a few months into their investigation they began to understand that these theories could no longer be wedded to one particular system.98 For in fact the Pennsylvania system, mentioned once in their 1830 report and excluded from the list of penitentiaries ‘France must imitate’,99 revealed important advantages over Auburn. It prevented any form of communication between prisoners; its plan made contact between prisoners impossible and its rules dictated that prisoners were isolated in their cells day and night. This meant there was no need to use physical force to discipline inmates. Tocqueville and Beaumont judged that ‘until we find a prison that really reforms, it is safe to say that the best prison is one which does not corrupt.’100 Pennsylvania created such a prison system. But it also offered the tantalising possibility of reform. The young magistrates discovered through extensive interviews with inmates how very effective it was at ensuring inmates repented of their crimes.101 They became convinced solitary confinement made it easier to reform inmates, though they acknowledged the limits to moral regeneration.102 It guaranteed that ‘the moral situation in which inmates find themselves is eminently appropriate to facilitate their regeneration.’103 The Pennsylvania system, the solitary system, offered the most thorough form of punishment by striking at the convict’s mind and soul, rather than his body; prisoners learned to cope with its rigors through work and the study of the bible.104 It appealed to Tocqueville’s moral rigorism, and it certainly was attractive to Beaumont who had ‘not the slightest doubt about its superiority’.105 Despite these benefits the Pennsylvania system had drawbacks. It may have had low running costs but the design of its premier institution, the Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia, was a poor example of economy. Its cells were large, ‘comfortable’, ‘fire proof’ and had a ‘continual supply of excellent water, to ensure the most perfect cleanliness of every prisoner, and his apartment’.106 According to Philadelphia Prison Society, the institution was designed ‘to convey to our citizens the external appearance of those mag-


nificent and picturesque castles of the middle ages, which contribute so eminently to embellish the scenery of Europe’.107 Tocqueville and Beaumont, however, judged the architecture ‘an abuse of penitentiary theories’ which ‘in other states are applied wisely’.108 There were other problems with the institution too. It may not have been the humane institution it portrayed itself to be. Documents from the Boston Prison Discipline Society stated the penitentiary, contrary to its principles, used instruments of torture to restrain and silence unruly prisoners.109 Why Tocqueville and Beaumont failed to discuss these instruments in the numerous editions of their report is a mystery. The cost of constructing a French version of the Eastern State Penitentiary was enormous. This violated the principal objective of Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s investigation which was to determine ‘the best system . . . which reconciles the principle of moral reform of inmates with savings in expenditures’. But cost was also important to their wider political objectives: to stimulate public opinion to consider penal reform, and to encourage central government to hand over the construction and administration of prisons to departments and municipal governments. Enormous and costly institutions discouraged both the public and local governments from participating in the construction and management of penitentiaries, though a number of smaller institutions which were closely wedded to the local community managed their own affairs; the house of refuge on the rue de l’Oursine in Paris was one such institution Tocqueville inspected in 1832. Large prisons, however, served only vested interest groups, particularly architects, philanthropists, businessmen and administrators. The classic example of this was the model prison of the rue de la Roquette in Paris. Described by Beaumont as an ‘incredible’ and ‘useless’ prison,110 it typified ‘the pretension of architects and the greed of entrepreneurs’.111 For these reasons Tocqueville and Beaumont rejected Pennsylvania and recommended Auburn instead.112 Prisons like Wethersfield, based on the Auburn model, were small, profitable and attractive to any government, but there were also problems with the Auburn system. As Auburn did not place inmates in solitary confinement day and night it had to find another way to ensure they did not communicate with each other. Prisoners were under constant surveillance and were prevented through a harsh regime of physical punishment from whispering, gesturing or communicating in any way. This created conditions for the mental isolation of inmates. Yet this could only be achieved by physical intimidation. Tocqueville and Beaumont believed French public opinion to be against physical punishment. Adapting the regime to French concerns would deprive it of a ‘moral auxiliary which, in the United States, has an important influence on its success’.113 The effectiveness of the regime could be further undermined by other factors as well, particularly important differ-

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ences between French and American national characteristics. In what served as a foundation to a discussion in Chapter Two of the first part of Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville and Beaumont explained how Americans were accustomed to the rigors of solitude. Tocqueville later put this down to their frontier mentality which made them independent in spirit.114 The French, however, were less able to endure isolation.115 As Tocqueville later recorded in his notes to The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, this national trait meant Frenchmen were unable to resist the ‘desire to join the crowd’. He believed this to be the psychological foundation to administrative centralisation.116 A further difference served as the basis to an important observation in Part One, Chapter Six, of Democracy in America (1835):117 Americans demonstrated a remarkable obedience to the law and this could be observed ‘even in prisons’.118 The French, however, had ‘a troublesome tendency to break the law: and this inclination toward insubordination appears naturally to compromise prison discipline further still’.119 Tocqueville believed this important in explaining why France had experienced so many revolutions, but he would also show how it was mysteriously and paradoxically linked to the spirit of the crowd and, through that, to administrative centralisation. It was a significant element in what he called the mal révolutionnaire.120 The Frenchman’s inability to endure isolation and obey the law meant that the successful application of the Auburn system in France depended to a greater degree than in America on recourse to corporal punishment. Yet French sensibilities were at odds with a prison system that relied on physical coercion. Tocqueville and Beaumont suggested a solution to this problem. It was that France adopt prisons like Wethersfield as a model. This prison, based on the Auburn regime, enforced discipline through a transparent system of graded punishments, none of which involved physical coercion. The theory behind both Auburn and Pennsylvania was that isolation prevented prisoners from corrupting one another. This simple idea may have inspired Tocqueville’s complex analysis in Democracy in America (1835) of how the tyranny of the majority has immense power over thought.121 Isolation was the great advantage of American penitentiaries over European institutions like the prisons of Geneva and Lausanne which Tocqueville inspected in 1832. Advocates of European penitentiaries considered the Swiss prisons impressive, orderly and very clean institutions. Tocqueville, however, believed their standards of discipline not nearly as high as Auburn or Pennsylvania. Though prisoners were confined to individual cells at night and worked together during the day under conditions of strict silence, they had three hours of free time each day and were allowed to converse during this time; on Sundays, after attending a religious service, prisoners were free to do what


they wished. This undermined the fundamental principle of an effective penitentiary system, according to Tocqueville. But even the failings of Geneva and Lausanne were minor in comparison to the deficiencies of penal colonies. Tocqueville’s inspection of France’s largest penal colony at Toulon highlighted a problem endemic to all penal colonies: the free association between convicts. With a population of 3,000 convicts the ‘spread of corruption was inevitable’,122 just as physical and sexual assaults were a regular occurrence.123 Toulon exposed another problem endemic to France’s penitentiary system. The centralised state created administrative shortcomings within the institution. Toulon’s director, a state appointee, was a man of high social standing and of a different class from his subordinates. He ‘distanced himself with disgust’ from ‘the functions he [was] forced to fulfil’,124 and left the running of the colony to his inferiors, colony guards who were so poorly paid they could be recruited from only the very lowest classes. When he had to intervene in the running of the colony he could neither command the respect of his staff nor influence their behaviour. Guards hated their jobs and were easily intimidated or bribed by prisoners. They were terrified of the convicts who vastly outnumbered them. The colony’s authorities allowed minor offences to go unpunished for fear that imposing discipline might lead to uprisings.125 Inspections of European régimes, including the women’s prison of Saint-Lazare and the house of correction for juvenile delinquents of l’hôtel de Bazencourt, only confirmed Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s concluding recommendation of The Penitentiary System in the United States: it was that Auburn offered the best model for the French to adopt. Whilst Pennsylvania was the ideal type, enforcing the most rigorous kind of isolation on prisoners, adopting it would impose a considerable financial burden, which France could not support. Auburn, however, was able to achieve a high degree of isolation at a reasonable cost, and this was its great attraction.126 The risks they associated with it, however, began to loom larger after the report was finished in 1833. New prison research in America, Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy cast doubt on the effectiveness of Auburn.127 Over time the young magistrates came to alter their earlier judgement. Tocqueville, whose thoughts on the issue ‘had been ripening for some time’,128 pronounced in favour of Pennsylvania in 1838.129 His change of opinion was reported in the press and was an issue of debate in the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences to which he was elected in the same year. After that time he vigorously defended his judgement both in lengthy book reviews, correspondence, speeches to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and statements to parliament in his official capacity as secretary to both the 1840 and 1843–4 parliamentary commissions on prison reform.130

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Tocqueville and a penitentiary system for France The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France was completed in September 1832 and submitted to the Minister for Commerce and Public Works in October. It was published in 1833 and awarded the Montyon prize in that year. Within months of its publication it was translated into English and German. W.B. Sarsfield Taylor published an abridged version in England, and in America a full-length translation was published by Francis Lieber; Nikolas Julius published the German translation. Critical reaction to the work was positive. It was favourably reviewed in all the major newspapers, the Gazette de Normandie even declaring the work ‘more important to humanity than the entire academy of moral and political science’.131 It was also well reviewed in newspapers and journals in America, Britain, Italy and Germany. Journalists, politicians and academics were impressed with its theoretical foundations and its use of statistics and interviews to test theory. It gave rise to reviews of policy on colonies and prisons by both the British and Prussian governments. It had its critics: it was attacked by philanthropists and prison administrators, including Lucas and the Inspector General of State Penitentiaries (maisons centrales de détention), who, in the first published critique of The Penitentiary System in the United States, defended the status quo.132 But Tocqueville and Beaumont continued to press for reforms. From the late 1830s until the revolution of 1848 Tocqueville played a leading role in French and international debates on prisons. His position as secretary for the parliamentary commissions on prison reform enabled him to argue the cause of Pennsylvania. Against its opponents and their claims that it harmed prisoners’ mental health, he marshalled studies from leading doctors and medical organisations.133 He shaped the opinion of academicians and galvanised deputies and peers behind the cause of Pennsylvania, a system the Chambers of deputies and peers approved for France.134 Yet what really preoccupied Tocqueville during this time was influencing public opinion and organisations toward giving departments and municipal governments a greater role to play in prison reform.135 He was also very interested in initiatives established by local charitable organisations to hasten the full reintegration of ex-convicts into society, an issue that reappeared in his 1843 report on ex-convicts written for the general departmental council of the Manche.136 His inspection in 1832 of the private charitable institution of the rue de l’Oursine in Paris confirmed his preference for private charity. This shelter for vagrants was similar to American almshouses. It had links to the state but was not subordinated to it. Because it was financed through charitable donations and had close ties with local donors and businesses it was wedded to the community, and this encouraged local participation in the success of the institution. Local agricultural colonies also attracted Tocqueville’s attention. In their


1833 prison report Tocqueville and Beaumont emphasised the success of agricultural colonies both in reintegrating ex-prisoners into society and helping the poor to improve their economic fortunes.137 They had cited favourably the most famous of books on this subject, L.F. Huerne de Pommeuse’s 1832 Des colonies agricoles et de leurs avantages. In the 1836 preface to the re-issue of the Penitentiary System in the United States they re-emphasised the importance of agricultural colonies; they would have been more confident in assessing them favourably because in the years between the first and second editions of their report Tocqueville became thoroughly familiar with impressive studies on these colonies by legitimists like VilleneuveBargemont and Bigot de Morogues, as well as the work of the Belgian prison reformer Édouard Ducpétiaux. Tocqueville and Beaumont supplemented their findings on agricultural colonies with material on the important role played by voluntary societies (sociétés de patronage) in the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents.138 The importance Tocqueville attached to these societies was further evinced by his 1842 report to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences on a book by Régis Allier, Études sur le système pénitentiaire et les sociétés de patronage. He judged the work favourably, particularly because it was ‘emanating from an ardent friend of humanity’.139 Allier argued for the creation of agricultural colonies as a way of facilitating the reintegration of ex-convicts into society. In this, he was strongly influenced by Villeneuve-Bargemont and Édouard Ducpétiaux. Ducpétiaux had written on voluntary societies as early as 1835, and his Des progrès et de l’État actuel de la réforme pénitentiaire (1837) summarised these earlier ideas. Allier recommended what Ducpétiaux proposed. Both shared a bias for the rural economy.140 They believed industry and the spread of materialist values had undermined religion and corrupted individuals’ morals, an opinion they shared with Tocqueville, as his 1843 parliamentary report on prison reform makes clear.141 They also believed placing an ex-convict in a rural setting and teaching him to farm would help reintegrate him into society.142 After all, ‘farms produce[d] fewer rascals, fewer criminals than workshops’,143 a view shared by Josephine Mallet who was interested in how colonies could bring about the moral and physical regeneration of women ex-convicts.144 Colonies were very popular among legitimists. They were a new means by which notables could bolster their political influence and maintain social dominance in rural society. Agricultural colonies were under the control of rural voluntary associations dominated by notables. Memberships to these associations were purchased; proceeds were used to buy land, livestock, seeds, tools, shelter and clothing for the colony. Ex-convicts, vagrants, orphans, and poor farmers were given everything necessary to make their small plots productive. Colonists had to observe the rules of the colony and hand over a portion of their crops to the association each year as part payment toward their loan. It took about sixteen years for colonists to repay

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in full the original loan. These colonies injected new life into the tithe but they were extremely popular. In 1829 there were over 9,000 colonists in Belgium and Holland alone.145 Allier also argued that voluntary societies might complement the work of agricultural colonies in reintegrating ex-convicts. He stressed the good work of societies, including the Société de la morale chrétienne, the Société des orphelins and Armand de Melun’s Amis de l’enfance. All were dominated by legitimists and all worked with young offenders. He believed adults had no equivalent societies to turn to.146 His legitimist beliefs imposed strict limits on what he was prepared to recognise: at first he ignored developments in eastern French departments and communes of industrial voluntary and emulation societies (sociétés d’émulation), though he later became aware of them. Nonetheless, he proposed the creation of a national network of voluntary societies under the administration of the ministry of the interior. Such a network, with societies in every city and town, would ensure inmates could be placed in a society immediately upon their release.147 Tocqueville was sympathetic to Allier’s intention. Like Allier, he believed voluntary societies effective in reintegrating ex-convicts. However, he objected to Allier’s proposal for a national network administered by the state.148 He attributed their success to voluntary and local rather than national organisation. He rejected Allier’s idea for the same reason he rejected VilleneuveBargemont’s ideas on an expanded role for government in welfare. He believed a government administered network would undermine the effectiveness of these societies. His brother Édouard was sure to have told him about the successes of private agricultural societies such as La Mettray, and certainly he read about them in the writings of Bigot de Morogues and Villeneuve-Bargemont. These societies offered family-like support to released young offenders. Their personalised approach to care and their efforts to place these youths in employment or apprenticeships were considered among their strengths by Tocqueville. His favourable assessment of these societies was confirmed by observations he made in America where similar societies were equally effective. Tocqueville’s investigations into American prisons demonstrated just how effective local voluntary initiatives could be. Fostering these kinds of project was an important political objective for him. He believed them to be an initial but solid foundation to the development of local self-government. Though he idealised regional and municipal government, or as he would call it in Democracy in America (1840) and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, ‘the system of free government’,149 he had observed first-hand from the workings of the New England township how effective it could be. He believed local government fundamental to safeguarding individual liberty. Only if individuals participated in governing themselves could they defend their freedom. The prison investigations revealed the extent to which philosophical theories on the indefinite perfectibility of man and the tendency


towards humanitarianism were consequences of equality of conditions. But the union of ideas on indefinite perfectibility and humanitarianism was a powerful factor in the development of individualism, the ‘calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows’.150 This union created unrealistic expectations about society’s ability to intervene in the fate of individuals and these clashed both with individuals’ perceptions of themselves as ‘weak’ and their real lack of interest in the fate of others.151 ‘Self-sacrificing’ men in democracies were rare, and in the face of expectations about the possibilities of individual regeneration, people inclined naturally to the state as the sole institution which could fulfil their humanitarian ideals. However, Tocqueville’s American experience showed the way in which voluntary and local institutions could fulfil those expectations, strive against individualism and foster the spirit of association.152 He believed that the French, in adopting the American penitentiary system, would not only improve their own prisons, but also learn how to safeguard their freedom.

6 The Investigations into the Causes of Poverty and the Ways to Remedy it

Tocqueville’s interest in the problem of pauperism first appeared with the 1830 prison report. In this preliminary study to their wider investigation of 1833, he and Beaumont stressed the relation between poverty and crime. Their introductory remarks focused on three causes to the growth in crime. The first was the relation between the rise of industry, the growth of the working-class population and crime. Here they showed how economic crises precipitated severe increases in unemployment, which, in turn, contributed to more crime.1 The second, and related cause, was France’s growing vagrant population, which included many ex-convicts who could not obtain work.2 According to the young investigators, vagrancy contributed to the rapid increase in thefts throughout France.3 The third cause was the poorer classes’ lack of education.4 Yet these causes were only pointed to, and none was examined in detail. The sheer scale of any investigation into a prison system best suited to the needs of the French restricted the scope of their study to the effectiveness of prison regimes alone. It could not accommodate an analysis of the remedies that might be brought to bear against the ‘ill’ of unemployment, nor could it analyse the complex economic issue of how by ‘opening to industry new outlets . . . idle hands [might find] opportunities for work’; it could not enquire ‘at what point it is just for a society to punish a man who does not work and does not have a job, and how it could offer means to subsistence other than by placing him in prison’;5 it did endorse, however, in a short paragraph, the demands of liberals and social Catholics for free primary school education.6 Whilst their 1830 report did not treat the problems of unemployment and vagrancy, The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France offered by way of appendices on agricultural colonies and pauperism in America a preliminary investigation into ways of dealing with these problems, although this was incomplete. The opportunity to undertake a thorough investigation of the first and second causes of rising crime signalled in 1830 and reiterated in 1833 presented itself in November 1834 when 135


Tocqueville was made a member of the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg.7 The Society, like the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences to which he was elected in 1838, offered him a forum to introduce ideas he would later develop in his great works.8 It was for this Society that he wrote in the winter of 1835 his first report on pauperism (Mémoire sur le paupérisme). The first report on pauperism was modelled on the reports on prisons. In this, Tocqueville and Beaumont pointed to a kind of paradox about crime: as civilization developed and became more refined, crimes multiplied.9 The same was true of pauperism. Tocqueville began his report by revealing that the wealthiest and most advanced European nation, England, the ‘Eden of modern civilisation’, had one-sixth of its population subsisting on poor-relief.10 This contrasted sharply with the most impoverished and backward European states such as Spain and Portugal. Their populations were ‘ill fed, ill dressed, coarse and ignorant’, yet surprisingly they had very few people who were considered poor. Tocqueville made use of some revealing statistics to prove his point. Figures compiled by Villeneuve-Bargemont showed the number of poor in Portugal to be fewer than one in twentyfive,11 and statistics collected by the Italian geographer and statistician, Andriano Balbi, were even more striking, with one in ninety-eight classified as poor.12 Tocqueville began his study as the legitimists Bigot de Morogues and Villeneuve-Bargemont had begun theirs.13 But whereas their concerns were ideologically motivated, his interest lay in analysing pauperism within the wider context of the development of democracy. He sketched a brief historical account of the origins of inequality in the earliest societies both by drawing on his recollections about the life of the American indigenous peoples, and by following closely Rousseau’s account in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men of the emergence of property, conflict and the rise of government.14 Where Rousseau showed how property led first to ‘perpetual conflict’ and ‘the most horrible state of war’ and then to the emergence of political institutions which secured the interests of a few property owners,15 Tocqueville portrayed the emergence of property as a state of social development in which individuals found themselves ‘placed between primitive independence they could no longer enjoy, and civil and political liberty they could not yet understand’. In this condition ‘they were surrendered without recourse to violence and deceit, and showed themselves ready to endure every kind of tyranny so long as they might live or rather vegetate near their furrows.’ From the ‘spirit of conquest’ there developed a concentration of property in ‘the hands of a few’ and inequality attained ‘its extreme limits’. Here lay the foundation of political institutions and ‘all enduring aristocracies’.16 Concluding his account of the emergence of property and political institutions in this way, Tocqueville combined Rousseau’s account of inequality with an analysis of the relation between conquest and feudal aristocracy,

Poverty: Causes and Remedy 137

which first appeared in the writings of the German jurist and historian Friedrich Karl von Savigny, and was later used by Guizot in his third lecture on the History of Civilization in Europe. Like other French liberals, Guizot was introduced to Savigny’s work by reading Pellegrino Rossi’s important 1820 article ‘de l’étude du droit dans ses rapports avec la civilisation et l’état actuel de la science’ for the Annales de législation et d’économie politique. Fascinated by the claims of the German historian, Guizot went on to read Savigny’s famous History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages (Geschicte des römischen Rechts in Mittelalter). He was struck by Savigny’s principal thesis that the legal foundations of property were not rooted in natural right but rather in the conscious and calculated use of force. This thesis he sought to integrate into his own account of European and French civilizations.17 Tocqueville also used it in his account of the juridical roots of property and inequality. He reiterated Guizot’s thesis of the third lecture in his own account of the victory of the German tribes over the Romans which ‘placed in the hands of the Barbarians not only the government but the ownership of lands’. The conquest guaranteed inequality and ‘became a right after it was established as a fact’.18 Guizot’s objective was to show how ‘society in Europe took a definite form, followed a determined tendency, and progressed rapidly and universally towards a clear and precise end’.19 Tocqueville’s aim was similar, but he went beyond the historian’s thesis and sought to show how from the condition of de facto and then de jure inequality society ‘progressed’ toward equality of conditions, the ‘basic fact’ of democracy. Whereas in the middle ages inequality became a right after it was established as a fact, he contended that in the democratic age the same was true for equality. He had already shown in Democracy in America (1835) how in America, where there existed a balance between aristocracy and democracy, this balance was tipped in favour of democracy, because a democratic people’s institutions ‘flatter the passion for equality’ which then becomes established in law.20 The first report on pauperism allowed him to explore this development more fully by analysing a practical consequence of an important theoretical proposition he advanced a few years later in Democracy in America (1840). This was how in democracy ‘[w]hen everything is more or less level, the slightest variation is noticed. Hence the more equal men are, the more insatiable will be their longing for equality.’21 Tocqueville had already signalled in Democracy in America (1835) how equality of conditions caused individuals to ‘reflect on their position’, thereby noticing a mass of hitherto unfelt wants, which could not be satisfied without recourse to the resources of the state.’22 He examined it in greater depth in the concluding remarks to the first part of his report on pauperism in which he saw that as the ‘progress of civilization’ had led ‘society to relieve miseries which, in a semi-civilized state one would not even dream of’, it undertook to ‘cure’ every kind of social ‘ill’.23 Though he


touched on the practical consequences of this in his appendix on pauperism in America in the 1833 prison report,24 and explored them in the second part of his report on pauperism, he examined their theoretical associations at greater length in Part Three of Democracy in America (1840). There he showed how, as social conditions became more equal, manners became more gentle; this gave impetus to the development of humanitarianism and the cure to all social ills. He approved of this but acknowledged its limitations. Individuals were ‘glad to relieve the sorrows of others’ but only ‘when they can do so without much trouble to themselves’.25 In this lay an important motive behind individuals’ calls for ‘recourse to the resources of the state’ in order to assist the less fortunate,26 but these calls were given added force when they were joined to economic developments associated with democratic nations. In his 1828 examination of Say, Tocqueville defined ‘the word wealth correlative of the word needs’. He went on to show how ‘wealth in increasing amongst a people creates new needs, and these needs in developing, in turn, drive the human spirit to create new wealth.’27 Villeneuve-Bargemont had already shown this in his examination of how the ‘English system’ of political economy was driven to ‘indefinite production’.28 The legitimist had also shown how indefinite production created the conditions for both relative and absolute poverty. Tocqueville was receptive to much of this. His 1833 journey to England convinced him that both these conditions existed there, and though he observed the English enjoyed a material standard of living ‘a century ahead’ of the French, this came at a cost: the inequalities between rich and poor were great. This led him to conclude the English ‘lower classes’ were ‘very inferior to what they are in France’.29 Tocqueville used his observations to extend to democracy itself the scope of VilleneuveBargemont’s assertion on relative and absolute poverty within the English system. A paradox emerged whereby absolute inequality became greater in the age of equality, but this was not examined in any detail by Tocqueville until his second report on pauperism of 1837. Instead, in the first report, he focused on relative inequality. In this, like Villeneuve-Bargemont, he observed that the ‘more a society is rich, industrious, prosperous, the more the possessions of the greatest number become varied and permanent; the more they are varied and permanent, the more they are assimilated by use and example with real needs. Civilized man is thus infinitely more exposed to the vicissitudes of destiny than savage man.’30 Yet civilized man, democratic man, suffered many economic crises and this exposed him even more to the ‘vicissitudes of destiny’.31 This explained both the paradox at the beginning of Tocqueville’s report on pauperism, and also the reason why the humanitarian spirit would develop and lead to mounting pressure on the state to alleviate the misery of growing numbers of poor who, as a result of economic crises, were left without work. The causes and consequences of this he examined in the second part of his report.


Private charity versus public welfare Tocqueville began the second part of his report by distinguishing between two kinds of welfare. The first was private and called charity. It was elevated to the status of a moral virtue by Christianity. The second, public and secular, was, unlike a moral virtue, ‘less instinctive, more reasoned, less emotional, and often more powerful’.32 As a characteristic of democracy and a natural outgrowth of humanitarianism, public welfare concerned itself with the misfortunes of the poor by systematically trying to alleviate their suffering. Yet this created many problems. Tocqueville’s observations on public welfare were similar to opinions he and Beaumont had expressed in their earlier prison investigations in which, they observed philanthropy to be ‘a matter of imagination’, ‘exaggerated sensibilities’ and ‘philosophical reveries’.33 In the second part of his report on pauperism Tocqueville remarked that in the face of human misery society’s ‘imagination is exulted and its soul could not be failed to be moved’. These ‘beautiful illusions’, however, are ‘dashed’ by experience.34 As with prison reform where he and Beaumont maintained theory had to be informed by practice, Tocqueville believed the same to be true of welfare.35 Moreover, his approach was very similar to Malthus’s.36 Having already displayed a sophisticated understanding of Malthus’s ideas before 1835, it is clear that by February 1835, when Tocqueville was in the middle of writing his report, Malthus’s Essay was at the forefront of his thoughts.37 His rhetoric, the thesis he advanced and the arguments he deployed were strikingly similar to those of the celebrated economist. Malthus believed Condorcet’s and Godwin’s ideas ‘the most beautiful and engaging of any that ha[ve] yet appeared’. What was beautiful in theory, however, could ‘not admit of application’.38 Tocqueville’s assessment of social welfare employed the same kind of argument. He believed there was ‘no idea, at first sight, which appears as beautiful and noble as that of public charity’.39 Yet, the history of the practice of social welfare revealed the extent to which reality fell far short of the admirable ideal. Tocqueville held England to be the country where civilization was at its most advanced and the only European nation to have systematically applied ‘the theories of public charity’.40 For this reason it was ideal to study and to this end he drew on a number of sources, including Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and the reports of 1833 and 1834 of the Poor Laws Commissioners’, reports that he obtained from Nassau Senior.41 Tocqueville sketched a brief history of welfare in England. It began with an account of the time of the ‘religious revolution’ under Henry VIII when ‘all the charitable communities of the realm were suppressed’ and moved on to the creation under Elizabeth I of the first laws governing the poor. From this point it took little time for legislation to admit the principle of a legal right to welfare [charité légale] for the poor.42 This happened gradually


and apparently without legislators giving much thought to the full implications of their actions. He believed French legislators might learn from the English experience.43 The strategy he deployed was identical to that adopted in the prison investigations in which he and Beaumont maintained legislators failed to give adequate consideration to ideas which in theory were beautiful but had never been tested in practice. The consequences of their adopting these ideas without much forethought led to decisions which had unforeseen and disastrous consequences.44 The same conclusion was drawn in the report on pauperism.45 But in order that England should act as an instructive point of comparison for the French, Tocqueville distinguished between those characteristics particular to England and those which could be generalised for France. In this, however, he also presented by way of an account of England’s economic fortunes a subtle critique of economic liberalism’s defence of unfettered free trade. Tocqueville observed that pauperism had grown more rapidly in England than in any other country. This was partially explained by England’s advanced level of development,46 but he signalled three other important factors. The first two involved the kind of economy the English had adopted; here his assessment was informed by Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont. The third was the principle of a legal right to welfare; his appraisal of it occupied the remaining pages of the report. Tocqueville believed England’s prosperity owed much to her adopting a policy of unfettered free trade, but he also contended this policy contributed significantly to multiplying the numbers of poor. Because England’s markets depended on international commerce, economic crises overseas had a direct impact on the English economy, so that ‘when an inhabitant of the Indes reduces his expenditures and restrains his consumption, there is an English producer who suffers’.47 He concluded from this that ‘England is therefore the country of the world where the farmer is at once most powerfully attracted to the works of industry and finds himself most exposed to the vicissitudes of fortune.’48 At first glance this seemed a curious conclusion to draw, but he drew it because he may have been thinking critically of Ricardo’s contribution to the English Corn Law debates, Essays on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock and Duchâtel’s positive assessment of it for the Globe. Certainly before or during the month of February 1835 he had been reading Ricardo’s most faithful disciple, John Ramsay McCulloch. He attacked the economist’s theses49 and showed how unfettered free trade might offer many benefits but it had the unforeseen consequence of forcing farmers to adopt a more mechanised, industrial, form of agriculture in order to compete internationally. Legitimists like Bigot de Morogues and Villeneuve-Bargemont had already commented on this development;50 Tocqueville used the report to reiterate that opinion. Unable to afford the necessary capital expenditure associated with mechanised farming, small-hold farmers were unable to compete with larger producers.


This led them to abandon agriculture and seek employment in industry, which ensured enclosure became economically viable. Whereas in other European nations landed property underwent constant division, in England it was ‘endlessly amassed’.51 With large numbers of individuals having left agriculture and seeking employment in industry, wages were driven down and security of employment became precarious. In times of economic crisis the situation was made worse and large numbers of individuals had no recourse except to charity or crime. Tocqueville was sensitive to the important social and political consequences of this. Like Smith and Malthus, he did not divorce political economy from politics and morals. Like them, too, he believed the headlong pursuit of wealth, to the exclusion of other important considerations, was wrong because it threatened liberty. Just as Smith and Malthus extended Montesquieu’s dictum of ‘power must check power’ to include social and economic powers or interests in order to secure liberty, so Tocqueville held a similar opinion. He believed not only that governments should pursue policies which assured a proper balance between agriculture, commerce and industry, but also thought it legitimate that economic considerations, even if true in theory, should be sacrificed to wider political and social interests.52 Policies rooted in economic values alone often entailed unforeseen consequences and costs which in the long term compromised the policies themselves and the theoretical truths upon which they were based. The 1833 prison investigation revealed the extent to which Tocqueville believed this to be true: at many points he and Beaumont argued that because there was a proper balance between agriculture, commerce and industry in America both employment and wages were high. These were important factors, along with education and religious instruction, contributing significantly to lower rates of crime in America than Europe.53 They were also important in guaranteeing that prison labour was effective, ensuring both that it did not compete unduly with non-prison labour,54 and that ex-convicts could find employment with ease and be reintegrated more smoothly into the community. As a result of this there were fewer reoffenders in American than in France or Britain.55 These were important factors not least because crime threatened private property and social order, the foundations of any successful economy.56 What emerges from Tocqueville’s critique of unfettered free trade and the new liberal political economy is the extent to which his opinions on political economy were more in tune with an older conception of that discipline. Like Malthus, he believed the new liberal political economy wrong in favouring the interests of industry over other economic, social and political interests. He rejected its formalised and singular scientific character which led it to be divorced from moral and ethical concerns. He shared Malthus’s conviction that a legal right to welfare was ill-founded and he argued against it.


Tocqueville highlighted the economic causes of pauperism, yet he believed that accepting the principle of a legal right to welfare was the chief cause of the growth of pauperism in England; it had ‘fatal consequences’. He and Beaumont had already shown crime to be a social and historical fact providentially ordained to increase as civilization developed. Though economic and social factors – especially population growth – contributed to rises or falls in crimes, these were principally affected by the kind of prison régime a society adopted; the way crime was tackled could retard or accelerate its growth. Tocqueville believed the same to be true of poverty. It, too, was a fact providentially ordained to grow as civilization developed, and the way it was dealt with affected its evolution. Whilst Tocqueville considered poverty and crime to be linked to the progress of civilization, he believed they stemmed from the same fundamental attribute of human nature: both were consequences of individuals’ ‘natural passion for idleness’.57 Because he believed this to be so, he thought both the penitentiary and any method of poor relief had to instruct individuals in the laudatory habits of hard work and thrift; they had to conquer this ‘natural passion’. He thought individuals were motivated to work by two stimuli. The first was survival, and the second, which affected a small number of people, was the desire to improve their material conditions of existence.58 Experience, he contended, had shown that by admitting the principle of a legal right to welfare, the stimulus for individual survival was either weakened or destroyed. Yet the same was not true of the desire of a small number of individuals to better their fortunes. The inevitable consequence of this was ‘the most generous, most active, most industrious part of the nation helps to provide the basics to those who do nothing or employ their labour poorly’.59 A basic injustice existed here. Why should the industrious and hard-working, those who contributed to the material improvement of a nation, support the idle and feckless? At the same time, however, help should be given to those who, through circumstance or tragedy, found themselves poor. The principle of a legal right to welfare, however, made it in practice impossible to distinguish between the undeserving and the deserving poor;60 his judgement was identical to that stated in the appendix on pauperism in America in the 1833 prison report, and was reinforced by what he observed in his travels in England the same year.61 There were other important problems associated with accepting the principle of a legal right to welfare. Based on an ‘ideal of perfection which human nature does not incarnate’ it unwittingly served to corrupt individual morals rather than elevate them.62 By ‘creating an idle and lazy class which lives at the expense of the industrious and working class’, it ‘reproduced all the vices of the monachal system, less the high moral and religious ideals which often accompanied it’.63 It was a ‘poison seed’ whose ‘effects worked no less grievously on morality as on public prosperity’.64 The legal right to welfare also worked to undermine the principle of right itself. Tocqueville believed rights were wedded to responsibilities; citizens could


not legitimately claim rights if they did not exercise the responsibilities that accompanied them. He also thought rights were ‘granted to individuals in consideration of some personal advantage they had gained over their fellows’.65 This definition corresponded better to the meaning of privilege rather than right. Nevertheless, a legal right to welfare contradicted both these definitions. It acknowledged individuals could receive assistance without fulfilling any duties; it rewarded socially irresponsible behaviour; and it was conferred not in consideration of merit but in recognition of an ‘acknowledged inferiority’.66 But how did it undermine the principle of right itself? Tocqueville believed ‘there was nothing which, in general, raises and sustains the human spirit to such a height as the idea of rights. One finds in the idea of right something virile and great that removes the mark of entreaty from its petition, and places he who reclaims it on the same plane as he who grants it.’67 The legal right to welfare, however, rather ‘than elevating the heart’ of man ‘lowers it’. It was the ‘authentic mark of the misery, weakness, and misconduct of he who is protected by it’.68 In this way it not only degraded the principle of right, it debased and humiliated the poor. The legal right to welfare, in undermining the principle of right and its uplifting effect of rendering equal both supplicant and benefactor, in effect shattered the bonds between them: Far from uniting these two rival nations, who have existed since the beginning of the world and who are called the rich and the poor, into a single people, it breaks the only link which could be established between them. It ranges each one under a banner, tallies them, and, bringing them face to face, prepares them for combat.69 In their 1833 report Tocqueville and Beaumont remarked on one of the elements explaining this development.70 They observed that wealthy individuals were driven by a powerful sentiment of humanity to better the lot of the poor. This was a beautiful and morally elevating spectacle, but the phenomenon itself was not without its difficulties. The well-to-do, having never experienced poverty themselves, ‘exaggerate[d] the sufferings privation cause the needy to endure’; this induced them to give the poor much more than they needed.71 By admitting the principle of a legal right to welfare and thereby conferring on the state the duty to provide for the poor, the development was accelerated. Predisposed to beautiful theories and prone to the influence of vested interests, the state would expand provision beyond what was reasonable, and would, at the same time, extend its influence over society at large. In order to pay for these developments it would have to raise taxes. The inevitable consequence of this would be to alienate the wealthy from the poor.72 In this way the two classes were divorced from each other, and the seeds of class conflict were sown. The principle of a legal right to welfare spawned two related difficulties associated with class conflict. The first involved creating a permanent and


stationary underclass. The second entailed sundering the bonds which existed in local communities. By admitting the principle of a legal right to welfare the poor were given no incentive to work or save. As the principle ensured they were never animated by a survival instinct – their basic needs having been satisfied – they became entirely estranged from the ‘spirit of foresight and saving’. The lack of foresight extended to the population itself. Here, Tocqueville reiterated the observations Malthus made in formulating his population principle. The legal right to welfare lifted the moral preventative checks on the poor, causing a rapid increase in births and vice.73 According to Tocqueville this led to a curious development, one contradicting the general movement of civilization itself. As civilization developed, and the majority of social classes became more refined, the poor found themselves moving backwards toward ‘barbarism’. ‘Placed in the middle of the wonders of civilization, [the pauper] becomes more akin, through his ideas and tastes, to primitive man.’74 The legal right to welfare not only caused this backward movement in the ideas, manners and sentiments of the poor, it deprived them of individual liberty. Tocqueville showed how the English Poor Laws, because of the way they were administered, forced the poor to remain within their own parish in order to receive assistance. Because assistance was administered at the parish level, parishes were highly resistant to accepting the poor from other regions. This created a situation in which the individual interest of each parish was defended with such vigour ‘it was more active than the best organised national police could ever have been.’ This had the effect of ‘immobilising’ a sixth of the English population, ensuring it was ‘bound to the land just as the peasants of the Middle Ages. The Glebe forced the individual against his will to remain in his place of birth; the legal right to welfare prevents him from wishing to leave.’75 Such was the difference between the two systems. The principle of the legal right to welfare, though emanating from a spirit of humanity integral to the development of civilization and democracy, had the unexpected and lamentable consequence of arresting an entire class. It created a rigid inequality where, because of the general movement of democracy, one should not have existed. Admitting the principle of a legal right to welfare had the additional and unforeseen consequence of undermining bonds within local communities. In his introductory remarks to the second part of the first report, Tocqueville acknowledged two different types of beneficence. One was private, the other social. Private charity, made a virtue by Christianity, was instinctive, ardent but temperamental. Social welfare was rational, moderate and systematic. It suited modern democratic societies and it was the origin of the principle of the legal right to welfare. Private charity existed between individuals, but social welfare meant ‘society itself care[d] for the misfortunes of its members’.76 Tocqueville’s depiction of private charity and social welfare became crucial to his attack on the principle of the legal right to welfare.


For the first time in his report Tocqueville focused on an important element of private charity in his discussion on how the legal right to welfare undermined the bonds between the poor and other social classes. Whereas the legal right to charity eroded associative bonds, private charity created them. His observations were similar to those made by liberal political economists such as Duchâtel and social investigators like Villermé and bore an equally striking resemblance to arguments made by legitimists, including Villeneuve-Bargemont. Like them, he showed how private charity both in principle and in practice strengthened the bonds of community. In principle private charity created these ‘precious’ links through its effect on both rich and poor. The rich, in personally undertaking to help the poor, became genuinely interested in their condition and their improvement. The poor, in obtaining an assistance to which they had no right and which they feared they might not obtain, ‘was drawn toward’ the rich out of recognition and thanks. In this way a ‘moral link’ was created between the two classes.77 In practice these ties were maintained and strengthened because they were personal and existed locally. In this way, just as he and Beaumont had shown in their observations on patronage and elsewhere in their 1833 report,78 charity responded to individual needs and was organised with active community participation and support. The creation and apparent success of a number of French voluntary schemes and emulation societies (sociétés de patronage, sociétés d’émulation), including agricultural colonies, was taken as proof of their success by individuals of even the most diametrically opposed political persuasions, such as Duchâtel and Villeneuve-Bargemont.79 Tocqueville agreed, and, like them, highlighted the beneficial effects private charity had in elevating moral standards among the poor and safeguarding social peace.80 He went on to show how private charity buttressed the principle of right itself. Though he confused privileges with rights in his report, he nevertheless understood both to be wedded to responsibility. Neither rights nor privileges were free of obligation. And an individual’s obligation to self and family was basic to all others. The principle of a legal right to welfare removed this basic obligation from the poor, rendering them unfit to discharge any others. Private charity, however, undertook through patronage to help individuals fulfil their basic obligations. Its purpose was to free individuals from poverty by helping them to become self-sufficient, and to make them independent. Tocqueville believed there was a French historical precedent to this idea of individual independence with the emergence of the independent peasant farmer, a subject he examined in his 1836 essay for the Westminster Review, The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution, and one he explored at greater length in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution; as with so many of his considerations on political economy and poverty, he drew on rural economy and society for lessons. But he also thought private charity corresponded with the general movement of


civilization and the development of democracy which was accompanied by an increasing number of individuals enjoying rights. Private charity served this development, but a legal right to welfare corrupted it. Despite the important advantages of private charity, it had a significant limitation. It lacked the systematic character of social efforts to ease the sufferings of the poor, and it was more arbitrary and limited in scope. Tocqueville believed these limitations could be overcome, however, and his ideas about it had important political consequences for the French. Private charity’s great strengths lay in its local nature and the way it established personal ties between individuals. These strengths were weaknesses in the context of a modern economy, one subject to numerous economic crises. Yet Tocqueville contemplated ways by which they could be reestablished as strengths. The problem was to find a way in which the local and personal character of private charity could be wedded to the scale and efficiency of a form of welfare better suited to the vicissitudes of the modern economy. The answer lay in creating a political climate conducive to the creation and growth of private charities and, most importantly, linking these private initiatives together. This kind of federation Tocqueville observed in America; its keenest advocates, among them Channing and Tuckerman, convinced him of its merits. He was also impressed with similar proposals made and experiments undertaken by leading French philanthropists. Yet in France the July Monarchy restricted the creation of many associations and hampered the workings of others. In an attempt to quash what it believed to be suspicious radical and legitimist activity, the Guizot Ministry passed a law on 10 April 1834 restricting the right of association. Though the government tolerated a number of charitable, trade and industrial associations, and in 1837 permitted mutual aid societies, prefects were instructed to scrutinise and report on their activities.81 Tocqueville’s belief that private charity could be adapted to democracy through policies favouring the growth and federation of charitable associations was, along with his favourable assessment in Democracy in America (1835) of associations in general, an important contribution to the French national debate on the freedom of association spawned by the law of 1834. It was a political statement, too, for it justified the role of notables in local and regional politics. It also endorsed local liberty and independence, and opposed further encroachments by central government in local affairs. Tocqueville restated the benefits of private and federated charities in all his writings on poverty. They appeared in a number of studies on social policy he undertook in the 1840s as head of the section examining moral, social and political issues (section morale) for the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences,82 and they would have been included in an abandoned report which was entitled The State of Moral Doctrines in the Nineteenth Century and their Application to Politics and Administration to be part of the Academy’s Tableau général de l’état et des progrès de science morales et politiques de 1789 à 1830.


Nevertheless, Tocqueville acknowledged times when associations might be unable to provide adequate assistance to the poor. His initial assertion that poverty became more of a problem as civilization developed was tied to an additional problem – one explored fully in Democracy in America (1840)83 – namely that economic crises of the modern industrial economy were more frequent, protracted and severe than those of the earlier agrarian economies.84 At times of crises these associations might be unable to cope with the demands placed upon them, and it was then legitimate for the state to give them emergency funds.85 This kind of temporary assistance was legitimate according to Tocqueville, though he acknowledged the justice of more permanent and legal assistance for the elderly without family, the infirm, the mentally ill and abandoned children.86 Nonetheless, this kind of support had to acknowledge the independence of local associations to spend funds as they saw fit and could only be ‘as immediate, as unpredictable and as temporary as the ill [crisis] itself’.87 Any permanent arrangement would have catastrophic consequences. Legislators needed to be reminded of this because, as he showed in Democracy in America (1840), the development of democracy meant public opinion exerted increased pressure on legislators to adopt a permanent and legal right to welfare.88 Tocqueville concluded his first report on pauperism by raising the issue of how the role of private charity might be expanded and the instances of state assistance reduced. In order to do that, however, he had to contemplate an economic model which, in conforming to the general movement of democracy, was subject to fewer economic crises than that associated with industry. Such an economy required its principal branches, agriculture, trade and industry, to be in equilibrium, but where agriculture occupied the highest position in the natural hierarchy of employments for a nation’s economic capital. This kind of economy, one valued by Smith and Malthus, was the surest way to lessen the frequency and severity of economic crises and to reduce pauperism. He also thought that pauperism could be further diminished by expanding the numbers, and considering new types, of associations. And he considered new ways in which property ownership could be more widely extended throughout society. The prison report of 1833 revealed an important benefit of this was lower levels of crime,89 and Democracy in America (1840) showed how it lessened the risk of revolution.90 His notes from his 1835 journey to England and Ireland, however, indicate his principal concern: property ownership established the basis for individual independence and was therefore the foundation of liberty.91

British poverty and political economy At the end of his first report on pauperism Tocqueville promised a second report on the preventative measures that could be employed to lessen pauperism. He promised this report for 1836, but only undertook its composi-


tion a year later; it was never completed. The reasons why he never finished the report are not clear. Certainly, the success of Democracy in America (1835) led to other projects, including the 1836 essay commissioned by Mill for the Westminster Review92 and the composition of Democracy in America (1840), which he began in 1836 but had been considering as early as 1835.93 In 1836 he also began to embark on a political career, first by taking tentative but unsuccessful steps towards seeking nomination to the general departmental council of the Manche,94 and then in 1837 by standing as a candidate for legislative elections. His election in January 1838 to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences created a state of mind in which Tocqueville felt himself pulled in many different directions by the obligations of politics, those of the Academy, a very strong desire to finish Democracy in America, and the frustration of being too busy to complete an important study on pauperism. Nonetheless, the issue of pauperism continued to remain important to him after the publication of his initial report of 1835. It was an important consideration during the whole of his journey to England and Ireland later in that year, and it was the central issue of a new preface and a new lengthy introduction to the 1836 edition of The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France. This used new statistical research on the link between poverty and crime by the Belgian statistician Édouard Ducpétiaux and William Crawford’s official prison report for the British government.95 It was crucial to many of Tocqueville’s administrative and political writings of the 1840s, including his reports on abandoned children, for the general departmental council of the Manche, his six Letters on the Internal Situation of France of 1843 and his contributions of 1847 to the political programme for the Young Left, The Middle Class and the People and a fragment on social policy.96 Tocqueville’s journey to England and Ireland was important for a wider study of democracy. As early as 1832, when he was contemplating the kind of work he might write, his principal consideration was something that would treat ‘subjects which had more or less direct links with the social and political state’ of France.97 Whilst Democracy in America (1835) analysed many of those topics, he believed a general revision of the work necessary.98 This he never undertook. Instead, he decided to complete his explorations by writing another comprehensive study.99 To this end he thought he should consider the democratic revolution within a wider European context,100 and it was for this reason, along with others, that he undertook his journey to England in 1835.101 As early as 1833 when he first travelled to England, he believed, mistakenly as he discovered, America and England to be comparable societies at a similar stage of historical development. When he first arrived in England he realised just how different the two societies were.102 During his second trip he went with the expressed purpose to consider how Britain, though different from America103 but part of the same revolution which affected


the young republic, ‘the European revolution’, the ‘great Democratic Revolution’,104 might serve to instruct the French.105 Tocqueville’s English and Irish diaries and correspondence reveal his interest in a number of topics, including the roles of central and local governments, the workings of crown and assizes courts, the nature and role of the English and Anglo–Irish aristocracies, the character of the working classes and the peasantry, and the composition and role of political parties. Of all the issues he explored the ones he attached the greatest importance to were political economy and poverty. There were good reasons for this. He had completed his first report on pauperism just before leaving for England and its subject matter remained at the forefront of his thoughts. His study of Villeneuve-Bargemont, at the end of 1834, deepened his knowledge of pauperism and made him aware of important differences between the French and English economies, ones the journey would help him assess. His lasting preoccupation with pauperism and its relation to crime ensured he followed closely the latest developments in statistics. This he did first by establishing new contacts with individuals, such as Charles Babbage, who were at the forefront of the development of the statistical sciences,106 then by renewing old contacts such as Lord Landsdowne (President of the London Statistical Society) and finally by participating in sessions devoted to statistical research at the fifth annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dublin in August 1835.107 Tocqueville and Beaumont were honoured guests at that meeting. They were among those invited to a special dinner party hosted at Viceregal Lodge, and they were among the select few to attend the University dinner at the close of the conference.108 Though they seemed to enjoy the hospitality of their hosts, they were enlightened by the papers given. Tocqueville certainly derived important knowledge from James Cleland’s paper on the Glasgow Bridewell,109 material which found its way into the 1836 preface to The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France.110 He may well have also attended W.R. Greg’s report on the Social Statistics of the Netherlands, a work compiled on the model of Guerry’s Moral Statistics of France,111 and one Tocqueville may have judged useful to Guerry who was then engaged in writing a Comparative Moral Statistics of France and England, a work he had asked Tocqueville to assist him with.112 Tocqueville’s interest in the relation between political economy and poverty was enhanced through his correspondence with Nassau Senior between February and March 1835. This contains a dialogue about Democracy in America (1835) over detailed issues relating to political economy and pauperism, which do not exist in any of Tocqueville’s other correspondence about that work at this time. Whether he addressed questions or criticisms from Kergorlay, Royer-Collard, Corcelle or Stoffels, Tocqueville spoke solely of general ideas or motivations,113 but with Nassau Senior the issues he discussed were specific and detailed: questions about


inflation, forms of poor relief, the nature of wealth and the distribution of property.114 With his second journey to England planned for April, the opportunity presented itself to discuss these topics in greater detail; they would have been uppermost in his thoughts. Tocqueville and Beaumont left Paris for London on 21 April 1835. They arrived two days later, and three days later they had found lodgings on Regent Street. Like their accommodation on Broadway in New York four years earlier, they stayed in the most ‘fashionable’ part of London. They were surrounded by ‘fashionable’ people and considered themselves to be ‘devilishly fashionable’. They were ‘inundated’ with invitations and were honoured guests at the Athenaeum.115 They attended numerous receptions – including a large anti-slavery assembly hosted by Lord Brougham – grand dinners, and led an exciting life. Tocqueville’s first impressions of this second trip to England contrasted sharply with those of his first visit. Then, though the prison study served as the ‘best passport’ to ‘the political and scientific world’,116 it was useless in gaining him access to the social and cultural élite. At that time Tocqueville wrote to Beaumont that ‘in America we were a great deal, in Paris we are very little, but I assure you that one must fall under zero and assume what mathematicians call negative numbers to calculate what I am here.’117 In 1835 their time in London became so frenetic and intense, however, that Tocqueville soon desired a calmer environment. At the end of May he moved to Hampstead and there, finding peace, was able to assist Henry Reeve in the translation of Democracy in America (1835).118 During this time he was able to meet with Mill and his disciple John Roebuck, Senior and a host of other individuals including Lord Minto, Lord Radnor, and the historian Henry Hallam. His conversations with Mill and Lord Minto focused on the issue of governmental and administrative centralisation, while those with Roebuck were on English radicalism – a topic of great interest to Tocqueville and one where he concluded that English radicals were different and more sensible than their French counterparts119 – and discussions with Senior touched on the privileges accompanying wealth. At the end of June Tocqueville and Beaumont travelled to Birmingham, and it was there that the link between political economy and poverty eclipsed their other interests. Tocqueville was struck by the contrast between rural England and its industrial cities. Birmingham was ‘an immense workshop, a giant forge, a vast shop’. It resembled the ‘interior of a mine of the New World’ where ‘everything [wa]s black, dirty and obscure’. Its inhabitants hadn’t ‘a moment to themselves. They work[ed] as if they had to become rich tonight and die tomorrow.’120 Manchester appeared worse. Covered in ‘thick and black smoke’ through which ‘the sun appears like an orb without beams’, the city was home to large factories with thousands of workers. Its working-class population lived in abject poverty and squalor. Their neighbourhoods, ‘receptacles for vice and misery’, contained streams and rivers through


which ‘flowed muddy and fetid water which the works of industry have dyed with a thousand colours’, ‘the Styx of this new hell’.121 Yet from this ‘filthy sewer, pure gold flowed’. It created great wealth at the same time as great poverty: the division between the classes could not have been greater. It brought together ‘science, industry, love of gain, English capital’ and a working-class population that was reduced to savagery. It united ‘a poor people and a rich people, an enlightened people and an ignorant people, civilization and barbarity’.122 Manchester dramatically confirmed the belief held by legitimists such as Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont that industrial capitalism led to the emergence of a new feudalism. After seeing the city, Tocqueville was convinced of it too. In both his second report on pauperism of 1837 and Democracy in America (1840) he expressed that belief.123 But when he travelled to Ireland he saw something different. There, an old feudalism was fully entrenched. Yet this feudalism existed within an economic context that was quite different from the middle ages. It was now rooted in an economy open to international trade and subject to all its vicissitudes. It applied the principles of industry to agriculture, and the consequences for the poor were dramatic. Tocqueville’s Irish diaries and correspondence reveal how he was shocked by the extremes of poverty and wealth that co-existed there. The country offered the spectacle of ‘two entirely distinct nations on the same soil. One rich, civilized, prosperous; the other poor, half savage and afflicted with all the miseries with which the Lord might torment men.’124 A number of factors contributed to this. Religious differences between Catholics and Protestants played a significant role. The wealthier and ruling Protestant population treated impoverished Catholics with ‘an extraordinary hatred and contempt’125 and this reinforced the deleterious effects of two other factors: one social and political, the other economic. Tocqueville observed that England and Ireland shared the same language, social constitution, laws and government, yet the two countries were radically different. Their difference was explained by a powerful aristocracy which reigned over both nations. In England this aristocracy brought many benefits, but in Ireland it caused the most appalling miseries.126 He showed how in England the aristocracy had its roots in the same country over which it ruled. Because its origins were ‘lost in the obscurity of past centuries’ it differed very little from the people and could be easily assimilated with it. It shared an interest with the people in resisting the unrestricted growth of sovereign power, and as such gained the respect of other classes. As ‘money which everyone can wish to gain came to replace little by little birth which depends on God alone’, its ranks were opened. This further forged the links between classes and strengthened the bonds within the nation.127 In Ireland, however, the same aristocracy found itself in different circumstances. Here it had been established through conquest, which the subject population had not forgotten. At the time of Ireland’s subjection ‘the victor had almost all


the wisdom of civilization and the vanquished was still in a state of semibarbarism’. With superior intelligence and morality the English aristocracy remained entirely remote from the ignorant and wild Irish populace.128 It despised the religion of the people over which it ruled, and did everything in its power to remain firmly rooted to England. An insuperable barrier was erected between the indigenous population and its ruling class. The result, an aristocracy which gave the English ‘one of the best governments in the world’ gave ‘the Irish one of the most detested imaginable’.129 The disastrous consequences of these social and political factors were exacerbated by an important economic element. As the branches of England’s and Ireland’s economies were open to international trade they were subject to significant competitive pressures. In order to remain competitive landlords lowered the price of their produce. This had the welcome effect of lowering the cost of staples which in turn allowed both wages and the price of goods to fall.130 Economic reality appeared to confirm Ricardo’s central thesis of the Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock. Tocqueville, however, was not easily swayed by theory alone. He observed the pressures on wages to be continuous whilst the fall in the price of staples to be accidental, the result of good harvests;131 here, his belief may well have been upheld by Malthus’s critique of Ricardo and legitimist attacks on unfettered international trade.132 When he travelled to Ireland he saw the extent to which international trade brutally forced down the price of staples. This had many consequences. It forced small producers out of the market so that there was virtually no small-hold farming in Ireland.133 But as there was very little industry to absorb this population, peasants could only find employment as farm labourers. The result was, as legitimists like Bigot de Morogues and Villeneuve-Bargemont had already observed, agriculture became industrialised.134 Just as there were severe downward pressures on the wages of industrial workers, so agricultural workers found their wages subject to the same forces. In Ireland international trade appeared to magnify these developments. Landlords, being constrained to lower the price of their commodities, were unable to accumulate sufficient profits without substantially lowering the wages of their labourers. Farm labourers’ incomes became so small they were barely sustaining. Competitive pressures also hit landlords, who had no income except from their Irish estates. Here Tocqueville observed ‘almost all Irish landowners were in distress’. This prevented them from raising wages but it also restricted them from helping the poor;135 The assistance the poor were able to obtain, as his visit to a poor-house in Dublin made clear, was inadequate.136 The repercussions were numerous and severe. Ruled by an aristocracy which was divorced from the local population, subject to the rigors and vagaries of unfettered international trade, the Irish populace not only endured extreme poverty, it became barbarised, unruly and violent. Poverty drove many to petty theft as well as more violent crime,


as Tocqueville learned from attending numerous sessions of the assize courts.137 But it also corrupted political virtues, making a people incapable of governing themselves,138 and created the conditions for violent insurrection.139 Yet religious virtues were firmly rooted in the local populace, so that many phenomena associated with poverty, illegitimate births for instance, were practically non-existent in Ireland.140 Here the obvious benefits of religious morals were noted by Tocqueville and Beaumont although these benefits could not outweigh the corrupting influences created by the singular and destructive union of political and economic factors to which the Irish were subject. Tocqueville’s journey to England and Ireland proved very instructive. He learned a great deal about the nature of aristocracy, and how one set of circumstances could bring about the world’s most enlightened aristocracy whilst different conditions spawned one of ‘civilization’s most selfish, isolated and detestable élites’. This knowledge he used in his comparative assessment of English and French aristocracies in his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution and his later judgement of the French aristocracy and its relation to the state in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. The journey to England and Ireland enabled him to examine, at first hand, the administrative workings of the English Poor Law system, and the effects of the recent changes to it in the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. He was able to assess the economic, social and political repercussions of the growth of manufacturing and large-scale industry, add depth to his judgement of liberal political economy and continue exploring the consequences of industry. He undertook all these things soon after returning from his travels. In 1837 he wrote his second report on pauperism; in 1838 and 1839 he completed the final parts of Democracy in America (1840); and in the 1840s he took over editorial control of the newspaper Le Commerce and wrote a political and social programme for a new political grouping called ‘The Young Left’. Although the impact of the journey was first revealed in the 1836 essay, its effects on Tocqueville’s thoughts on poverty became apparent very soon afterwards.

Associations, political economy and the poor A few months after returning from England and Ireland, Tocqueville may well have undertaken an examination of the problem of pauperism in Normandy. The results of his investigation were submitted in a short essay called Letter on Pauperism in Normandy. The commission and date of the Letter have not been ascertained, but it is possible to speculate on a number of possibilities. It may have been written either as an introductory work for his brother Hippolyte, or as a short piece Tocqueville may have wanted to publish before the 1836 elections to the departmental general council of the Manche in order to enhance his chances of nomination, though he believed


Democracy in America the best work for that.141 It may also have been written for Hippolyte as a way of promoting his chances in the election. Hippolyte owned the Château de Nacqueville in the Contentin, and his interest in local Norman affairs was great – he had published two widely publicised tracts under the title Lettres aux Normands.142 He was a prominent royalist in a position to influence individuals in Tocqueville’s favour, especially as Alexis believed the royalists would readily adopt him as their candidate.143 Tocqueville’s relations with his brother Hippolyte were never as good as those with Édouard. He thought Hippolyte dogmatic and dangerously wedded to the Bourbon cause,144 but these were minor differences, ones that would not have prevented Hippolyte helping Alexis in the elections. The greater obstacle to his assistance may have been Tocqueville’s marriage to Mary Mottley in October 1835. This damaged relations between the two. Alexis believed Mary unfairly judged by Hippolyte and his wife Émile,145 and we may speculate that perhaps the Letter on Pauperism in Normandy had been the expression of a desire on his part to establish better relations with his brother. Whether he wrote the Letter to demonstrate a knowledge of local affairs and thus enhance his chances of nomination, or as a work for his brother, or both, it may be possible to speculate upon the text being written in the summer or early autumn of 1836. A number of elements suggest this might be the case. For instance, at the end of the first report on pauperism Tocqueville indicated a more thorough analysis of voluntary arrangements to combat and prevent poverty should be undertaken.146 The Letter on Pauperism in Normandy examined just such a scheme. Tocqueville had been preoccupied with the connexion between poverty and crime since writing the 1830 preliminary report on prisons. In 1830 he and Beaumont considered how beggars, vagrants and those without work were not by nature criminals but, through circumstances, might be driven to petty crime.147 In both the new preface and introduction to the 1836 edition of The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France they revisited the problem of poverty and crime, but gave it greater prominence than they did in either 1830 or 1833. Their journey to England and Ireland, the conversations they had there with leading judges and lawyers, the numerous criminal and civil trials they attended, their participation in sessions dealing with statistics at the fifth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences in Dublin in August 1835,148 all served to maintain their preoccupation with the links between poverty and crime. Tocqueville’s Letter, in giving a central place to an examination of associations to combat vagrancy and begging, was an indication of that long-standing interest, which he hoped to pursue more fully. The second issue discussed in the Letter was the creation of a mutual fund which would extend to rural communities the equivalent of savings banks, which existed in a few cities. This kind of mutual fund would encourage poor peasants to accumulate financial savings, something they were not


accustomed to doing.149 Tocqueville was fascinated by this idea. Savings banks had already been established for French urban workers, but their number was small. The idea of extending the principle of these banks to rural France was new. He believed the example of more established savings banks in England and Scotland might prove instructive to the French, but he believed this idea needed further exploration.150 He undertook it in his second report on pauperism of 1837, where he was able to use material Beaumont accumulated for him in 1837 on English and Scottish savings banks.151 Tocqueville examined four principal themes in his Letter on Pauperism in Normandy; yet all that remains is his analysis of the fourth one. This dealt with ways of combating the vices and lack of foresight of the poor. As a remedy for their vices, he suggested the creation of a local association which could provide for mutual assistance and eradicate vagrancy and beggary. The creation of a common fund within the association would encourage the development of foresight among the poor by promoting the idea of savings. Tocqueville’s recommendation to establish a Communal Association for the Abolition of Vagrancy and Beggary (Association Communale pour l’extinction du Vagabondage et de la Mendicité) was rooted in his favourable assessment of agricultural colonies, which appeared in the 1833 prison investigation. Like these colonies, the association would be voluntary and local. It would encompass two, possibly three, communes and be open to individuals who paid an annual subscription fee. Its principal role was to assist the local poor.152 The ways it did this, however, were many and varied. As with agricultural colonies, where members contributed according to income and the amount of influence they wished to exercise, so it was with the association. The contributions of poorer members would be placed in the common fund. In times of hardship they could draw upon it. In this way the association functioned like a mutual aid society. The common fund, established by individual contributions, introduced the important idea of financial savings, as in savings banks.153 Tocqueville believed that this bolstered the voluntary principle, because as the fund grew so the association would attract more members and the amount each would have to contribute could be lowered. The voluntary principle was further buttressed both because membership was voluntary, so that individuals could join and leave when they wished, and because the association was under no legal compulsion to assist all the local poor. It was able to discriminate between deserving and undeserving poor. In this way it ensured charity never became ‘an intolerable burden’ for the members of the association.154 The association offered an additional benefit to members and the local poor: it protected them from the pernicious influence of vagrants and beggars, as it had the power to prevent them entering the communes and could expel them.155 Tocqueville thought this role could be greatly enhanced if the association could engage the informal co-operation of prefects and the courts.156 In the idea of a Communal Association lay the principle of self-interest


rightly understood and the virtue of social solidarity. The association would, in eradicating those ‘terrible miseries which threaten more greatly the property of the well-to-do than the subsistence of the poor’, help the rich understand that ‘Providence has united them with the poor and that there are no misfortunes which are entirely isolated in this world’.157 Just as in the first report on pauperism, where he showed how a legal right to welfare undermined the principle of right, by removing a fundamental responsibility, here he showed how the privilege of wealth could be preserved only if certain duties were fulfilled. He understood, however, why this was a complex problem. Already in Democracy in America (1835) he revealed the extent to which wealth and materialist values made individuals complacent, apathetic towards politics and indifferent to others. By arguing that property itself was threatened by poverty, he sought to appeal to individuals’ enlightened self-interest, hoping the middle classes and the rich would recognise the benefits they would derive from helping the poor. In this way he sought to understand the concept of duty in a new way. Whereas it was traditionally associated with honour, he returned to Democracy in America (1835) and his inventive adaptation of the principle of false honour, linking duty with a new concept: self-interest. This simple idea acquired real political urgency in the 1840s, for by that time rich and poor were separated by what appeared to be an unbridgeable divide: they had succumbed to collective individualism where they were separate societies isolated from each other. This mirrored conditions in Ireland and it recalled a similar French development a century earlier, the separation of the nobility from the middle classes. It was this that spawned the French Revolution. And in his essay The Middle Class and the People, written a few months before the 1848 Revolution, he warned the French against it happening again.158 The theme of social division, the result of rigid inequalities in the age of equality, underlay the second report on pauperism of 1837. Whilst he developed a number of topics of the Letter and the first report, he was mostly interested in exploring ways in which rigid inequalities might be weakened and reduced and social divisions diminished. To this end he explored ways in which property ownership could be spread throughout society. It was, as he contended later in Democracy in America (1840), the surest way to lessen the threat of revolution.159 Tocqueville’s second report on pauperism was probably written in the spring or summer of 1837. It was advertised for the 1838 Reports of the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg, but failed to appear. The text was never completed, but what was written reveals the extent to which Tocqueville thought carefully about the relation between political economy, poverty and democracy. He sought to write something definitive, and to that end he drew on Malthus’s Essay, social and statistical investigations, including VilleneuveBargemont’s Économie politique chrétienne and Adolphe d’Angeville’s famous 1836 Essai de la statistique de la population française;160 studies on agricultural


colonies such as L.F. Huerne de Pommeuse’s Des colonies agricoles et de leurs avantages of 1832;161 and an important number of works on savings banks and monts-de-piété (charitable pawnshops) by leading economists and reformers. Agathon Prévost’s Notice sur les caisses d’épargne and Félix de Viville’s Sur l’organisation des caisses d’épargne et des monts-de-piété, were also particularly important to him. A good many French and English documents were also used. These included parliamentary reports on savings banks written by the liberal Charles Dupin, articles from the Revue Britannique on developments in English savings banks, legislative documents from England, and the text of the famous speech on savings banks of December 1834 by the liberal Benjamin Delessert. Tocqueville began his report by reminding his readers of the conclusion of his first investigation. There, he showed how both private charity and public welfare were ‘powerless to cure the ills of the impoverished classes’.162 In this report, however, he moved to classify these impoverished classes into two broad categories. The first was the poor who ‘belong to the agricultural classes’, and the second was the poor ‘who depend on the industrial classes’.163 Tocqueville carefully considered this formulation. It suggested the rural poor had greater independence than the poor in industry, but to prove his point he proceeded in a seemingly roundabout way by contrasting two types of rural economy. The first, particular to France, embodied an ‘equality of shares’ which had ‘pervaded manners’ and was established in law. The other, characteristic of other European economies, especially England’s and Ireland’s, was characterised by an agglomeration of property in the hands of a few.164 The first was decentralised, the second, centralised. In focusing on the distinctiveness of France’s rural economy, on its decentralised character, Tocqueville anticipated his startling claim in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution that revolution broke out in France not because it lagged behind other European nations but because it was ahead of them, as property ownership and the ‘levelling-up process’ had been carried farther than ‘in any other country’.165 In his discussion on poverty and his analysis of the French and English rural economies, however, he presented his readers with economists’ theoretical arguments in favour of the centralisation of land, but showed, with a short history of enclosure, the practical and disastrous consequences of theory. He summarised the arguments used by physiocrats and English political economists such as Nassau Senior in favour of large estates.166 He showed how these estates, because they offered economies of scale, provided the conditions for innovation and profitable agricultural investment. He contrasted theory with practice, and recalled how enclosure, by aggregating lands, placed large numbers of individuals in a state of dependency, either by driving individuals out of agriculture into manufacturing or turning them into agricultural labourers. This had several outcomes, but the overall effect was to lower wages both in manufacturing and agriculture and raise levels of rural and urban poverty.167 By way of contrast to the English economy, Tocqueville showed how the


French economy, a rural economy where property was widely distributed, might have been slower to innovate and less attractive to investment, but had social advantages which far outweighed any economic handicap. In France where land was much more widely distributed, rural poverty was much less of a problem than in England.168 For this sole reason he concluded that the best way to guard against rural poverty was to ensure land was widely distributed,169 though, as his 1843 report on common lands for the general departmental council of the Manche revealed, he did warn against too small a division which made any investment uneconomic.170 He also gave economic reasons for a wide distribution of property. Tocqueville believed centralisation of lands might offer short-term economic benefits, but in the long term it undermined the laudatory habits of industry and thrift, sapping the rural population of enterprise and initiative and ultimately eroding any short-term economic gains that might be derived from centralisation.171 His observations during travels in Ireland were proof of this, and the argument reappeared in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.172 This wide distribution of land ensured greater equality of conditions in France’s rural economy. It conformed with the development of democracy, and guaranteed the personal independence of farmers, as he would later demonstrate in Democracy in America (1840).173 The same, however, was not true of industry. It had an ‘aristocratic form’.174 This new feudalism, as legitimists liked to call it, created large and rigid inequalities, subjugated the working classes, created new dependencies in the democratic era, was subject to frequent and unforeseen economic crises,175 and caused widespread poverty. The contrast could not have been greater between the decentralised rural economy, with its low rates of poverty and independent farmers, and centralised industry with its dependent and impoverished workforce. Unlike legitimists, who highlighted this contrast in order to conclude industry should be restrained and agriculture enhanced,176 Tocqueville, who favoured agriculture over industry but thought the two were complementary,177 examined ways in which property could be more widely distributed in the industrial economy, thereby lessening dependency, economic crises and poverty.178 Tocqueville explored a number of ways ‘to give the industrial worker . . . the feeling for and the habits of property’.179 His analysis began by examining two ways this had been attempted. The first, and simplest, involved industrialists offering workers a share in their firms. By making workers partowners of factories this would have ‘similar effects to those brought about by the division of landed property among the agrarian class’,180 although Tocqueville acknowledged this simple idea was unpopular among industrialists. While he argued it was in their self-interest to put it into practice, he contended it would be neither just nor useful to legally oblige them to do so. The second idea, one later examined and rejected as impractical by the leading social investigator Louis Villermé,181 entailed workers forming asso-


ciations which would enable them to become factory owners themselves. By creating a common fund they could unite their small individual contributions and direct them to a single purpose. This kind of scheme, organised in a similar way to a mutual aid society, was, like those societies, in its infancy. Tocqueville conceded that the brief history of these associations had shown they were not very successful. Yet he believed the idea was sound and thought they would be more successful in future.182 Though these ideas were suited to democracy and might later be achieved in practice, Tocqueville believed one idea which had been tried out showed real promise. It was rooted in the simple principle of encouraging workers to save so they could build up a capital fund which then could be invested.183 The way it was administered, however, created important problems. It was the savings bank. Savings banks offered important benefits to workers, but being organised and administered by the state these advantages were offset by significant risks. Because they were understood as institutions primarily for use by the poor, both French and English savings banks offered high rates of interest on savings and low rates on loans; the difference between the two – about 1 to 12 per cent – meant they operated at a loss. Because they were supported by the public purse the loss they made was to all intents and purposes a ‘genuine poor-rate which the government collects from all its taxpayers’.184 This problem was further compounded by legislation which forbade savings being invested. This created a mass of unproductive capital on which the state had to pay interest. As this burden was heavy, it restricted the number of accounts, thereby undermining the aim of the banks. Tocqueville believed this problem easy to overcome. He examined numerous solutions proposed by economists and statesmen, including those by Huerne de Pommeuse, Jules Dufaure, P.-J.-J. Lacave-Laplange and Charles Dupin. He concluded they were all flawed and that the only way to resolve these difficulties was to make savings banks independent of the state – though it would act as a final guarantor on deposits – and organise them locally. Freed of administrative restrictions savings banks could then invest in local enterprises. They could then promote more decentralised economic growth and a wider distribution of property.185 This would counteract centralising tendencies within the industrial economy, ones exacerbated by the state as he demonstrated in Democracy in America (1840).186 It would lessen the risks and severity of any economic crises, and would fulfil the primary role for which savings banks were designed: to encourage workers to accumulate savings, understand the value of thrift, and promote an understanding of the value of property and ownership, which, as he also pointed out in Democracy in America (1840), promoted social peace.187 Though he was never as sanguine as Dupin and others to consider savings banks a panacea, Tocqueville believed their effectiveness could be further enhanced if they were linked to monts-de-piété. These charitable pawnshops


had a long and established history in France. Monts-de-piété were supported by the church and served the poor by making small loans on items pawned. As they were very secure, the poor had confidence in them. But their security was assured by profits accumulated from interest made on loans. Though a substantial portion of these profits were donated to orphanages and general hospitals, they were acquired through exorbitant rates of interest.188 In this way they ‘ruin[ed] the poor in order to prepare an asylum for his misery’.189 Tocqueville believed the practice of monts-de-piété could be changed so it conformed with the elevated principle underlying the institution. To this end he examined practical changes introduced in Metz by Félix de Viville. Here, the local savings bank and the monts-de-piété were brought under the same administration. The results were promising and widely acclaimed and inspired Tocqueville to recommend combining the two institutions.190 He believed the combined institution would help bring about with greater ease all the benefits offered by local and independent savings banks. In this way these institutions might serve as initial catalysts to a wider distribution of property throughout society, the principal means by which poverty might be reduced, according to Tocqueville. As the only institutions which might ease poverty, they were woefully inadequate: the problem of pauperism was much too complex to be solved by a couple of institutions. Yet Tocqueville failed to develop further any systematic consideration of the problem of pauperism in this report. He did not abandon the problem but changed his approach to it. His political, academic and administrative writings of the 1840s ensured he touched on particular aspects of pauperism. There was one aspect, however, he understood as encompassing all others: the abandonment of children.

7 The Investigations into Abandoned Children

Throughout the 1840s Tocqueville continued to write on the issue of poverty. As in his reports on pauperism, he considered the issue in detail and in its broad relation to social justice and political stability. It was of considerable importance to him. He believed it to be fundamental to France’s political situation,1 and he lamented the established political parties’ lack of interest in it. The issue played a significant part in his leaving the dynastic left and establishing a new political grouping called the ‘young left’;2 and it was for this group that he drafted the outlines of a social policy for France. It is clear from this fragmentary document that he was very sensitive to the plight of the working classes and the poor. Tocqueville’s draft of ‘young left’s’ social policy focused on three broad spheres: taxation, welfare, and social responsibility. He proposed to ‘reform the whole system [of taxation] in a way to diminish the burdens on the poor by increasing a little those of the rich’.3 He believed this to be a ‘noble idea’ based on principles of equity and social justice. His proposals included a reduction, and in some cases near elimination, of taxes on basic necessities; this re-emphasised the conclusion of his 1846 academic review of Raymond Thomassy’s Du monopole des sels par la féodalité financière for the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.4 Where this was not possible, he recommended lowering taxes in such a way that their impact on poor and rich were equal; he also proposed the introduction of the principle of progressive taxation.5 These recommendations applied equally to customs duties.6 His suggestions, however, were only a small element of a proposed larger study, which members of the ‘young left’ believed Tocqueville ideally placed to undertake.7 This would have encompassed an account of the whole of France’s system of taxation, its history, its principal weaknesses, how it might be reformed, and how comparing it to reforms in England’s system of taxation might prove instructive.8 Tocqueville’s proposals for welfare were equally far-reaching. They included increasing the number of savings banks, monts-de-piété, mutual aid societies, charitable workshops (ouvroirs), establishing free schools and cre161


ating laws restricting working hours. For the absolutely destitute, those incapable of caring for themselves, he proposed better financing of hospices and bureaux de bienfaisance, free distribution of food-stuffs and welfare payments.9 He also emphasised the role of social responsibility in ameliorating the material and moral condition of the working classes and the poor. Whilst he rejected socialist solutions, involving a reorganisation of labour and a legal right to employment, Fourierist ideas on the phalanstère, and more radical notions on communism, he did, however, emphasise the importance of social solidarity by indicating the middle classes had an important obligation to the working classes and the poor. This belief he proposed to elaborate upon in greater detail, and this he did in his draft of the political programme for the ‘young left’. In this document, entitled The middle class and the people (1847), he asserted the middle classes were the chief beneficiaries of the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. But because they acted in a manner very much like the ancien régime nobility, refusing to acknowledge the desperate condition of the working classes and the poor, the political and social gains they obtained were now under threat.10 In appealing to their enlightened self-interest, he argued that if they did not strive towards social justice by helping the working classes and the destitute, the material and political gains of both revolutions would be lost in new political upheavals.11 Tocqueville’s drafts of a social and political programme for the ‘young left’ did not emerge from purely theoretical considerations. His experience in the 1830s in studying prisons and pauperism lent an important practical dimension to them. This was supplemented by investigations he undertook in the 1840s on the plight of abandoned children. These represent an interesting and neglected example of Tocqueville’s practical experience as a social investigator. Tocqueville took an interest in the plight of abandoned children (enfants trouvés, enfants abandonnés) when he began investigating prisons.12 In their 1833 report he and Beaumont devoted the third part of their study to juvenile crime and houses for juvenile offenders. There they exhibited a genuine sympathy for the plight of orphans and children abandoned by their parents. Deprived of family, these children became vagrants and beggars. They embraced the two vices that social investigators like Tocqueville and Beaumont considered the source of more serious crimes.13 In America, however, a concerted effort was made to stop the spread of these vices. To this end the power of association was used to great effect, and the beneficent influence which houses for juvenile offenders had on these children demonstrated how great that power was.14 These institutions were organised in such a way that they were able to break successfully the hold vice had on children. Because they obtained the support of local communities and were tightly linked to them, houses for juvenile offenders were able to create within their confines ‘a little society

Abandoned Children 163

in the image of the larger’.15 Described by Tocqueville as institutions halfway between a college and a prison,16 these houses accepted vagrant and delinquent children ‘much less in order to punish them than to given them the education their parents or fate denied them’.17 They provided children with a structured environment and organised a way of living with a daily routine of work, classes, religious instruction and recreation.18 Once a juvenile was released into the community he was still bound to the house of refuge through a patronage network established by the institution’s superintendent. This official placed the youth in the care of a foster family and apprenticed him to an artisan or farmer. The juvenile’s conduct and progress were closely monitored, and the superintendent wrote to him on a regular basis. Tocqueville and Beaumont thought very highly of this system and the patronage network they believed essential to its success. The statistics they compiled on America’s houses for juvenile offenders supported their judgement.19 Yet the American experience contrasted sharply with the situation in France, where children and juveniles were seldom sent to houses for juvenile offenders. Instead, the law encouraged magistrates to return children to their families or to send them to prison. Yet these laws with the appearance of harshness were seldom applied with full rigour, largely because magistrates were reluctant to convict delinquents. Orphans or children abandoned by their parents were seldom convicted and usually found their way onto the streets. According to Tocqueville this created ‘a mass of young delinquents, vagrants, beggars, etc., who abound in every town and city, and whose wayward and indolent existence lead inevitably to crime’.20 When they were finally sent to gaol their formal education in crime began.21 In contrast to America, where errant juveniles’ entry into society was smoothed because they had been integrated first in ‘a little society in the image of the larger’, in France wayward youth, left to themselves, became ‘a kind of foreign nation in the heart of the country’.22 They committed criminal acts from petty theft to prostitution. This was recognised by all French social investigators and philanthropists, and it was something Tocqueville acknowledged as early as 1832 when he conducted inspections of the House of Refuge of the rue de L’Oursine and the women’s House of Correction of Saint-Lazare, where young girls arrested for prostitution and petty theft were housed with older women.23 Tocqueville and Beaumont believed America had important lessons for the French, and they recommended changes both to the organisation of French prisons and houses of juvenile correction and to criminal legislation which would enable France to emulate America.24 In France, however, a more fundamental change was needed because of its very large and growing itinerant child and adolescent population. France was hit by a wave of child abandonments which exceeded by far anything which existed in America or the rest of Europe. Early in his research, Tocqueville acknowledged that


this was the source of juvenile crime,25 but it was not until the early 1840s that he was able to study the problem in any depth. Tocqueville wrote four reports on the plight of abandoned children for the general departmental council of the Manche. He was elected to this body of local notables in December 1842 and represented the twin cantons of Montebourg and Sainte-Mère-Église. He was considered by the members of the council to be an expert on economic and social issues,26 and he worked hard at mastering the many issues the council considered. The numerous reports he wrote for it dealt with matters of local importance and were instrumental in shaping the administration of local affairs. He enjoyed writing these reports and discovered many new things about departmental issues. He also felt much more at ease in the council than in the Chamber of Deputies;27 his natural love for local politics over national politics was the reason for this.28 And he left an important mark on local affairs. His election as president of the council for 1849, 1850 and 1851 he judged to be the high points of his public life.29 Tocqueville’s reports on abandoned children were written between 1843 and 1846 and coincided with the peak of public and philanthropic concern for their fate. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s over 30,000 children were abandoned every year, with an estimated 120,000 housed in Hospices and General Hospitals.30 Tocqueville’s interest in the problem was great. He understood how it related to the issues of poverty and crime, and to practical and theoretical considerations of political economy and public administration. He believed there was no other issue ‘more governmental in nature than that of abandoned children,’31 and thought ‘nothing influenced more directly the destiny of citizens, their wellbeing, their duties, their rights and their existence than the laws relating to abandoned children’.32 His reports reflect those considerations. They were thoroughly researched, revealing not only a comprehensive knowledge of the most important investigations into the issue, the laws governing foundlings and administrative and local networks designed to assist them, but a profound sensitivity to their plight. The reports were highly valued by his colleagues on the council,33 and significantly influenced local policy toward foundlings.

Child abandonment in France The problem of child abandonment in nineteenth-century France was both acute and complex. Infants were abandoned for many reasons, both moral and economic. Some were forsaken because they were conceived out of wedlock. Others found themselves abandoned because one or both parents were imprisoned. Still others were left because their parents could not afford to raise them.34 The French began caring for these children in an organised way as early as the twelfth century, when the church created a number of hospices for them. For five centuries their plight received minor considera-


tion by legislators, but by the seventeenth century this changed when the charitable works of St. Vincent de Paul made the issue prominent.35 He obtained the support of notables and legislators and inspired the creation of many charitable organisations which cared for foundlings, including the Dames de la Miséricorde, the Société de charité maternelle and the Fondation Montyon. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries interest in the plight of foundlings grew, and they soon became the beneficiaries of state relief. In 1769 an official wet-nursing agency was created in Paris,36 and ten years later legislation was passed which made it mandatory for all local hospitals to accept unwanted children. It was at this time that the tour became widespread throughout France; the tour was a trap door in the hospital wall into which a child was placed in a basket and a bell was rung alerting staff to its presence. It assured the anonymity of parents and was justified as a humanitarian alternative to parents abandoning their children on roadsides or in fields. An Imperial decree of January 1811 made the tour obligatory throughout France. It also required each district (arrondissement) to have a hospice or hospital which could care for foundlings, and declared the state would assume responsibility for their care.37 The consequence of creating hospices with a tour in every arrondissement was a proliferation in abandonments. From 1801 to 1815 the number of abandoned children increased from 63,000 to 84,559. In 1824 that number rose to 116,452 and by 1833 it was 129,629; these increases contrasted with a decline in the population of France as a whole.38 Social investigators and political economists interested in the problem, like Bernard-Benoît Remacle and Villeneuve-Bargemont, showed how acute it was. Remacle contended that nearly one out of every 345 inhabitants was an abandoned child.39 Villeneuve-Bargemont asserted that one child in fourteen children was abandoned.40 These shocking rates were complemented by equally appalling mortality statistics. Two physicians who had studied the problem in detail, J.-F. Terme and J.-B. Monfalcon, recorded that of the 336,297 children placed in care between 1824 and 1833, 198,505 died.41 In addition, the cost of caring for these children was also very great. Between 1824 and 1833 97,775,643fr. was spent caring for them,42 more than three times what Tocqueville and Beaumont estimated it would cost to establish the Auburn prison system throughout the whole of France.43 Philanthropists like Delessert and Gérando recognised expenditure on this scale could not be sustained.44 Even defenders of the established order, like the abbé Gaillard, acknowledged the heavy financial burden.45 These humanitarian, administrative and financial considerations were the principal forces driving notables, legislators and the general public to recognise that the problem of abandoned children was rapidly getting out of control. When this was coupled with the problems of vagrancy and crime, however, which in turn were considered part of the wider phenomenon of


declining standards of morality among the working classes, the issue gained widespread attention. At the national level legislators, including the Minister of the Interior in the Molé-Guizot ministry, Count Gasparin, acknowledged the need for rapid change and suggested ways in which past laws might be modified to deal more effectively with the problem.46 At the local level both prefects and general departmental councils demanded change.47 Their opinions were given added weight by leading newspapers which all campaigned for change. National and local academies debated the issue fully. Many of them, including the Académie Française, had essay competitions on it. The response to these competitions was overwhelming. In answer to just such a competition, the Russian émigré Antoine Jeudy de Gouroff published the most widely cited text on the issue, Recherches sur les enfants-trouvés et les enfants illégitimes. The work was judged very favourably by statisticians and social investigators like Villermé. But the ‘definitive French work on the history of foundlings’,48 Terme and Monfalcon’s Histoire statistique et morale des enfants trouvés was awarded the Montyon prize for its statistical rigour and the depth of its historical analysis. Most of these writings highlighted ‘a new form of rational calculus’ underlying working-class behaviour, particularly among women.49 They therefore concluded that a ‘misconceived practice of charity’50 allowed women to enter into illicit sexual relations with the knowledge that should they become pregnant they could dispose of their offspring in the nearest tour. These studies attested to what was perceived as the more general problem of degenerating moral standards among the working classes, but they also signalled a change in social attitudes towards children.51 Tocqueville’s reports were classic examples of this kind of writing.

Tocqueville and abandoned children Tocqueville’s reports on abandoned children reveal a comprehensive understanding of the problem. He was familiar with the principal texts on the issue, had detailed knowledge of the latest statistical research and knew the legislation and administrative regulations governing foundlings and general hospitals. He also had a detailed knowledge of related issues such as prisons and poverty. This enabled him to evaluate the problem in its wider social and moral context, particularly the way it was linked to the relation between individual responsibility and social obligation. Tocqueville wrote his reports in order to influence opinion within the general departmental council of the Manche and thereby shape the beliefs of the prefect. He focused on how services offered to foundlings and their adoptive parents might be improved, and, at the same time, how this demand could be reduced. The first two reports (1843 and 1844) examined an issue of cost, namely whether it was the responsibility of central government and local authorities or that of wet-nurses and adoptive parents to


provide foundlings with clothing. The second and fourth reports (1844 and 1846) exposed the issue of whether it was fair for young single mothers to be entitled to a legal right to welfare. By far the most important and hotly contested issue, however, and one which featured in all his investigations, was whether it was fair to abolish the tour. In exploring all of these matters, Tocqueville returned to the theme of his earlier reports on pauperism: the issue of a legal right to welfare. As it was then organised, the French method of caring for foundlings relied on hospices, general hospitals and a network of wet-nurses. Hospices and general hospitals cared for an infant in the weeks immediately after it was deposited in the tour. Once a suitable wet-nurse was found for the child, it was placed in her care, usually for a period of twelve years. For each child taken into her care a wet-nurse was issued with a full set of swaddling clothes and a complete set of baby-linen. Each year, for the time the child remained with her, a field representative of the foundling hospice or general hospital would issue a new set of clothing: outfits were simple and of a standard size according to age. Tocqueville approved of the general humanitarian sentiment underlying the policy on clothing,52 but showed how it had been abused in practice. Prefects, with unofficial sanction from the Minister of the Interior, imposed on local hospices and general hospitals the full responsibility to provide and pay for clothing. This placed a heavy burden on institutions already encumbered with caring for the ill and the destitute and those incapable of looking after themselves. In some cases it quadrupled their costs.53 According to Tocqueville this was a case of officials implementing policies without considering either the consequences of their initiatives or consulting the local population. He judged this kind of practice harshly, believing it always led to disastrous consequences, and in this instance he highlighted two of them. First, he believed wet-nurses generally gave the clothes they were given to their own children rather than the children in their care.54 Most wet-nurses were very poor and barely able to clothe their own children properly. So it was no surprise that they used the clothes given them for a purpose other than the one intended.55 But if the clothes were used as they were intended then a different problem arose. Clothes earmarked for foundlings were often better than those wet-nurses could provide for their own children.56 Better clothed than the wet-nurse’s own children, the foundling stood apart from the adoptive family. This Tocqueville believed to be ‘an immoral and dangerous inequality’ with far-reaching consequences.57 The issue of clothing highlighted the dependency and separateness of foundlings and wet-nurses. Wet-nurses were usually very poor and commonly ridiculed as ‘milk cows’ (vaches à lait). The children in their care were believed to have no family ties, the progeny of women with no morals. This bolstered the vulgar opinion that these children were not only naturally inclined to vice and crime, but they were also suspected carriers of disease.58


These prejudices nourished the fears people had of foundlings and stressed their separateness from the rest of society. This was a major consideration according to Tocqueville:59 That which makes the foundling ghastly is its isolation. The foundling is a proletarian who does not even have a family. It holds to nothing of society; it has no interest in it; it is not responsible to it; how can it become a useful member?60 The problem of making foundlings useful members of society was highlighted by difficulties related to their education. This issue was raised in his last report of 1846. In that, he showed how foundlings placed with families in the countryside failed to receive any education or religious instruction,61 for as soon as they were old enough they were put to work by their adoptive families. It was an important issue for the department, and had been discussed by the prefect and raised in reports by the foundlings’ inspector. According to Tocqueville, however, the principal solution they proposed was too elaborate. The foundlings’ inspector, appalled by ‘the state of coarseness and near barbarity’ of these children,62 suggested the creation of an agricultural colony for the department as a means of ensuring they received a proper education. This kind of recommendation was by no means unusual. Most works devoted to foundlings, including acclaimed studies such as Considérations sur les enfants trouvés by the economist and statistician Benoiston de Chateauneuf or Essai statistique sur les établissements de bienfaisance by the economist and philanthropist Baron de Watteville, argued that agricultural colonies were the best way to provide education and religious instruction to foundlings. These authors believed colonies had the added advantage of creating patronage bonds between foundlings and their administrators, something crucial to cultivating the spirit of association within society. They made a strong theoretical case which Tocqueville had little difficulty in endorsing; he continued to argue the merits of patronage for exconvicts and juvenile offenders, as was shown by his 1843 report for the parliamentary commission on prison reform,63 but in this instance, practical considerations led him to reject the recommendation. He believed the problem could be resolved much more simply and with very little expense by issuing foundlings with a certificate of study that would testify to their attendance at school. The loss of income suffered by the adoptive family could be made up by an increase in the state subsidy paid to it.64 The subsidy was an issue in its own right and one linked to the issue of a legal right to welfare. Tocqueville had already dealt with this issue in his reports on pauperism to the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg. In both reports he acknowledged the legitimacy of such a right for foundlings. Thus the subsidy paid to families to care for these children was entirely just. Yet the subsidy highlighted an important issue raised in the first report on poverty: once


the principle of a legal right to welfare was admitted and permanently entrenched, it undermined public morality and national prosperity by ‘creating an idle and lazy class which lives at the expense of the industrious and working class’.65 This was what he raised in his discussion in his 1844 report on whether young single mothers should have a right to public assistance. Treating single mothers as a special category needing social assistance was something new. Tocqueville discovered the issue was of little or no interest in other nations, and in France it attracted very little attention.66 He found no special category assigned to young single mothers in foreign legislation and in France payments to these mothers were considered part of budgets assigned to foundlings.67 This was a clever administrative means of preventing some mothers from abandoning their children: the sums paid to each single mother were so much smaller than the expenses incurred in caring for a foundling. The practice appeared to have financial merit and as it ‘was temporary’ and nowhere had it ‘degenerated into a sort of permanent pension’, it appeared to be worth emulating, especially as it was the determining factor in ensuring a mother ‘kept the child she would have left forever’.68 Granting young single mothers a right to welfare, however, raised the spectre of its limitless expansion.69 If these young women were granted a right to welfare then why should it be denied to poor older married mothers?70 Tocqueville understood how vexing this issue was. He was full of compassion for the plight of young single mothers. He acknowledged that these mothers could not keep their children unless they received some assistance,71 and he recognised the moral and civil value of keeping families together.72 But he also feared the consequences of a legal right to this kind of assistance. He believed its high moral principles might be subverted in practice, and rather than help mothers in distress it would corrupt their morals and weaken their resolve to improve their material and moral wellbeing.73 Nevertheless, by 1845 he was prepared to accept this risk could be minimised if, in following the general principle on welfare he set out in his first report on poverty, the assistance granted was small and for a limited period.74 It was what he recommended to the general departmental council, and his advice was accepted; the department experimented in granting the kind of assistance he endorsed. Because it was administered locally, with each case investigated thoroughly, conferred in small amounts and for a short time, Tocqueville was able to report favourable results in 1846.75 It appeared as though the department had established a regime of assistance for single mothers that was organised and administered in a way reminiscent of charitable practices he had observed in America. The issue of young single mothers underlined for Tocqueville the risks associated with the limitless expansion of welfare. He believed legislators and administrators, in admitting a principle in one area in order to make savings in another, had to be attentive to all possible consequences of their


actions.76 He thought ‘all human miseries, whatever their origin, are sisters. They hold each other’s hand, and society cannot offer an asylum to one of them without immediately drawing all the others to its door’.77 Legislators and administrators failed to heed this basic fact. The consequence, according to him, was that the ‘legal right to welfare’ seemed to ‘encroach from every side, but it advanced haphazardly, one instance doing too much, another too little; here giving birth to habits which must be changed, elsewhere failing to prepare habits which must be cultivated’.78 The dangers he associated with this right were brought into sharp focus with the tour, and it was in discussing it that he sought to remind legislators and administrators of their responsibilities.

The issue of the tour The tour was an Italian invention introduced into France in 1180 by Father Guy of the Montpellier hospice for foundlings and the infirm. From the twelfth century to the nineteenth the tour was believed to be a humanitarian means by which families or single mothers could abandon unwanted offspring. It was thought to be an effective alternative to abortion, infanticide and exposure – though not a single commentator assessed it as an alternative to primitive forms of birth control, but in the 1830s and 1840s it came to be perceived as both ineffective in preventing unwanted infant deaths and important in encouraging child abandonment. Its critic, like J.F. Terme and J.-B. Monfalcon, commented wryly that there was no better way to ‘halt the progressive movement of population’ than to ‘multiply the number of foundling hospices where children would be welcomed without distinction or limit’.79 The tour was, they believed, ‘immoral’ and ‘subversive of all social principles’. It ‘exercised a deplorable influence on the morality of the working classes’.80 Supporters of the tour, including the abbé Gaillard, Armand de Melun and Alphonse de Lamartine, commended it as the ‘ingenious invention of Christian charity’.81 They believed it saved lives and safeguarded public morality. They attacked its critics for their narrow economic reasoning,82 accusing them of ‘showing that compassion is seduction and humanity a crime’.83 Moreover, they argued that the decline in moral standards highlighted by critics had nothing to do with the tour itself but was the result of the growth of industry and the corrupting influence of unfettered capitalism.84 The issue of the tour featured in each of Tocqueville’s reports on foundlings. He believed the tour represented a classic example within philanthropy of the dichotomy between theory and practice. It embodied elevated moral principles and was conceived to bring benefits to children, families and the community. However, in practice it failed to protect infants’ lives, corrupted individuals’ morals and threatened public order.85 The tour


licensed child abandonments.86 It placed terrible burdens on hospices and general hospitals and it enabled individuals to act irresponsibly, ‘offering to the disorder of mothers a permanent encouragement and a sort of impunity through privilege’ by removing ‘from vice the responsibility which providence binds to it’.87 These criticisms of the tour were the same as those made by its critics, but because Tocqueville had a broader understanding of the tour in relation to individual morality and social welfare than many of its detractors, he believed its abolition would not solve all the problems associated with it. The real source of these difficulties lay ‘not in the tour but in the relaxing of morals; and to strengthen morals other remedies are required than those proposed’.88 In his account of the tour, Tocqueville dismissed its champions’ assertions that it was unique to the French way of life. He highlighted its Italian origins and asserted that there was nothing characteristically French about the institution at all.89 He dispelled claims that if the tour were abolished many abortions, infanticides, and criminal acts would follow. In 1844 he bolstered his belief with statistical evidence amassed from twenty departments, which had abolished the tours with no ill consequences. In fact in the department of the Nord the number of both abandonments and infanticides dropped when the tours were closed.90 In 1845 he supplemented these findings with more French data from Bernard-Benoît Remacle and statistics from Belgium collected by Édouard Ducpétiaux.91 The Belgian data were important because they offered a point of comparison within a single country. Ducpétiaux collected data from 1831 to 1839 comparing numbers of infanticides in Flemish provinces where tours did not exist and in French provinces were they did. His findings showed that in those provinces with tours there were more infanticides than in those without.92 Tocqueville used these data to sway the members of the general departmental council to press for the closure of tours in the department. In 1846 he reported on the beneficent results achieved by this policy: annual abandonments dropped by one hundred and infanticides did not increase.93 Tocqueville believed abolishing the tour would not solve the problem of abandonment. He acknowledged that there were many reasons why mothers and families left their children, and like most social commentators on this issue he highlighted declining moral standards as the principal reason for abandonments. Like many of them, he also believed the family to be the bulwark of morality, and emulation the best way to reverse declining moral standards.94 To this end he endorsed an idea promoted by Gérando and other detractors of the tour: the creation of an admissions office (bureau d’admissions).95 Closing the tour and replacing it with an admissions office was, according to Tocqueville, one of the best ways to limit abandonments and raise standards of morality. Admissions offices would become integral to foundling


hospices and general hospitals. Their purpose was to control abandonments by requiring unwanted offspring to be registered before being granted admission. Officials in the office would determine whether a family or single mother was, for whatever reason, incapable of caring for their new-born. If this was the case the child was admitted to the hospice. Advocates of the idea believed the admissions office would maintain the identity of family, or mother, and child strictly confidential. They thought it would protect young single mothers from public shame at the same time as securing infants’ civic rights – this was not possible with the tour because there was no accepted way to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate children. Advocates also believed admissions offices would enable families or mothers to reclaim their children when their circumstances improved. These advantages were highlighted in all of Tocqueville’s reports. They were also valuable in another important way. Tocqueville, like other advocates of the admissions office, believed it had a salutary influence in cementing ties between parents and their children through instruction and by emulation.96 This was, as Gérando contended, the first step in ‘restoring the regime of the family among the working classes’.97 Not only did it serve as a registry for parents and children, it also monitored and sought to improve the moral and material conditions of those registered with it. In this way it endeavoured to assist individuals to become independent and socially responsible. But for Tocqueville the admissions office had another positive advantage. As it was part of the local community it could adapt to local needs and draw on the support of local notables and other influential individuals. This enabled it to meet the needs of both the community and those seeking its assistance. It was also less inclined to apply policies indiscriminately and uniformly, as central government institutions were apt to do.98 Tocqueville’s positive assessment of admissions offices was endorsed by his earlier observations on American philanthropic institutions and his investigations into admissions offices in other French departments.99 For these reasons he commended it to his colleagues on the council.100 Tocqueville’s reports on foundlings, like his prison investigations and studies on poverty, all embodied the opinion that the noble theories of philanthropy, all too often ‘a matter of imagination’,101 were subverted in their application. ‘Fed on the philosophical reveries’ of their ‘exaggerated sensibilities’ philanthropists’ ideas attracted the interest of legislators, who all too often formulated policies which incorporated these ideas but failed to consider attentively their potential consequences. As all of these reports showed, the results of these policies were frequently unforeseen and all too often disastrous. This theme of Tocqueville’s writings on social issues reappeared in his famous historical study The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, in which, he showed how policies pursued by generations of French statesmen led to consequences, none of which could have been foreseen. But what was the


origin of the ideas behind these policies? According to him they were a natural outgrowth of equality of conditions, of democracy itself, and this is what he sought to show in his great study of manners, customs, and ideas of democratic society, Democracy in America (1840).


Part III Democracy and Revolution


8 Democracy and the Threats to Liberty: Democracy in America (1840)

The overwhelming impression people were left with after reading the first volume of Democracy in America (1835) was that America was a remarkable nation. Its inhabitants loved and cherished the ideas and institutions that underpinned their republic. Their manners were pure. They were blessed with a happy coincidence of circumstances, including climate and geography, that seemed to ensure that their democracy worked without interference or meddling, functioning as if it were a perfect ‘machine’.1 At the time Tocqueville’s account of the young republic struck a cord with the French. The fascination with America, in part the result of France’s historic ties to her and in part due to French sympathies with, and attraction to, republican ideas, contributed significantly to the popularity of Democracy in America. But by the time the second volume appeared, that had all changed. Throughout the second half of the 1830s the French became increasingly disillusioned with republican and liberal ideals, and by the end of the decade their disillusionment was almost complete.2 As a result, public opinion about America was much more critical. When Tocqueville completed the second volume of Democracy in America (1840) he could not be confident of the same kind of public reception given to the first five years earlier. The publication of Democracy in America (1840) was not greeted with fulsome praise. Along with a general disenchantment with the American way of life which marked its reception, French readers found Tocqueville’s work too abstract, too philosophical, very pessimistic and much more difficult to understand than the first volume. Reviewers believed the text was far too contemplative and moralising. Saint-Beuve, who praised the first volume, led critics in his harsh analysis of the second. He complained that the text lacked the sharp observations of the earlier work. It was overly serious, and possibly, as Tocqueville himself feared, prosaic.3 Even English admirers of his writings such as John Stuart Mill found the work difficult to understand.4 Although Mill agreed with French reviewers that the book required ‘much thought and study to appropriate’ its ideas, he certainly drew 177

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a different conclusion from them. For Mill was in no doubt that Tocqueville had written a truly great work: You have accomplished a great achievement: you have changed the face of political philosophy, you have carried on the discussions respecting the tendencies of modern society, the causes of those tendencies, and the influences of particular forms of polity and social order, into a region both of height and of depth, which no one before you had entered, and all previous argumentation and speculation in such matters appears but child’s play now. I do not think that anything more important than the publication of your book has happened even in this age of great events....5 But Mill’s opinion was not widely shared, and Tocqueville was the first to admit it. After considering Mill’s lengthy review for the Edinburgh Review, Tocqueville was eager to thank him. In a letter dated 18 October 1840 he declared that Mill was the only person to have understood completely his ideas and the full importance of his work.6 In the same letter he confessed that he had been attempting to understand why the second volume of his work was not as popular as the first. His conclusion bore none of the hallmarks of earlier anxieties he had when writing, rather it was a sober and thoughtful assessment from a thinker who had mastered his subject. Tocqueville believed Democracy in America (1840) treated democratic society as an abstract entity whose contours were only starting to become defined. He concluded that his study of the specific example of American democracy, a society developing but not fully formed, was readily accessible, understandable to all who read it. His 1836 study of the evolution of democracy in France, The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution, was also well understood as it bore striking similarities to Guizot’s Histories. These early works had clear and identifiable subject matter. They relied on an analytical method that was familiar to students of Guizot and Say. They examined themes and concepts that were readily understood and recognised from Guizot’s Histories. They adopted a framework of analysis and ideas that was easily identified with Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and made use of simple and clear examples that a reader could understand immediately. Democracy in America (1840), however, was different. In it, Tocqueville explored something more general. His topic was intelligible, but it was not established in a single concrete example. To analyse it rigorously, he began with observations he made of America, England and France. He arranged them in such a way as to sketch the general characteristics and tendencies of democratic society. It was the abstract and general nature of his topic that, as he put it, did not ‘seize the spirit of the crowd’.7 This inability to capture the public’s imagination was further compounded because he focused on the internal elements of democratic society, elements he knew were difficult for people to understand. Whereas his initial inten-

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tion in 1835 had been to examine the internal and external elements of democratic society, he abandoned that difficult enterprise in favour of the more manageable task of analysing the external elements of American society, such as its political and social institutions, its economic organisation and its climate and geography. But in 1840 he set out to complete his original task. Here he focused on the internal elements of democratic society, ideas, outlooks, customs, manners, beliefs and sentiments.8 The nature of these elements was more abstract and difficult. As he confessed in 1837, this was ‘a subject that is very difficult for everyone, but particularly for myself, who finds himself ill at ease in the little details of private life’.9 A year later he emphasised again, this time in a letter to Royer-Collard, the complexity of his enterprise.10 Showing how ideas, opinions and sentiments shaped and were shaped by external elements had never been done on the scale he intended, not even by Guizot himself. It was, as he commented in a note to his manuscript, something worthy of the ‘gravity of my subject’.11 Mill concurred with Tocqueville on the abstract and profound nature of the work. He believed ‘the thoughts in the second part are much more recondite, and whether one assents to them or not, are brought from a much greater depth in human nature itself, than those in your first publication’.12 Though the first volume of Democracy in America was far from a superficial work, in the second Tocqueville confronted and explored fully issues the importance of which he became aware in writing the first. Democracy in America (1835) revealed his acute intuition and great analytical skills in the way he drew the reader’s attention to the important number of pitfalls and dangers that faced democratic society. What he was unable to do there, however, was to discern clearly their contours, substance and full implications. This may have been the underlying reason for his decision to undertake a general revision of the text.13 Yet instead of revising it, he decided some time near the end of 1835 to write a new work.14 He was most certainly convinced of the need for a new work after studying the works of the political economists Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont and pursuing his own studies on pauperism. Although this was a starting point, he also sought to explore more fully what the great authors of political philosophy had to say about the nature of individuals, society and government. He read, among others, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Montaigne, La Bruyère and Saint-Evremond.15 These classics helped to guide his thoughts and gave him ideas he could use to evaluate observations he made of democratic society. What they could not give him, as he confessed to Franscisque de Corcelle, was a description of a society or polity that remotely resembled modern democracy.16 As he put it in Democracy in America, in ‘working back through the centuries to the remotest antiquity I see nothing at all similar to what is taking place before our eyes’. This forced him to conclude that ‘the past throws no light on the future, and the spirit


of man walks through the night’.17 Whereas the classics could inform his observations and thoughts, new insights were needed to understand fully democracy and its providential nature. He set out to acquire these insights in the belief that with this knowledge individuals would be granted the ability to exercise their free will in the face of a ‘continuous, ancient, and permanent’ development that was ‘daily passing beyond human control’.18 Tocqueville drew on many different sources to explore democracy’s development. The Idéologues and Guizot’s analytical method he had first adopted in 1835 he used once again to, as he said when studying America for the first time, ‘deconstruct (decomposer) a priori’ democratic society.19 The doctrinaires’ sociological and ‘philosophical’ historical method that he put to such effect in writing the first volume of Democracy in America, enabled him to examine democracy as a general fact. The gains derived from this method were further consolidated by the use he made of political economy, statistics and geography.20 In examining democracy’s internal elements, particularly the relation between private morality and public manners, and how individually and together they shaped political regimes, he sought instruction in the works of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moralists, Pascal, Montesquieu and Rousseau. This helped him to assess and analyse observations he made in investigating important social issues. Considerations on ethics and social justice made during his 1835 travels in England and Ireland complemented his thoughts on democracy. As a social investigator and traveller motivated to ‘think and to observe’,21 he noted changes to individual and social outlooks on crime and punishment, poverty, and individual and social responsibility. He understood how these changes in outlook were indicative of the transformation of old beliefs and the development of new ones. This had important consequences for legislators, ultimately affecting the role and nature of democratic government itself. Tocqueville’s social investigations were complemented by theoretical studies of important works of social reformers and political economists, particularly Malthus’s Essay and Villeneuve-Bargemont’s Économie politique chrétienne. Studies of political and social works that he undertook for various academies also proved important. He used theory to inform practical investigations but also ensured that practice was rigorously applied to theory. This approach was complemented by political experience which helped him gain knowledge of administrative and legislative issues.22 The admixture of theory and practice extended both the scope and depth of Tocqueville’s analysis, and was admired by his contemporaries in the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences who commissioned him in 1843 to undertake a large and important work on The State of Moral Doctrines in the Nineteenth Century and their Application to Politics and Administration: a study which focused on the interaction between internal and external elements in society; sadly, it was never completed.


Christian political economy and the internal elements of society The most important book Tocqueville studied after completing the first volume of Democracy in America was Villeneuve-Bargemont’s Économie politique chrétienne. As we have seen, this work was among the detailed and critical studies of the new liberal political economy and its defence of industry, and it had a lasting influence on Tocqueville. The legitimist’s experience as a prefect, particularly in France’s most industrialised department, the department of the Nord, was crucial in fashioning his ideas on political economy and industrial society. Villeneuve-Bargemont’s extensive reading and encyclopaedic knowledge of economic classics along with the most upto-date writings of Fodéré, Sismondi, Droz, Say and many others, made him one of France’s most knowledgeable commentators on economic issues. Even though he was at the forefront of economic scholarship, however, his beliefs were resolutely traditional. His opinion on what created national wealth was old-fashioned, distinctively French and thoroughly agrarian. He linked the issue of poverty to that of national wealth and reasoned that large-scale industrialisation was something alien to France, exposing the nation to foreign influences and alien ideas that were antithetical to the French way of life. He concluded that agriculture was natural to France and the surest foundation upon which to improve the wellbeing of the poor.23 In order to counter the pernicious effect of foreign ideas, he developed a sophisticated economic doctrine which would present a robust challenge to the economic ideology of the ‘English system’ which he believed, because it was rooted in unlimited production and universal competition, led to the moral degradation of man.24 In opposition to the ‘inhuman’ and immoral economy of the ‘English system’, he proposed a French alternative based on a wise development of agriculture, a just distribution of the products of small-scale industry and an equitable remuneration for labour. It was rooted in the elevated principle of human charity and directed toward the religious and moral regeneration of individuals.25 There was a great deal in Villeneuve-Bargemont’s work that Tocqueville found both interesting and compelling. Certainly his journey to England in 1835 confirmed much of what Villeneuve-Bargemont had to say about the industrial economy. His grim description of England’s industrial cities appeared to endorse the legitimist’s assessment of the industrial economy. But this was not entirely the case. Tocqueville certainly concurred with Villeneuve-Bargemont’s judgement that the industrial economy relied on, and promoted, important concentrations of capital, and that it was driven by unlimited production and universal competition, that it replaced human labour with machines, drove down wages, and excited individuals’ desires


for material goods. But he rejected the former prefect’s premise that industrialisation was specific to the ‘English system’ and that France could, if it chose to, remain immune from its influence. Rather, Tocqueville believed it was integral to the development of democracy itself, and he set out to examine the influence it exercised on people’s manners, habits, outlooks and ideas, seeking to understand how it altered the workings of self-interest rightly understood.26 In America he observed how enlightened self-interest safeguarded liberty. What he read in Villeneuve-Bargemont and observed from his social investigations was how it was progressively corrupted as industrialisation and the influence of market relations developed unchecked. How this came about and the consequences it was to have became a central theme to Democracy in America (1840).

Wealth and the corruption of self-interest In Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville demonstrated a clear understanding of the concept of self-interest. He knew that as an unrestrained passion it was frequently at odds with the public good. Like Montesquieu and Say, however, he also understood that when informed by reason and experience it had beneficial effects. It acted much like gravitation, drawing individuals toward the public good when they were thinking only of promoting their own interests. America showed the extent to which enlightened self-interest was so beneficial to liberty, but it also revealed the extent to which market relations and the general desire for material comforts corrupted self-interest and threatened liberty. The Americans, however, succeeded in checking these corrupting influences. Political and social institutions combined with active and numerous associations and a vigorous spirit of religion all worked to arrest the baleful effects of wealth on enlightened self-interest. The first volume of Democracy in America emphasised this. In 1840, however, Tocqueville’s subject was different. In this he was preoccupied with democracy both in more abstract terms and as it was emerging in Europe, particularly in France. The institutional checks Americans established against the corrupting effects of wealth were absent in a European context: democracy had been established ‘on the ruins of an aristocracy’.27 Tocqueville retained the comparative method, believing America continued to be a useful model for the French. But in order for it to be genuinely instructive he believed it was necessary to analyse the concept of self-interest rightly understood in much greater detail. In this he may have concluded, after Villeneuve-Bargemont, that liberal economists worked with an inadequate understanding of self-interest in its relation to other elements of democratic society as they failed to grasp the full extent to which wealth corrupted self-interest. He set out to correct this, not only by stressing how self-interest was influenced by the underlying tendency of democracy, equality of conditions, but, as he explained to Henry Reeve, by emphasising its


negative effects in order to prevent his contemporaries from surrendering themselves blindly to it.28 This, he believed, would give individuals the lights to understand democracy and discern ‘the distant perils with which it threatened them’.29 Yet he remained pessimistic about this knowledge ever being used, and his English translator agreed: Is there in this world a portrait more doleful than that which you have painted of a people which would have all the elements of democratic decadence without a spirit of order, association, and religion that have sustained the American republics?30 What was it about self-interest that made it so dangerous? And how was it that in the United States institutional checks along with the spirit of order, association and religion all worked to limit its corruption, whereas in France these elements were absent and its corruption far advanced? These institutional and other checks worked in America because of the extent to which equality of conditions had penetrated to the roots of society. Class distinctions were levelled and property and wealth widely distributed so that a large and influential middle class dominated society. The predominance of a middle class in America guaranteed uniformity of both class interest and opinion within society. It moderated social excesses and established the reign of common sense. Tocqueville still believed this to be fundamentally true of the United States.31 This verdict on America, however, contrasted sharply with the one he passed on France. As early as 1833 he lamented the narrowing of French political life. Politics had become more self-interested and those participating in it were motivated by greed and personal gain rather than by any elevated ambition to duty or service.32 The July Monarchy consolidated middle-class power and debased political life. Tocqueville’s mentor, the noble statesman and philosopher, Royer-Collard, deplored the state of French politics in an 1837 speech to his electors. He asserted that the July Monarchy had presided over a state of political life that was dominated by material interests and ‘divested of its greatness’.33 Tocqueville was ‘transported’ by Royer-Collard’s ‘beautiful words’, the speech ‘awakened at once every noble sentiment in [his] soul.’34 No longer sustained by high ideals, politics had become dominated by narrow class interests which made it both mediocre and immoderate.35 In one of the most famous chapters of Democracy in America (1840), ‘Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare’, Tocqueville judged the middle class to be fixated entirely on its possessions. Driven by its petty material ambitions, the middle class became more and more individualistic, it succumbed to a collective individualism which divorced it from the rest of society. The middle class’s moderating influence on social excesses and its role in establishing a reign of common sense, the qualities that, according to political economists like Say, made it fit to lead,36


were entirely absent in France. Instead, as we shall see later in this chapter, its conduct threatened liberty and removed any impediments to the development of a new form of despotism.37 Tocqueville’s assessment of the French middle class and its narrow selfinterest contrasted sharply with what he observed in America. There, Say’s positive assessment of the role of the middle class was confirmed. For in the United States there was a universal acceptance of the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood: So the doctrine of self-interest properly understood is not new, but it is among the Americans of our time that it has come to be universally accepted. It has become popular. One finds it at the root of all actions. It is interwoven in all they say. You hear it as much from the poor as from the rich.38 The benefits of this doctrine were immediately apparent. It disposed Americans to help one another and to give freely ‘part of their time and wealth for the good of the state’. It was within the grasp of every individual, and it was much loved by them. Americans took great ‘pleasure’ in proclaiming how an enlightened self-love continually led them to make numerous sacrifices. Yet the daily sacrifices it inspired individuals to make were small and easily calculated. It made a virtue of individual utilitarian calculus. Sacrifices were made for the long-term benefits they might bring rather than out of noble motives. The doctrine of self-interest rightly understood was ‘not at all sublime’.39 Yet it was ‘clear and definite’, and this ensured that it would ‘more than ever become the chief if not the only driving force behind all behaviour’.40 Though it could not inspire individuals to great sacrifices, nor lead them directly to virtue, it shielded them from ‘gross depravity’ because the acts and sacrifices individuals considered and undertook were always small. It also ensured orderliness and discipline, making citizens ‘temperate, moderate, careful and self-controlled’,41 characteristics Tocqueville valued and ones he believed necessary to the flourishing of liberty.42 This befitted a democratic political order. At the same time, however, it could not be considered alongside the doctrines of traditional moralists which emphasised the active role of civic man. Nor could it be considered on a par with those doctrines that stressed the importance of the virtues associated with the good, just, or exemplary life. Rather, it was a negative virtue which turned ‘private interest against itself and [used] the same goad which [excited human weaknesses] to direct passions’.43 Tocqueville stoically accepted what providence ordained, and acknowledged that the doctrines of the great moralists were less relevant to the age of equality.44 Rather than concern themselves with the sublime virtues of the past, he believed modern-day moralists could make better use of their intellect by directing their thoughts to the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood:


I am not afraid to say that the doctrine of self-interest properly understood appears to me the best suited of all philosophical theories to the wants of men in our time and that I see it as their strongest remaining guarantee against themselves. Contemporary moralists therefore should give most of their attention to it. Though they may well think it incomplete, they must nonetheless adopt it as necessary.45 Tocqueville may have accepted this doctrine as best suited to individuals in the democratic age, but he did not revere it. There was little in it that appealed to an aristocrat whose political and moral beliefs were so powerfully shaped by moralists like Pascal, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Though self-interest rightly understood was a foundation to a democratic polity, it was, as we have already noted, subject to many weaknesses. In democracies the electorate tended to be ignorant and coarse, frequently considering its own interests rather than the country’s good.46 However, Americans successfully overcame this obstacle by fostering both general formal education and a political education which stemmed from the institutions of government, the legal and constitutional framework that encouraged individuals to participate actively in civic and political life, and religious practices which were wedded to the spirit of liberty. Tocqueville believed the French could benefit from similar institutions and customs. He and Beaumont had already emphasised, in their prison reports of 1830 and 1833, the importance of general formal education to spreading enlightenment.47 He reiterated the same idea in his 1833 sketches for a new newspaper: the theme of education was frequently linked to that of religion. Tocqueville attached real importance to unifying the spirit of religion with the spirit of liberty,48 and it was to remain a consistent theme in all his political projects and theoretical works.49 Defending it was to prove costly to his political ambitions, as the 1844 debate on the educational freedom would later demonstrate.50 Yet he continued to maintain that intellectual and political enlightenment were essential to the successful application of the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood, and democracy itself. Where they were absent, the doctrine could not succeed and democracy would fail. As he wrote in 1840: If citizens, attaining equality, were to remain ignorant and coarse, it would be difficult to foresee any limit to the stupid excesses into which their selfishness might lead them, and no one could foretell into what shameful troubles they might plunge themselves for fear of sacrificing some of their own well-being for the prosperity of their fellow men.51 This was a clear warning to the French. In order for it to be heeded, however, he needed to explain in detail how self-interest was corrupted. This, he hoped, would give his countrymen the lights to guard themselves against


it.52 To this end he focused on its chief menace: financial advancement and the acquisition of material comforts.53 When Tocqueville was travelling through the United States he was struck by the extent to which Americans were driven by an unstoppable urge to acquire wealth and material comforts. He knew of ‘no other country where the love of money ha[d] such a grip on men’s hearts’.54 He stressed the risks associated with an excessive love of money as early as 1835. He judged the single-minded pursuit of wealth morally corrupting, and he attacked the crude materialism that accompanied it. The modern-day champions of materialism he believed to be base and devoid of moral precepts. They sought to make men materialists, to find out what is useful without concern for justice, to have science quite without belief and prosperity without virtue. Such men are called champions of modern civilisation, and they insolently put themselves at its head, usurping a place which has been abandoned to them, though they are utterly unworthy of it.55 An antidote to this crude materialism, as we have already seen, could be found in religion. Tocqueville’s notes to Democracy in America (1840) show the extent to which he placed such a high value on religion as something that could restrain wealth’s corrupting influence.56 This was because it had the power to direct individuals’ concerns away from material goals and toward matters of an elevated and transcendent nature. Religion was the foundation to noble ideas, customs and manners, and it was the solid foundation to liberty. Whereas Tocqueville judged religion’s influence positively in 1835,57 however, his underlying reasons for committing himself to that judgement in 1840 had acquired real depth. His studies of Malthus and VilleneuveBargemont helped him to consider religion’s connexion to political economy; attending Lacordaire’s 1835 Conférences de Notre-Dame helped him ponder the link between religion and political liberty.58 Studying the Koran in 1838 might well have reinforced his conviction in the noble value of private charity and individual commitment to community.59 Nevertheless, his thoughts had already been firmly established: in 1835 he had used an ancient critique of democracies in his attack on wealth’s corrupting influence. In a sub-section to Chapter Five of the second part entitled ‘Corruption and Vices of the Rulers in a Democracy and Consequent Effect on Public Morality’, he argued that because ‘statesmen in democracies are poor, with their fortunes to make’, they are much more inclined to corruption. These men owed their success ‘to base intrigues or culpable maneuvers’ rather than intellect and virtue. Their actions had a corrosive effect on the morals of the public, and though the effect was indirect it was ‘even more to be feared’ than the corruption associated with the wealthy bribing the ruled.60


In 1840 he concentrated on another indirect route by which wealth and materialism corrupted society and politics. He observed how individuals in democracies became preoccupied with physical comforts and the ‘trivial conveniences of life’. He analysed it in three chapters: ‘the taste for physical comfort’, ‘particular effects of the love of physical pleasures in democratic times’, and ‘Why the Americans are often so restless in the midst of their prosperity’. What he wrote resembled parts of his first report on pauperism, but it also relied on the first volume of Democracy in America too, particularly where he distinguished between differing class perceptions of wealth and material comforts in both aristocratic and democratic societies. However, in 1840 he pushed his analysis further and studied the effects of the levelling of fortunes within democracies. This approximated parts of his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France before the Revolution.61 Yet the underlying influence to these chapters lay with Villeneuve-Bargemont. What struck Tocqueville in reading L’Économie politique chrétienne was the legitimist’s appraisal of industry’s ability to generate perpetually changing and new desires. Industry stimulated perpetual demand for its products. It transformed a moderate and calm society into an immoderate and agitated one.62 In so doing, it weakened individuals’ ability to understand transformations taking place around them. At the same time, according to Villeneuve-Bargemont, it altered their perceptions of themselves, of their place in society, and of those around them. It made them selfish and egotistical, and was the source of individual corruption and moral degeneration.63 Tocqueville’s assessment of industry was equally harsh, but his analysis of its effects was more refined and innovative. It centred on the love of physical comfort. Tocqueville’s analysis of the love for physical comfort began by contrasting the forms it took in aristocracies with those it adopted in democracies. Like Montesquieu, he argued that in aristocracies the rich, having never experienced different social conditions and having no fear of losing their status, could not imagine an existence different from what they were used to. For aristocrats ‘the comforts of life are by no means the aim of their existence; they are just a way of living’. Since the ‘universal, natural, and instinctive human taste for comfort’ have been satisfied ‘without trouble or anxiety’, an aristocracy can turn its attention ‘to some grander and more difficult undertaking that inspires or engrosses them’.64 This lack of consideration for material comforts was reinforced by a ‘philosophical doctrine’ which held in contempt acts directed toward immediate personal advantage.65 Within aristocratic constitutions the poor were similarly unpreoccupied with a taste for physical comforts. Because ‘the people finally get used to their poverty just as the rich do to their opulence’ they do ‘not think about [physical comfort] at all because they despair of getting it and because they do not know enough about it to want it’.66 However, with the devel-


opment of equality of conditions, ‘distinctions of rank are blurred and privileges abolished’ the ‘patrimonies are divided up and education and freedom spread, the poor conceive an eager desire to acquire comfort, and the rich think of the danger of losing it. A lot of middling fortunes are established. Their owners have enough physical enjoyments to get a taste for them, but not enough to content them. They never win them without effort or indulge in them without anxiety.’67 This assessment resembled Montesquieu’s judgement on prosperity and material acquisition from The Spirit of Laws;68 but it also reiterated one Tocqueville made earlier in The Social and Political Condition of France before the Revolution;69 it would later reappear in The Ancien Régime and the Révolution.70 In 1840, however, his principal focus was the United States as an example that would serve to instruct France where the middle class had triumphed over the nobility. America had no established aristocracy. It was blessed with an inexhaustible amount of land which ensured a wide distribution of property throughout society, and it had a dominant middle class whose habits, customs, manners and ideas permeated society, influencing both rich and poor. Chief among those habits was the acquisition of material comforts: If one tries to think what passion is most natural to men both stimulated and hemmed in by the obscurity of their birth and the mediocrity of their fortune, nothing seems to suit them better than the taste for comfort. The passion for physical comfort is essentially a middle-class affair; it grows and spreads with that class and becomes preponderant with it. Thence it works upwards into the higher ranks of society and thence spreads downward to the people.71 In the United States the love of physical pleasures was ‘tenacious, exclusive, and universal’ but it was always restrained, never leading Americans to excesses.72 This contrasted with ancient societies where the passion for physical comforts could develop into loathsome vices. In democracies like America it was not opposed to good order, nor was it hostile to ‘moral regularity, for sound morals are good for public tranquillity and encourage industry’.73 This characteristic was the result of powerful institutional checks on this vice, but it was also a consequence of equality of conditions which in raising the poor and lowering the rich, created a dominant middling class, moderate in its beliefs, habits, manners and conduct. The consequence of this was that all forms of excess, including extreme vices and virtues were squeezed from society. Tocqueville’s conclusion was remarkably similar to Montesquieu’s verdict on the moderating effects of commerce and Say’s positive assessment of a well balanced industrial society:74 In democratic societies public sensuality has adopted a moderate and tranquil shape to which all are expected to conform. It is as hard for vices as for virtues to slip through the net of common standards.75


Though it never led to excesses, the universal pursuit of physical comfort was dangerous because it had a slow, almost imperceptible, corrosive effect on society. It absorbed individuals completely in the quest for permissible physical delights. In this way ‘a kind of decent materialism may come to be established on earth, which will not corrupt souls but soften and imperceptibly loosen the springs of action’.76 It not only softened manners but, as both Montesquieu and Rousseau had already shown, made society mediocre, leaving it devoid of greatness.77 These negative consequences, however, could be moderated by political and civic obligations which temporarily drew individuals’ attention away from material comforts and focused it on the elevated considerations of the community itself.78 Tocqueville emphasised the salutary effects of civic participation, believing it safeguarded liberty;79 the theme ran through all his writings on social issues and was one later adopted by political economists such as Michel Chevalier and the liberal Journal des économistes.80 As mentioned earlier, he also considered religion important in moderating the passion for material comforts. Like Pascal, he believed religion elevated human thoughts and actions, adding grandeur and dignity to them. Religious faith also gave individuals courage in the face of misery and adversity.81 It helped them cultivate an inner strength necessary to their independence. Religion, like civic and political obligations, inspired people to consider questions that transcended their daily cares: It was not man who implanted in himself the taste for the infinite and love of what is immortal. These sublime instincts are not the offspring of some caprice of will; their foundations are embedded in nature; they exist despite a man’s efforts. Man may hinder and distort them, but he cannot destroy them. The soul has needs which must be satisfied. Whatever pains are taken to distract it from itself, it soon grows bored, restless, and anxious amid the pleasures of the senses.82 Tocqueville worried, however, that religion and civic and political obligations might not be able to moderate sufficiently the passion for material comforts. He lamented its flattening effect on intellectual activity, emptying the arts and sciences of grand aspiration and directing their focus away from the elevated goal of discovering an eternal truth towards the low ambition of practical application. He was apprehensive about the extent to which it reinforced a general dissatisfaction with what individuals had, inciting them to always desire more. The consequence of this was, as VilleneuveBargemont had already indicated, a society in constant agitation where people were unhappy and never satisfied with what they had.83 Tocqueville feared the passion for physical pleasures would make individuals exclusively preoccupied with their own condition; it would make them narcissistic and whilst he observed the feelings of humanity were


strong in democracies, the bonds between individuals were much weaker.84 When coupled to growing narcissism and levelling effect of equality, a feeling of unease emerged amongst the general populace. To escape it individuals withdrew from society. This phenomenon Tocqueville believed to be entirely new and he called it ‘individualism’. The origins of the concept of individualism lay in Montesquieu’s observations on social atomisation in commercial society and in Rousseau’s concept of amour propre. Yet individualism was itself a feature of modern democracies; nineteenth-century thinkers like Comte used the term. What Tocqueville had in mind, however, was different. Individualism emerged from social conditions created by modern commercial societies. It was unlike ancient vices such as selfishness or egoism which sprang from a ‘blind instinct’ and ‘passionate and exaggerated love of self’.85 Rather, it was a ‘calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends’.86 It was a corrupted form of self-interest rightly understood which did not spring from a ‘depraved feeling’ but was ‘based on misguided judgment . . . due more to inadequate understanding’ of an individual’s interest. Because it was ‘calm and considered’ it was difficult to discern and its influence slow to develop. As social conditions became more equal, it threatened to grow. Its influence was corrosive and ultimately destructive. It threatened the institutions of free government which were so effective at ensuring people came to regard self-interest rightly understood as ‘their strongest remaining guarantee against themselves’.87 In France, where the ancient institutions had collapsed and new ones were not yet fully established, individualism posed an even greater threat. Here it emerged in a new and sinister form. It came to dominate entire classes, developing into a ‘collective individualism’. It corrupted the class praised by Smith, Malthus and Say for its moderation and orderliness, the class of industriousness and common sense, as Tocqueville had observed in America: the middle class. Having attained its independence in France, the middle class became ‘drunk with [its] new power’. It had acquired a ‘presumptuous confidence in [its] strength, and never imagin[ed] that [it] could ever need another’s help again, [it had] no inhibition about showing that [it] care[d] for nobody but [itself]’.88 This collective individualism fostered a political and social climate in which nothing but narrow class interests predominated. Its corrupting influences were sinister, spawning a vicious cycle of revolutions. Tocqueville feared individualism would grow because it was nourished by ideas which promoted material and utilitarian goals. Ideas about the usefulness and profitability of the fine arts, architecture, literature and the sciences, or beliefs on the value of physical comforts, became generalised throughout the whole of society because individuals’ lives were ‘so practical, complicated, agitated, and active that they [had] little time for thinking’.89


These materialist and utilitarian ideas were fortified by the new doctrines of political economy which divorced moral and political considerations from political economy. As the new doctrines were concerned with purely scientific considerations, they were very different from theories upheld by Malthus or Villeneuve-Bargemont. In a letter to Lord Radnor, Tocqueville professed that a knowledge of political economy was necessary to legislators and moralists,90 but he did not believe it had independent scientific status that separated it from moral and political concerns. Rather, he thought it was intimately bound up with those considerations. When formalised and given a scientific status, the new political economy became a powerful force behind the growth of individualism. Its scientific pretensions justified the rightness of materialism, the ‘dangerous malady of the human spirit’.91 Though he worried about the growth of individualism, he believed it could be checked by strengthening liberty and associations.92 Newspapers, charitable organisations, local assemblies, juries and religious organisations were the ‘great free schools to which all citizens come to be taught the general theory of association’.93 He thought America could be an example for France to emulate.94 All his writings on social issues emphasised this. As democracy developed and the love of material comforts grew, however, the checks on individualism were weakening. Here he focused on the corrosive influence of something that oddly was both alien to democracy yet arising from it: rigid inequality. In Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville had shown the extent to which property was widely distributed in America. From the time of the first colonies ‘the soil of America absolutely rejected a territorial aristocracy’.95 The easy access to property and its wide distribution were important both to safeguarding equality of conditions and individual independence and to a well-regulated society. Though his analysis here was influenced by his reverence for the land96 and his agrarian ideas on wealth,97 the important inspiration lay in Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans and Say’s Cours complet. In the Considerations Montesquieu emphasised the importance a roughly equal division of land had on the Roman republic’s well-regulated society and vigorous army, but he went on to show that as the division of land became more unequal a wealthy class arose. Its need for artificial luxuries spawned corruption and cowardice. Patriotism and military valour quickly declined and the empire followed suit. Say also emphasised the corrupting influence of opulence. From the first edition of his Traité d’économie politique to the Cours complet, he stressed that extremes in poverty and wealth corrupted manners and ultimately undermined the foundations of nations. Tocqueville followed Say and adapted Montesquieu’s thesis to a new context in the second volume of Democracy in America. Here he was no longer dealing with an economy characterised by easy access to property and its wide distribution. Rather, his


social investigations, journeys to England and Ireland and study of Villeneuve-Bargemont enlightened him to the growing power of industry. In Democracy in America (1840) Tocqueville developed observations he made in 1831–2. He contended that every American valued the importance of work, considering it the ‘necessary, natural, and honest condition of all men’.98 Though it was ‘an honorable necessity of the human state’, work ‘[wa]s always clearly done, at least in part, for pay’.99 He also noted that individuals in commercial societies were always dissatisfied with their fortunes and were engaged in an endless pursuit of greater material comforts. He observed, too, that in commercial societies factors such as fame or glory no longer had sway over individuals’ choice of profession. This meant that all professions had a common basis. The result was individuals tended to favour one type of work over another. Individuals developed ‘a distaste for agriculture’ and an appetite for jobs in trade and industry because these professions offered the ‘quickest and best means of getting rich’.100 Tocqueville was astonished by how in ‘the United States the greatest industrial undertakings are executed without trouble because the whole population is engaged in industry and because the poorest man as well as the most opulent gladly joins forces therein’.101 His observations, however, stressed a worrying development. They indicated that those best suited to the professions of trade and industry were the wealthy who were spurred on in their pursuit of fortune by the rest of society.102 Tocqueville feared, like Fodéré and Villeneuve-Bargemont, that the rich would come to dominate trade and industry completely, and would be hailed for doing so by the rest of society. He believed the inevitable outcome of this was the emergence of a new and powerful class within democracy, and this would usher in a new form of inequality within the age of equality itself. Just as Montesquieu’s Considerations showed how the rise of a Roman wealthy class led to the decline of empire, and Say’s work emphasised the corrupting power of extreme inequalities, Democracy in America (1840) showed how a the rise of a wealthy class threatened democracy itself. Tocqueville drew on Villeneuve-Bargemont’s Économie politique chrétienne to show how an aristocracy would emerge from industry.103 He sought to show both how an industrial aristocracy emerged from conditions of equality and how revolution or despotism would ensue if its corrupting influences were not mitigated. Having demonstrated that democracy favoured the development of industry ‘by multiplying without limit the number of those engaged in it’, Tocqueville focused his attention on the effects of the division of labour within industry. He observed that the division of labour was integral to improved productivity, and economic and material prosperity. Intensifying it made products more abundant and cheaper. This was good because it enhanced national wealth. Yet it had deleterious consequences which, parting company with the new economists,104 he stressed: chief among these was the pernicious effects of mental mutilation:


When a workman is constantly and exclusively engaged in making one object, he ends by performing this work with singular dexterity. But at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the way he is working. Every day he becomes more adroit and less industrious, and one may say that in his case the man is degraded as the workman improves.105 As the principle of the division of labour was more thoroughly applied, the workman became ever more degraded as a man. The same was not true of the industrialist: While the workman confines his intelligence more and more to studying one single detail, the master daily embraces a vast field in his vision, and his mind expands as fast as the other’s contracts. Soon the latter will need no more than bodily strength without intelligence, while to succeed the former needs science and almost genius. The former becomes more and more like the administrator of a huge empire, and the latter more like a brute.106 Though Tocqueville devoted much of his analysis to the intellectual, moral, social and political consequence of mental mutilation, he also stressed the problem of alienation: When a workman has spent a considerable portion of his life in this fashion [making heads for pins], his thought is permanently fixed on the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits which it can never shake off. In a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to his chosen calling.107 Alienation and mental mutilation combined to secure workmen in their occupations and make them dependent upon the will of their employer. The phenomenon was startling and akin to a form of slavery. The new aristocracy emerged from equality of conditions because ‘conditions become more and more equal in the body of the nation, the need for manufactured products becomes greater and more general, and the cheapness which brings these things within reach of men of moderate fortune becomes an ever greater element of success’.108 The general passion for material comforts assured the emergence of this new aristocracy: Hence, just while the mass of the nation is turning toward democracy, that particular class which is engaged in industry becomes more aristocratic. Men appear more and more like in the one context and more and more different in the other, and inequality increases within the little society in proportion as it decreases in society at large.109


The new aristocracy bore little resemblance to older landed aristocracies. First, it had no corporate spirit, no common tradition, nor any common aspiration. There was nothing to ensure solidarity within it, a prerequisite for any caste; he surely learned this from Guizot’s fifth lecture from The History of Civilization in Europe.110 This lack of corporate spirit was the result of both the dominance of self-interest and the extreme social mobility that existed within democracies, particularly among the wealthy and middle classes. For the poor the situation was dramatically different, their position was more or less fixed – Tocqueville’s second report on pauperism explored ways this might be overcome. At the same time, however, he observed that because no corporate spirit existed within the new aristocracy and because it had no real association with the working class, it had no great hold on them. Unlike the ancient aristocracies which had legal or moral obligations to those in distress, the new industrial aristocracy abandoned those same individuals in times of need: The territorial aristocracy of past ages was obliged by law, or thought itself obliged by custom, to come to the help of its servants and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy of our day, when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in time of crisis to public charity to feed them.111 Villeneuve-Bargemont believed the industrial aristocracy to be a class with a distinctive corporate spirit, and attributed its callousness to this spirit and the corrupting influences of greed.112 Tocqueville certainly thought it ‘one of the hardest that have ever appeared on earth’,113 and he also attributed its hardness to greed. But he disagreed with the legitimist about a new corporate spirit being at the root of its vices. Rather, he contended that it was the industrial aristocracy’s lack of corporate spirit that made it so hard. At the same time, however, the lack of corporate spirit also made it paradoxically ‘one of the most restrained and least dangerous’ of all aristocracies.114 Yet Tocqueville did not depart entirely from VilleneuveBargemont’s analysis. He foresaw how the industrial aristocracy might indeed acquire a corporate spirit, but it would be one not entirely of its own making. Rather, it would emerge from the industrial aristocracy’s relation to the state. The state would come to envelop it; it would become the leading industrialist, ‘the chief, or rather the master, of all others’;115 a state which takes on the allure of an ‘industrial company’.116 Tocqueville explored this development in his first report on pauperism, emphasised the issue in his Souvenirs and explored it again thoroughly in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution where he examined the relation between a landed aristocracy and the state of the ancien régime. In 1840, however, he showed convincingly how the industrial aristocracy in its relation with the state would acquire a corporate spirit which made it not only ‘one of the hardest’ classes that ever


appeared on earth, but also contrary to his initial estimate, one of the most dangerous.

Capital, crises, class and the state In the concluding paragraph to his chapter on ‘how an aristocracy may be created by industry’, Tocqueville called on ‘the friends of democracy [to] keep their eyes anxiously fixed’ on developments that may lead to aristocracy.117 He had discussed a number of these in earlier chapters, particularly Americans’ preference for industrial callings, and he explored the relation between economic crises and industry; he illustrated these remarks with observations he made when in America. For instance, he stressed how struck he was by the ‘innumerable multitude of little’ commercial undertakings which were agricultural, with Americans importing ‘into agriculture the spirit of a trading venture’.118 Land was rarely held for long periods: individuals cultivated it ‘in order to make it produce enough to enrich them within a few years’.119 They then sold their plots and moved on. The phenomenon was particularly striking in the western territories where fields were cleared ‘to be sold again, not to be cultivated.’ These settlers showed no strong attachment to the land, an immobile asset, but a real fondness for money. He concluded that liquid capital was plentiful and widely circulated throughout the United States. It allowed Americans to ‘make great advances in industry’. It also ensured they engaged in industry not only because its returns were greater and quicker, though the risks higher, but above all because the liquidity of assets conformed admirably with the restless temperament of a democratic people. So, just as money wages guaranteed that individuals were not bound to a particular employer or profession, liquid assets offered them mobility and safeguarded their independence. But this advantage was tempered by an important disadvantage. As Americans were engaged in industry at the same time, they were ‘subject to very unexpected and formidable industrial crises’.120 Tocqueville believed these crises ‘an endemic disease among all democratic nations in our day’.121 Their effects threatened business activity, all private fortunes, and the state itself,122 an issue explored earlier in his second report on pauperism.123 They frequently led to a constantly shifting number of new proprietors, but they also had the effect of consolidating capital in the hands of the industrial aristocracy, because with large fortunes at their disposal industrial aristocrats were both more thoroughly insulated from the adverse effects of crises and could also absorb their smaller competitors at those times. Industrial society, and the endemic economic crises associated with it, enhanced concentrations of capital, and this had profound consequences for the working classes. In economies with a wide distribution of property and where most wage earners were engaged in agriculture or small scale industry, such as the America Tocqueville visited in 1831 and 1832, workers were able to


command high wages, assuring their independence and contributing to the general raising of living standards, making conditions more equal. This state was very much in tune with Tocqueville’s economic ideal. With property ownership widespread and wage earners’ independence assured, important political and social advantages were to be found, not least local liberty.124 But as he was to stress in 1840, large scale industry was the ‘one great and unfortunate exception’ to the economic ideal.125 In this, Tocqueville’s observations on economic developments in England, Ireland and France corroborated his belief that an aristocracy of wealth replaced one of birth. The very large and constantly increasing number of workers attracted to industry, ‘for from time to time there are periods of extraordinary prosperity in which wages rise disproportionately and attract’ individuals into industry, contrasted sharply with the small size of the powerful industrial aristocracy. The members of this class, being few in number could ‘league together and fix the rate of wages’ in times when profits fell. Once locked into industry, however, workers developed the ‘habits of body and mind which render[ed] them unsuited to any other work’. They had little ‘education, energy, or resources’ and were entirely at their ‘master’s mercy’.126 This state erupted into ‘unspoken warfare between all citizens’127 because equality of conditions had given rise to a mentality which noticed ‘the slightest variation’ between individuals’.128 The emergence of an industrial aristocracy was at odds with this. From Montesquieu and Smith he had learned that as equality of conditions developed there was a greater need for equity and justice. What he had observed in England, Ireland and France, however, showed industry created economic and social conditions which contradicted this axiom. His second report on pauperism tried to deal with this problem by exploring initiatives which would give workers greater control over their destiny. By the 1840s, however, the full extent of industry’s influence was clear. His important series of Letters on the Internal Situation of France for the Siècle and his social programme for the ‘young left’ readdressed the issue. It was one that demanded ‘the particular attention of legislators’.129 The development of an industrial aristocracy was well advanced by the 1840s and Tocqueville had shown how it had come about. In the related discussions on the effects of economic crises, he showed that though the consequences of economic crises were severest for wage earners and the poor, he was careful to show that even the powerful within the industrial aristocracy were not wholly immune from their ill effects. Nonetheless, this class used every opportunity to eliminate altogether, or at least lessen the effects of, crises. In this it was supported by the whole of society because ‘everyone living in democratic times contracts, more or less, the mental habits of the industrial and trading classes’.130 The effects of this were profound.


In one of the most famous chapters of the second volume of Democracy in America, ‘Why Great Revolutions will become rare’, Tocqueville brought together a number of assertions made earlier in the text.131 He contended that trade and industry, being the ‘natural’ enemies of all violent passions, embraced moderation and economic and political stability, an opinion reiterated in his first two Letters on the Internal Situation of France.132 But on one issue Tocqueville held fast to an eighteenth-century commercial perspective that was characteristic of Montesquieu, Smith, or Malthus when he highlighted the beneficial characteristics that were offered by trade alone: Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance; it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them how to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.133 Here he did not mix the terms trade and industry, as he had done in his account of why Americans tended toward industrial callings. He believed trade combined with a wide distribution of personal property lessened the threat of revolution. They were the foundation to equality of conditions. As society became more equal, justice, particularly social justice, grew in importance. This was a characteristic Montesquieu and Smith observed of commercial societies where individuals had a feeling for exact justice because self-interest was strong and the spirit of association weak, but it was also an important element to the humanitarian spirit which emerged in democracy. With a commercial society governed by the principles of justice, the threat of revolution retreated. Yet this favourable eventuality was threatened by rigid inequalities. In a democratic society such as America Tocqueville feared injustice and rigid inequality, particularly as they pertained to slavery, would bring America to civil war.134 On the eve of the 1848 Revolution rigid inequalities of class would cause him to be anxious for the future of liberty in France.135 In 1840, however, what he feared more than revolution was indifference. In all his political writings of the 1840s, from his first Letter on the Internal Situation of France to his article for Le Commerce, Administrative Centralisation and the Representative System,136 Tocqueville feared individuals would ‘shut themselves up more and more narrowly in the little circle of petty domestic interests’ becoming ‘so engrossed in a cowardly love of immediate pleasures that their interest in their own future and in that of their descendants may vanish’.137 Society would become static, making ‘no


advance’.138 This anxiety emerged from his studies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moralists and Guizot who believed this static state to be an example of non-civilization.139 Tocqueville’s fear emerged from his conviction that society’s ruling ideas were industrial and that these were firmly rooted in the state.140 A new form of despotism was emerging in democratic France, one arising from a union between the industrial aristocracy and the state. This new despotism emerged from a ‘more roundabout and secret but also a more certain road’ that led individuals to servitude than any in history. It arose from individuals’ love of material comforts and fear of endemic economic crises, but its development could be stopped. Once again, Tocqueville believed a strong network of vibrant associations and a union between the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty were the surest ways to halt the growth of this new despotism. Associations eroded the barriers of rigid inequalities by instructing individuals to ‘each freely recognize every other citizen as equal’141 – remarks similar to his evaluation of private charitable associations in the first report on pauperism.142 He believed that once a network of associations was established the creation of new associations would be made easy, expanding the scope of political society.143 America represented the classic example of this, as the investigation into prisons and the first volume of Democracy in America showed. However, in countries such as France where a people had ‘never known or long forgotten what freedom is’, individuals, rather than relying on their own initiative and forming associations, as recommendations from his social investigations encouraged them to do, turned to the state for direction.144 This was true of all classes, but it was particularly true of the property owning classes, and above all the middle classes and industrial aristocracy who feared the consequences of economic crises and working class agitation.145 With the state emerging as an economic force in its own right, it ‘faithfully’ represented the interests of the propertied classes and was ‘an exact mirror of their instincts’.146 The outcome was that the interests of the state and those of the propertied classes merged. It made the country its ‘factory’ and the people its ‘workmen’.147 In 1840 Tocqueville returned to the issue of administrative centralisation discussed in 1835. This time, however, his social writings allowed him to add a new dimension to his earlier account. At the beginning of the final part of the 1840 text he observed that two tendencies resulted from equality: the ‘first leads men directly to independence and could suddenly push them right over into anarchy; the other, by a more roundabout and secret but also more certain road, leads them to servitude’.148 He then showed how equality was an important ally of political liberty. It insinuated ‘deep into the heart and mind of every man some vague notion and some instinctive inclination toward political freedom, thereby preparing the antidote for the ill which it has produced’.149 But equality also produced a love of order and


tranquillity, which, when exaggerated, fostered the conditions for administrative centralisation, the greatest threat to liberty in democratic society. This was a form of despotism European nations were most prone to.150 It had ‘no prototype’ and did not fit to ‘old words as “despotism” and “tyranny” ‘.151 Though its development could be checked by strong associations and a robust spirit of independence and religious convictions, economic and social conditions developed that slowly and imperceptibly placed liberty at risk. The blind pursuit of material wellbeing ensured individuals slowly but steadily relinquished their political and civic duties, isolating themselves in a narrow universe of family and friends. In this way individualism eroded the foundations to the intermediate institutions, the guarantors of liberty. Individuals’ preference for industrial callings ensured the development of an aristocracy of industry in the midst of conditions of equality. It also drove them to endorse those policies that could eliminate or limit the effects of economic crises. These factors combined to ensure the gradual erosion of the checks on the development of administrative centralisation. In nations such as France, where ‘the principle of equality triumph[ed] with the help of a violent revolution’, the situation was different from America whose deep roots of liberty there still ensured that its citizens were free, equal, and prosperous. In these nations ‘centralization [became] a fact, and in a sense, a necessity’.152 The classes that managed local affairs, that assured local independence and communal liberty, were swept away by the ‘storm’ of revolution. The ‘confused mass’ which remained had ‘neither the organization nor the habits which would allow it to take administration of these in hand, the state alone seem[ed] capable of taking upon itself all the details of government’.153 This was a consequence of the violent and revolutionary triumph of equality. But the combination of revolution and equality contributed further to bolster the power of the state in a country like France. Having emerged from a violent revolution, the nation continued to be dominated by ‘fierce hatreds, conflicting interests, and contending factions’. It was at these times, when the fear of anarchy seemed overwhelming, that the ‘taste for public tranquillity then becomes a blind passion, and the citizens are liable to conceive a most inordinate devotion to order’.154 This was a direct road along which administrative centralisation could be established, but there were also more insidious routes it could follow to establish itself. Tocqueville observed that as individuals’ passion for material comforts grew stronger the state acquired ‘more and more complete control of the sources of that well-being’. It did so through its union with the propertied classes, particularly the industrial aristocracy, but also, and curiously, through an indirect connexion with the working classes and the poor. But how was its power enhanced? As its recourse to loans from large capitalists to fulfil its increased activities grew, it strengthened its hold on capital. This


was further enhanced by the control it gained over workers’ savings through its absorption of independent savings banks, an issue Tocqueville explored both in his second report on poverty and in correspondence.155 Both these developments contributed to a concentration of capital in the hands of the state.156 The state’s power was further enhanced by the unforeseen effects of economic disruptions. With economic crises endemic to democracies, the state was called on by both property holders and workers to shield them from their adverse effects either through regulation, investment, the acknowledgement of a legal right to welfare, or the recognition of a legal right to employment. This further increased the state’s control over not only the economy, but also society and individuals. It extended its power over domains that were previously reserved for personal independence. It took ‘responsibility for forming the feelings and shaping the ideas of each generation’ and as its power grew ‘diversity, as well as freedom, [were] daily vanishing’.157 Even the judiciary, an independent power and guarantor of liberty, found its sphere of jurisdiction more tightly restrained – a theme Tocqueville explored thoroughly in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.158 By centralising capital, the source of material wellbeing, and regulating society, the state guaranteed individuals were led to servitude, and it was assisted in this by democracy itself. Because democracy gave individuals a taste for material comfort it diverted them from taking part in government, and as the state gained greater and greater control over the sources of material prosperity by centralising capital, it further ensured that individuals developed an ‘ever closer dependence’ upon it.159 Tocqueville feared the consequences which would emerge from the union of the state and the industrial aristocracy. He judged the industrial aristocracy harshly and harboured a personal animus toward it. It was its union with the state he feared. With the growth of the industrial aristocracy the state also grew more powerful,160 until it became not only the leading industrialist, but ‘the chief, or rather the master, of all the others’. As the industrial aristocracy and the state became more powerful they became increasingly remote from the mass of the population. As the state enveloped all things it made society static and established a new form of ‘oriental despotism’.161 This despotism was like no other. It did not torment individuals, but, being milder and more widespread, it degraded them. It stripped individuals of ‘several of the chief attributes of humanity’.162 Tocqueville believed there was one alternative to this new despotism: to foster an environment where the love of liberty was widespread and strong. It was this idea he proclaimed in many of his political writings of the 1840s.163 Democracy, whilst useful to despotism, was also conducive to liberty. Living in the democratic age where the love of equality was greater than the love of liberty, Tocqueville saw no alternative but to champion


liberty: ‘I think that at all times I should have loved freedom, but in the times in which we live, I am disposed to worship it’.164 As he was well aware, however, this was a matter for individual choice, and individuals could choose either to value their liberty or to squander it.

9 Administrative Centralisation and the Threats to Liberty: The Composition of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution Throughout the 1840s Tocqueville became increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty in France. He believed it was threatened by administrative centralisation, whose development was accelerated by the long series of revolutions that had exhausted the nation. It was a great evil that, in tightening its grip on France, corrupted the manners of the French. In looking back on France’s long series of revolutions, Tocqueville observed that the great political parties, ‘decimated, cooled and weary’ by years of upheaval, first became indifferent to achieving their high ideals and then lost sight of them altogether. They became more partisan, and focused on doing everything in their power to prevent the success of their opponents.1 This restricted the boundaries of politics, divesting it of the lofty principles and high ideals that characterised the spirit of 1789. It created the conditions for successive ruling parties to fall back on an established tactic of their predecessors, to consolidate their political power by strengthening their administrative grip on the nation. The Restoration followed this course, just as the imperial and republican governments before it. With the establishment of the July Monarchy and the consolidation of bourgeois power that was to follow, a great calm came over the nation. But, as Tocqueville commented in his Souvenirs, this tranquillity had less to do with the virtues of common sense and moderation ascribed to the middleclass by Say and Malthus – virtues he himself observed in America – than with its complete triumph over all other classes in society. The middle-class preoccupation with acquiring wealth and material comforts became the dominant passion of society as it became the ‘sole master of society’.2 Had it chosen to govern with the other social classes, it could have achieved ‘wonders’. Instead, it adhered to narrow partisan concerns and transformed the state into an instrument of its own interests.3 Its government, one Tocqueville described as ‘devoid of virtue and without grandeur’,4 consolidated its power by mastering the technique of previous governments. It perfected the state as an instrument of its will, extending its administrative reach and enhancing its administrative control.5 By linking administrative centralisa202

Threats to Liberty: Centralisation 203

tion to equality of conditions and political representation, the July Monarchy accentuated the vices of democracy.6 In ‘developing quietly through the vices of men’, administrative centralisation was, as Tocqueville lamented, gradually leading the French to ‘achieve a degree of moral misery that no other people has ever witnessed’.7 In a series of essays published in the 1840s and numerous speeches given to parliament, Tocqueville warned his compatriots of the dangers of administrative centralisation. With the fall of the July Monarchy in 1848, and his election to the National Assembly, the body that replaced the Constituent Assembly, he continued to warn Frenchmen of its threats. The coup d’état of 1851 and Louis-Napoleon’s inauguration of a new imperial government in 1852 ended Tocqueville’s political career. Though Louis-Napoleon, now Napoleon III, sought Tocqueville’s participation in the imperial government, Tocqueville steadfastly refused, so great was his hatred for the new emperor and his régime. Instead he sought to serve his nation in a different way and set about undertaking something he had been considering since 1850, writing a history of the French Revolution. This, however, was to be a history like no other. Its intent was to expose the deep forces impelling French democracy, to trace their distant historical origins, to emphasise how they created conditions in which administrative centralisation developed, thereby corrupting the ideas, customs and manners of the French, and to stress the dangers that awaited France if its citizens failed to heed the lessons of the past. Tocqueville’s The Ancien Régime and the Revolution surpassed the narrative histories of the French Revolution in originality and depth of thought. It was consciously modelled on the great histories: Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur of the Romans and their Decline,8 Guizot’s Histories and perhaps even Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.9 It married the ingredients of the great eighteenth-century histories with the elements of political economy, geography, sociology and moral considerations that made up what Guizot called ‘philosophical’ history.10 It bore a striking resemblance to Tocqueville’s earlier analyses of democratic society in Democracy in America, synthesising ideas and topics from 1835 and 1840. It developed themes first explored in the 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution. And it drew on personal recollections from his Souvenirs of 1850–51. It was the great synthesis and culmination of earlier explorations: the work of a mature historian, and one readily recognised as such by contemporaries like Guizot.11 When Tocqueville began considering work on The Ancien Régime and the Revolution he first contemplated writing a rival narrative history to Thiers’s History of the Revolution (1823–27),12 a work which, when he first read it as a young man, brought about ‘a singular horror and the most violent antipathy against its author’.13 Yet he felt unsuited to writing narrative history, considering his strength to be analytical, or as he put it: ‘judging facts rather


than to tell them in a story’.14 The more he thought about the work, however, the more he believed he would write neither ‘a [narrative] history nor a series of philosophical observations’, but rather a ‘combination of the two’.15 He combined the elements of the great and philosophical histories with those of his earlier studies, and showed through an analysis of the internal elements of society, the details of how changes to the French people’s ideas, traditions, customs and manners, their beliefs, opinions and feelings caused the ancien régime’s demise.16 He ‘foraged’ in archives, accumulated the facts about ancien régime society, and, in piecing those facts together, constructed a picture of it.17 In this way he retained the analytical method of Democracy in America, examining the society of the ancien régime and the French Revolution as a general fact. Tocqueville was conscious that he was undertaking something new in this kind of study of the French Revolution, as he explained to Nassau Senior.18 Just as this analytical approach was fruitful to his study of America, it yielded new and useful knowledge about ancien régime and Revolutionary France. It enabled him to explain how the French in their endeavours to obliterate the institutions of the ancien régime and to ‘differentiate themselves in every possible way from the previous generation . . . took over from the old régime not only most of its customs, conventions, and modes of thought, but even those very ideas which prompted our revolutionaries to destroy it’.19 To understand this irony of history involved delving into the distant origins of France’s past. It meant tracing the long development of equality of conditions and examining equality’s effects on the social and intellectual roots of institutions in France. This was an ambitious undertaking. But by 1854 Tocqueville’s ambition for the work became greater still. He sought to extend the bounds of his analysis beyond France and examine how the democratic revolution was unfolding throughout the nations of Europe.20 At first, he turned to England. He read Blackstone for a second time, but derived little from the Commentaries, judging it to be the work of a ‘rather weak genius, lacking in imagination and insight’.21 He was more impressed with Macaulay’s History of England, a work he considered ‘admirable’, and in reading it was brought back to a question that had fascinated him in writing his 1836 essay for Mill’s Westminster Review, The Social Condition of France Before the Revolution: in the gradual evolution of democracy in Europe, what caused France’s nobility to remain a caste at the same time as England’s aristocracy evolved into an open class? He hoped that Macaulay could provide him with some answers, but he also turned to Nassau Senior in the search for clues, drawing up a list of questions on English feudalism and the English aristocracy for the political economist.22 As his enquiries progressed, Tocqueville found that the evolution of democracy in France and England resulted in the two countries taking very different paths by the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, he thought many lessons could be learned from England, and he continued to pursue his studies of its politics and admin-


istration, returning there in 1857 to study the British Museum’s large number of pamphlets on the Revolutionary era and consult diplomatic correspondence from 1787–93 not available to the public. Where Tocqueville thought a firmer basis for comparison might lie was between eighteenth-century France and eighteenth-century Germany. Since the 1840s he had become increasingly interested in Germany through the influence of his friends Jean-Jacques Ampère, who had studied at the University of Bonn in 1826 under Wilhelm von Schlegel and Barthold Niebuhr, and Adolphe de Circourt, whose travels in Germany between 1835 and 1837 led to friendships with Karl von Savigny and Leopold von Ranke. Tocqueville knew personally the celebrated geographer Alexander von Humboldt, and when he began work on The Ancien Régime and the Revolution he sought the acquaintance of the historians Christian von Bunsen and Ranke, corresponding with them and Savigny. In 1854 he travelled to Bonn and worked in the city’s rich library. But because Bonn was in that part of Germany were the vestiges of feudalism were almost completely effaced, he planned to travel further east, to Berlin and Dresden where he could meet specialists in feudal law and customs. Unfortunately, this part of the trip had to be cancelled because Mme de Tocqueville had fallen ill. Nonetheless, his research in Bonn bore fruit, furnishing him with the necessary insights to establish a basis of comparison between the two nations. Tocqueville’s knowledge of English and German history allowed him to compare France to other European nations and thereby illuminate the French case more thoroughly. By the beginning of 1854 the project he had in mind was for a work of two volumes. Two years later it had grown to three;23 the first volume was to be a history of the ancien régime, the second and third volumes were to treat the Revolution and the Empire respectively. When the first volume appeared it was considered by many to be an achievement that far surpassed what had been undertaken by thinkers before him. The Ancien Régime and the Revolution became a truly worthy successor to both Montesquieu’s and Guizot’s famous works.24 Tocqueville always hoped that through an understanding of the democratic revolution, liberty might be safeguarded in an age where it had fallen out of fashion.25 This was the aim he had set for both volumes of Democracy in America, and it was the explicit objective of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution; it struck the reader at once, as Mill attested.26 Yet the ties between the two works were far more numerous and much tighter than their common objective might suggest. Tocqueville divided The Ancien Régime and the Revolution into three parts that mirrored sectional divisions of Democracy in America. In Part One he traced the broad outlines of the development of equality of conditions throughout France and Europe. In the second part he examined the historical and institutional changes brought about by that development. In the final part he focused on the effects democracy had on the ideas, manners, habits, customs and traditions of the French. His


approach was thoroughly analytical. As in Democracy in America he ‘deconstructed (décomposer) a priori the society’ he was examining. Particular facts were studied, classified and built up into a comprehensive general fact of society. This approach, however, was not without risks, for it could easily convey a static picture of society. In order to avoid this he maintained the distinction made in Democracy in America between internal and external elements. By studying their interactions he was able to convey a dynamic and vividly striking picture of the societies of the ancien régime and Revolution. Tocqueville was acutely aware of how abstract his subject matter was. The nature of his topic and the ideas he wished to present forced him to think hard about conveying his subject matter clearly and understandably. Adopting the structure of Democracy in America would, he thought, give his readers a familiar setting in which they would be introduced to something altogether new. Yet he worried that the abstract subject and his ‘philosophical’ approach might lose his readers, fearing the work would be greeted with the same kind of opprobrium as the 1840 Democracy in America.27 He was pessimistic because he believed his times ‘were not at all favourable to the success of ideas such as [his own], or ideas of any sort, except industrial ideas’.28 He was resigned to an apathetic response. Nonetheless, he was at least content that he could remain true to his beliefs and not ‘declare good’ the government of Louis-Napoleon: a regime that had ‘degraded thought’ and ideas.29 Contrary to Tocqueville’s expectations The Ancien Régime and the Revolution was a great success. The first edition was sold out in less than seven weeks after its publication on 17 June 1856.30 Any joy he might have had at its success, however, was stifled by a terrible grief at the death of his father eight days earlier; he was indifferent to the praise the book received.31 Over time, however, he was able to feel joy at his achievement.32 Immediately following the publication of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, a large number of reviews appeared in the French press. The overwhelming majority were very favourable, but a small number were critical. Léon Plée wrote four articles for the leftist Le Siècle. The paper’s editor at this time was Léonor Havin. He detested Tocqueville, and Plée’s articles reflected this. In their attempt to persuade readers that Tocqueville was nostalgic for the ancien régime, however, they gave the work an immense publicity. Also from the left was Alphonse Lamartine’s article for his monthly Cours familier de littérature. In this the poet–politician expressed astonishment at how Tocqueville’s great intellect could ‘misunderstand’ the ‘character, causes, and significance of the most important event in modern history’. But to anyone who read The Ancien Régime and the Revolution it was clear that Lamartine had not even set eyes on it, his interpretation of it was so fundamentally wrong, as Tocqueville wrote to his friends.33 Despite the small number of critical assessments, the overwhelming majority of reviews were full of praise. Naturally, Beaumont’s review for the


Débats of 18 June under the pseudonym de Sacy was very flattering, and an article by the legitimist Armand de Pontmartin in L’Assemblée Nationale was full of praise. Paulin Limayrac wrote a good but critical review for the Constitutionnel and Adolphe Peyrat produced a very good review for La Presse. Villemain wrote an excellent and admiring article for the Débats which appeared on the 1st of July. The best review, by Rémusat, appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes on the 1st of August. It was, Tocqueville remarked, ‘the best that had been written on my work’.34 The success of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution was not restricted to reviews alone. Sales of the text surpassed those of Victor Hugo’s Contemplations, a work that had for some time captured the public’s imagination.35 Clearly, Tocqueville had written another masterpiece. The book’s success can be attributed to a number of factors. The first was that it had a clear focus: ancien régime France and the Revolution. In this it was unlike the second volume of Democracy in America, which sought to illuminate the general and abstract idea of democracy by oscillating between analyses of America, France and England. The second important factor was the style of the text. Tocqueville was very concerned that it be readable, and it was.36 Attentive readers were struck by its clarity and the profundity of the ideas expressed in it.37 It was, as many remarked, a work of incomparable beauty.38 Though its beautiful style and high ideas contributed significantly to its popularity, there was a third important factor. Whereas Democracy in America (1840) endeavoured, in its analysis of internal elements, to describe and analyse something entirely new, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution considered ideas on the ancien régime that were by now already familiar to the French. Rémusat’s popular ‘Richelieu et sa correspondance’ which appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes in February 1854,39 and Guizot’s Histories expressed ideas Tocqueville used and refined. The work was also accessible because many of the ideas about democracy it expressed were no longer so alien to readers as they had been in Democracy in America (1840). Ideas about the development of a new and emerging industrial society with its class divisions and antagonisms were now widely recognised in France, owing much to the highly publicised debate in the 1840s on industry and class antagonism between the liberal political economist, Joseph Garnier, and the celebrated centralist, Charles Dupont-White.40 By the time The Ancien Régime and the Revolution appeared, the effects of industry were widely understood and vigorously debated. The Ancien Régime and the Revolution made a significant contribution to this debate, for in it Tocqueville renewed the attack he launched in the second volume of Democracy in America and pursued in his 1843 Letters on the Internal Situation of France on the corrupting effects of industry and the culture of greed that emerged from it. His attacks on this kind of unrestrained industrial development had a receptive audience among legitimists, republicans and some liberals; his fierce attack on social-


ism was also readily accepted by many in these groups. All of these elements contributed to the work’s success. Tocqueville was keen to ensure its success would maximise its political impact.41 Here he set two objectives for the work. The first was the important and long-term political objective of safeguarding liberty.42 In order to achieve that goal, however, he needed to succeed with a more restricted objective, one that was very similar to that set out by the Doctrinaires in the ‘Great Debate’ with the ultra-royalist government after 1820, and particularly by Guizot himself in his lectures of 1828–29. He hoped The Ancien Régime and the Revolution would reveal to his contemporaries the parallels between the Second Empire of Napoleon III – one he described as combining ‘a formidable mixture of socialism and absolutism’ – and the despotism of Bonaparte’s First Empire. This idea he retained from the original plan for the work he sketched in 1850.43 The theoretical foundation that enabled him to draw parallels between the 1848 Revolution and Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état, and the ‘noble’ spirit of 1789 and Bonaparte’s rise to power had been laid in Democracy in America (1840), particularly in Part 3, Chapter 21 ‘Why Great Revolutions Will become Rare’ and in the closing chapters of the work. The parallels between these revolutions and their collapse into despotism Tocqueville had analysed in his Souvenirs, his private recollections of the individuals, causes and events of the 1848 Revolution. There, he showed how the triumph of materialist values led to important inequalities in the age of democracy. This undermined justice and precipitated revolution. But the revolution that resulted was usurped. A further consolidation of middle-class values ensued, and once again, just as under the July Monarchy, a great calm came over the nation. Detached from both the aristocracy and the masses, the middle-class spirit triumphed in government, but it was incapable of producing marvels as it had done in 1789. Instead, fatigue and an overwhelming fear of anarchy meant it withdrew into a kind of collective individualism that permitted the rise of a government devoid of virtue and without grandeur.44 In The Ancien Régime and the Revolution Tocqueville sought to enlighten his readers on the evil of the despotism of administrative centralisation. For it was this that deprived individuals of their liberty and plunged the nation into a perpetual state of revolution.45 The despotism of administrative centralisation was rooted in antagonism, hate, and individual isolation. Its ‘ruling passions’ were, as Tocqueville described them, ‘love of gain, a fondness for business careers, the desire to get rich at all costs, a craving for material comfort and easy living’.46 They were the ruling passions of industrial society, and ones he stressed in previous essays.47 Tocqueville’s loathing of narrow materialism and of the culture of financial advancement drove him to become more resolutely critical of industrial society and what he saw as the petty material values it spawned.48 He was particularly critical of doctrines that buttressed industrial society, especially administrative law (droit


administratif ) and formalised political economy. He believed administrative law functioned as the ideology of administrative centralisation,49 and he thought the kind of formal political economy advocated by Ricardo, McCulloch and French followers of Say spawned a culture of greed. He feared the pernicious effects of individualism and class antagonism that emerged from industrial society. He thought industry, when divorced from wider social and moral considerations, gave rise to social atomisation; it isolated individuals and laid the foundation to absolute government: the government where one man’s admiration for it is ‘proportionate to the contempt he [felt] for those around him’.50 Such a régime could achieve nothing of greatness. Only when France came to embrace liberty fully could its prosperity and grandeur be guaranteed.

Democracy and the French Revolution Tocqueville began The Ancien Régime and the Revolution by contending that the French Revolution was neither a ‘local’ nor a ‘transient phenomenon’. It was neither Satanically inspired, as Maistre believed, nor was it, as Burke suggested, some ‘hideous phantom’ which in ‘ “going straight forward to its end, undeterred by peril, unchecked by remorse, . . . [was] crushing out men who [could not] even understand how such a creature [could] exist”.’51 Rather, he returned to the theme that dominated his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution and contended the French Revolution was part of a wider European revolution whose origins lay in the distant past. In 1856, however, he was troubled by an important question which, twenty years before, he was never able to explore fully: ‘why did the storm that was gathering over the whole of Europe break in France and not elsewhere, and why did it acquire certain characteristics in France which were either absent in similar movements in other countries, or if present, assumed quite different forms?’52 This was the principal question of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, and the first part of the work provided a broad outline to the answer. Near the beginning of the work Tocqueville made the important distinction between appearance and reality. He presented the Revolution as a kind of paradox. Its appearance was anarchic,53 but in reality it was ‘a vast centralizing power’.54 Just as Guizot was concerned with the development of civilization in which ‘events, social crises, the various states through which society has passed’, unveiled ‘the general and hidden fact which we seek under all the external facts which envelop it’,55 Tocqueville was interested in showing how anarchy masked order and democracy created despotism. To do this he returned to Chapter One of the concluding part of Democracy in America (1840), where he showed that two tendencies emerged from equality. The first tendency pushed men ‘into anarchy’, whilst the second led them ‘by a more roundabout and secret but also more certain road . . .


to servitude’: that ‘vast centralizing power’.56 These distinct tendencies merged in his account of the French Revolution. The anarchic event of the Revolution was akin to a rupture in the smooth and seamless fabric of history that enabled the acute historian to make out that ‘roundabout and secret’ road to servitude. Stressing the union of anarchy and servitude was indicative of Tocqueville’s intention to use the analytical approach in his philosophical history. His reverence for facts and events – what the Doctrinaires described as la force des choses – was tied to a deeper philosophic purpose: discerning the hidden and profound general pattern to history. This approach was prized by Tocqueville. It helped him to apprehend and evaluate the true nature of the paradox of the Revolution, thereby enabling him to unveil the ‘hidden connection and secret link between equality itself and revolutions’.57 In his account of the Revolution, Tocqueville sought to draw a close connexion between it and the more distant historical event of the Reformation. He believed the French Revolution, as a political revolution, had no equivalent in history. Its only parallel was to be found in ‘certain religious revolutions’, and the religious revolution he had in mind was the Reformation. Drawing inspiration from Guizot’s account of the English Revolution in the thirteenth lecture of The History of Civilization in Europe and in referring to Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years’ War, he argued that the French Revolution shared a number of important characteristics with the Reformation. First, it brought together races and classes ‘which knew next to nothing of each other’ and created ‘a novel sense of fellow feeling between them’.58 Second, its repercussions went far beyond French soil. Third, it sought ‘proselytes all the world over and applied itself ardently to converting foreigners as compatriots’.59 Fourth, disproving Maistre’s famous remark in Considerations on France that ‘there is no such thing as man in the world’,60 the Reformation and the French Revolution shared something that was ‘common to all religions’, an ‘interest in the human personality, the man-in-himself irrespective of the trappings foisted on him by local traditions, laws, and customs’.61 They viewed man in the abstract and because the Revolution ‘viewed the “citizen” from an abstract angle’ it was able to hark ‘back to universal, not particular, values and to what was the most “natural” form of government and the most “natural” social system’.62 This was why both the Reformation and the Revolution had such wide appeal. In viewing all men in the abstract, the Revolution not only portrayed all men equally, but it understood them independently of origin, caste or status. It understood them as independent individuals and characterised them as equal. Tocqueville strengthened the bond he established between the French Revolution and the Reformation by drawing on an analysis from Democracy in America (1835). In the chapter ‘Concerning their point of departure and its importance for the future of the Anglo–Americans’, he paid particular attention to the religious character of the first settlers, the Pilgrims. He


believed their Puritanism was much more than just a religious doctrine because ‘in many respects it shared the most absolute democratic and republican theories’.63 The Puritans viewed themselves as equal, and they were fiercely independent of central authority. Tocqueville thought this kind of independence to be the foundation to local and political liberty. From the equality and liberty that reigned among the Puritans sprang a successful democracy while in France liberty and equality, the reigning values of 1789, led not to a successful democracy but to despotism and continual revolution. What explained this difference? When the Puritans arrived in America they were blessed with a vast territory and were able to establish local institutions that were exemplary of their democratic and republican beliefs. The situation was different in France, where feudal institutions exercised a powerful influence on people’s outlooks and beliefs. Creating institutions that embodied democratic and republican beliefs would be much more difficult for the French, as the influence of feudal institutions was deep-seated and pervasive. Tocqueville considered this in his examination of the origins of French laws and institutions in the fourth chapter of Part One entitled ‘How almost all European nations had had the same institutions and how these were breaking down everywhere’. There he expressed his astonishment at the large number of similarities that existed between the ancient mediaeval laws of France and those of Germany and England. It was truly ‘extraordinary that nations so unlike and having so little intercourse with each other should have built up systems of law so close akin’.64 The same was also true of their institutions: It is not, I think, going too far to say that in the fourteenth century the political, social, administrative, judicial, and financial institutions – and even the literary productions – of the various European countries had more resemblance to each other than they have even in our time, when the march of progress seems to have broken down all barriers and communications between nations have so vastly improved.65 As conditions grew more equal the ancient constitution and institutions of Europe began to decline. At this point the remarkable similarities between nations began to evaporate, their differences becoming more pronounced. In Part One of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution Tocqueville did not elaborate upon what caused these changes to occur, this would be the object of his discussions in the second and third parts of the text. There he showed that what caused these differences to emerge had to do with the way in which the classes of these nations reacted to the social, moral and intellectual changes taking place around them. In the early chapters what he was keenest to show and develop from his 1844 article Administrative Centralisation and the Representative System was the extent to which a central administration ‘staffed by a bureaucracy’ undermined the power of a weak nobility.


In Germany this development was slow; in France it was rapid, but England was an exception. In England old institutions were retained but society had undergone a radical transformation. By the seventeenth century feudalism was dead. The classes had intermingled and the aristocracy had ceased to be exclusive. Wealth had now become ‘a steppingstone to power, all men were equal before the law and public offices open to all, freedom of speech and of the press was the order of the day’.66 Changes were ‘gradually and adroitly introduced into the old order, that, without impairing its stability or demolishing ancient forms, gave it a new lease of life and new energy’.67 English society adapted easily. Here, Tocqueville’s account bore a striking resemblance to what Guizot said on the Christian church in his fifth lecture on The History of Civilization in Europe. Guizot contended that the church was able to remain a vibrant institution because of its ability to adapt and ensure equal admission of individuals to ecclesiastical roles: There can be no doubt that the equal admission of all men to the ecclesiastical functions, that the continual recruiting of the church according to principles of equality, has powerfully contributed to maintain, and incessantly re-animate within it, its life and movement, to prevent the triumph of the spirit of immobility.68 Whilst English society had undergone a profound change, it was able to retain its ancient institutions and its local liberties. Here, too, Tocqueville drew on Guizot. In both his accounts of the English Revolution, History of the English Revolution, and the fourteenth lecture of The History of Civilization in Europe, Guizot argued that the alliance that formed between the aristocracy, the middle classes and the peasantry secured the vitality of local liberty. This was because it checked the development of royal, and central, power. This was a profoundly important consideration that marked The Ancien Régime and the Revolution,69 and one that bore a striking resemblance to Tocqueville’s first thoughts on Guizot, when as a student in 1828 he used the Doctrinaire’s framework of analysis to study of John Lingard’s A History of England.70 But whereas in England events developed in a way that was propitious to local liberty, the situation was very different in France. There, equality had similar effects on individuals’ perceptions of themselves, wealth grew in political importance, but class structures and the privileges associated with ancient castes were retained. France’s institutions also underwent important changes. Whereas the English retained those aspects which stemmed from their ancient institutions, the French adopted elements that were ‘foreign to its institutions and could exist independently of them’.71 This was to have dramatic consequences, particularly for local liberty; its loss was the chief characteristic that distinguished France from England and


America. It was also one of the reasons why France continued to have revolutions whilst these other countries did not.

Centralisation and the ancien régime What caused the French to lose their local liberties? Tocqueville pointed to a number of factors, but he highlighted one above all others: administrative centralisation. Whilst Guizot had shown the dynamic force of civilization to be the principle of antagonism, Tocqueville showed how administrative centralisation arrested this force by eroding the powers of the various civil and religious institutions of society.72 He emphasised its importance and analysed it thoroughly. In Democracy in America Tocqueville used his studies of political economy and social issues to accumulate particular facts that enabled him to better comprehend the general fact of democracy. In The Ancien Régime and the Revolution he used these facts in the same way. As in Democracy in America, he classified them according to whether they were internal or external elements to society, and he stressed their interactions and the consequences emerging from them. This approach was at the heart of his analysis of the institutional and social transformations that marked the important historical changes the ancien régime underwent. Tocqueville traced all of the changes to the ancien régime to development of equality of conditions. One particular aspect of this development fascinated him, which was that both French and American societies became characterised by an extensive distribution of land. Yet whereas his thesis was self-evident for the young American republic, it needed to be proved for France. This he did, and in doing so challenged the widely held belief that the break-up of the large estates began with the Revolution. Tocqueville proved that France’s large estates had been broken up long before the Revolution. He drew upon a substantial body of evidence to substantiate his claim. He quoted from reports by anxious intendants concerned that inheritances were being subdivided to ‘an alarming extent’. He showed how they worried that estates were being ‘broken up into innumerable fragments’ and that this ‘process of fragmentation’ was unstoppable.73 He cited Turgot who contended that ‘ “the practice of partitioning inheritances has gone so far that a piece of land which just sufficed for a single family is now parcelled out between five or six sons”.’74 The single most important piece of evidence he offered was his own survey of land distribution. In this, he showed that in certain parts of France ‘the number of landowners was as high as half, often two thirds, of the present number’.75 This material he used as the foundation to one of his most important theses: that the French peasant ‘had not merely ceased to be a serf, he had become a landowner’.76 The scale of this development was extensive and it placed France alongside America as


a nation with widespread property ownership. Whilst England had a great many peasant proprietors in the distant past, by the end of the eighteenth century their number was very small; in Germany the number of peasant proprietors always remained tiny. Among European nations France was different. It had developed the material conditions that could foster a large middle class as in America, but failed to create institutions that, in reflecting those changes, safeguarded liberty. How did this come about? There were many elements to Tocqueville’s answer, but two are worth stressing. The first was that the development of a landowning peasantry had not been accompanied by the equivalent development of agrarian commercialism as it had in America. Turgot’s and intendants’ concerns about the extensive distribution of cultivated land were symptomatic of their belief that small plots could not be profitable. Tocqueville’s own 1843 and 1846 investigations into communal lands written for the general departmental council of the Manche suggest that he understood and sympathised with those eighteenth-century concerns. But he did not endorse the conclusion that smallholdings be consolidated into larger ones. Rather, and this was the second element to his answer, he offered an entirely different interpretation on the inability of smallholders to make their lands profitable, one that could easily have been lifted from the pages of any one of Say’s works. Tocqueville contended that ‘these small proprietors had much difficulty in making a living out of the land since it was subject to many imposts from which there was no escaping’.77 He believed it was not so much that property was too widely distributed to make it commercially viable, but rather that peasant proprietors could not make their plots profitable because they were subject to numerous and unfair taxes, taxes designed to pay for the nobility’s privileges. Two important consequences flowed from this. First, as peasants became land owners, the commercial spirit, he argued, developed within them. This was accompanied by a softening of manners, just as Montesquieu and Smith had shown. At the same time, however, the development of the spirit of commerce undermined the old bonds of community. Mentalities changed and as old bonds were loosened a new awareness of exact justice emerged within the peasantry. Among nobles, however, no reciprocal development took place. As the fortunes of the French peasant improved those of the French nobility declined; the development of equality of conditions ensured that as one class rose the other fell. Instead of acquiescing to this development and deriving advantage from it by leading the struggle to strengthen local freedoms, however, the French nobility sought to preserve its privileges by gravitating toward a weak crown and thereby unwittingly strengthening it.78 It declared its love of status to be more important than its love of independence and from this a second far-reaching consequence flowed. Tocqueville showed how unfair and high taxation prevented peasant agriculture from being commercially viable and hindered the development of a


spirit of independence that accompanied commercialisation. The French peasantry were never able to acquire the fierce spirit of independence that existed among American yeoman farmers.79 The French peasant, taxed at every opportunity, was unable to reap the fruits of his labour and enlarge his holdings to a size that would guarantee individual independence: here lay the explanation to Tocqueville and Beaumont’s assertion in their 1833 prison report that the French had a weak spirit of independence.80 Tocqueville believed these developments explained how in France the bonds of community disintegrated as equality of conditions developed. With changing mentalities individuals assessed their relations with others in formal terms defined by a notion of exact justice. The system of taxation which maintained privilege was at odds with this and it became the source of peasant disenchantment with the political regime. Yet the peasantry’s pent-up frustration could find no clear expression because the growth of a spirit of independence, something that would normally have accompanied the development of a commercial spirit, had been arrested. At the same time, however, the nobility, wishing to maintain its privileges, sacrificed its spirit of independence by tying itself to the crown. Unlike in England where local liberties and the spirit of independence were protected by an aristocracy that resisted royal encroachments on its rights by forming an alliance with the peasantry and the middle classes, the French nobility sacrificed its independence for privilege, and ensured local freedom was extinguished. Tocqueville’s account of property ownership among the peasantry served to remind readers of his earlier portrayal of the America yeoman farmer’s spirit of independence; it was intended to evoke a stark contrast and convey a powerful message. Whereas the American farmer was independent, prosperous and politically mature, the French peasant was servile, frustrated in his endeavours and retarded in his political development. His backwardness was the result of administrative centralisation. Describing the effects of this and explaining its historical development was what Tocqueville intended for the rest of the work. He began his analysis of administrative centralisation by contrasting the case of the French nobility whose local powers were usurped by the central authority with what transpired in England, where local liberty was preserved. In France, as equality of conditions developed and the classes came closer together, the nobility sought to distance itself from the rest of society by moving closer to the crown. In this way it became a kind of courtier class. But in England the same development saw the aristocracy allying itself with the other social classes in order to resist encroachments on local freedoms by the crown. It maintained many of its privileges, forged close links to the other social classes and preserved local liberty. By contrast, the French aristocracy became complicit in the slow and inevitable loss of local freedoms with the further consequence, one stressed by Montesquieu, that the monarchy itself would succumb to corruption once local liberties were lost.81


In his account of local freedom and privilege, Tocqueville emphasised a clash that was to emerge between two different types of freedom. He showed how the liberty that emerged from the development of equality of conditions was in conflict with the liberty associated with privilege. As he had shown in Democracy in America, democratic liberty was associated with personal independence. Market societies in which property was widely distributed provided the conditions for the widespread enjoyment of personal independence, the first prerequisite for freedom.82 This was a modern idea of liberty.83 It rested on the conviction that all human beings, endowed with the natural intelligence to direct their own lives, bring with them from birth an equal and imprescriptible right to autonomy. Tocqueville believed this idea of liberty was different from that associated with aristocracies. Aristocratic liberty was linked to ancient virtues and great individual sacrifice. It was, as he understood from Guizot’s fourth lecture on The History of Civilization in Europe, a form of liberty that created a sentiment of exulted selfworth, of haughty and fierce independence, in those who enjoyed it.84 This form of liberty, long associated with the works of the great seventeenthand eighteenth-century moralists,85 was out of place in the democratic age because it was bound to institutions that justified inequalities.86 Nonetheless, he admired it because it embodied ancient virtues and was associated with great individual sacrifice. There was something indescribable about aristocratic liberty that appealed to something deep in men’s souls: Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense. It is not for what it offers on the material plan that they love it; they regard freedom itself as something so precious, so needful to their happiness that no other boon could compensate for its loss, and its enjoyment consoles them even in their darkest hours. Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) defies analysis. For it is something one must feel and logic has no part in it. It is a privilege of noble minds which God has fitted to receive it, and it inspires them with a generous fervor. But to meaner souls, untouched by the sacred flame, it may well seem incomprehensible.87 Aristocratic liberty had the capacity to promote ‘an active sense of fellowship’, to lift ‘men’s minds’ and make them ‘aware at every moment that they belong each to a vaster entity, above and around them’.88 It brought individuals together, but it also instilled in them a fierce spirit of independence – and this Tocqueville sought to link to local or political liberty in the democratic age. To this end he found inspiration in Guizot’s accounts of


mediaeval France, but he was also inspired by what he discovered in America. From the mediaeval French and the modern Americans he learned that aristocratic liberty created a sense of fellowship among individuals of an estate, village, town, parish, canton or region. It was the foundation to local liberty, the independence of township or parish.89 He also pondered the relation between the spirit of religion and liberty. He believed that religion, by directing the individual’s thoughts away from earthly considerations and toward God, imbued individuals with an inner strength that sustained them in times of hardship or oppression. Tocqueville observed the workings of this personal fortitude when he was in America. It enabled Americans to endure the solitudes of their vast wilderness, it sustained Catholics in a country where the dominant religion was Protestant and where majority pressure to conform was great. In focusing on aristocratic liberty and its connexion to local liberty, Tocqueville was able to stress the important relation between liberty and decentralised administrative power. He was able to show in all his important works how aristocratic liberty was preserved in the parish and the township.90 But in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution he went on to show how it had been lost; the class to which it was bound became corrupt. The conclusion was vintage Montesquieu or Rousseau: corruption resulting in a loss of virtue and inevitable decline. The analysis, however, was Tocqueville’s own. He showed how the French nobility, the repository of ancient liberty, gradually relinquished its local responsibilities, sacrificed its freedom and paved the way to the centralisation of both political and administrative power, and ultimately its own demise. How did all this come about? Tocqueville relied on a comparative approach to answer this question. He described how in England and Germany the ‘great landed proprietors’ administered as well as governed their respective nations.91 In England they were able to do so because as social conditions became more equal the aristocracy became more open and less of a caste, accepting within its ranks wealthy merchants. In Germany social conditions had not evolved to nearly the same extent as in England or France. Their slow development ensured the nobility remained untouched, its status as a caste assured – though Tocqueville believed that Germany was gradually coming under the yoke of administrative centralisation, a development applying equally to the whole European continent, and one he described as ‘the modernised administration of the Roman Empire’.92 His analysis of developments in France recalled his account in Part Three Chapter Six of the second volume of Democracy in America, ‘How democratic institutions and manners tend to raise rent and shorten the terms of leases’. There he showed how, as conditions became more equal, as the aristocracy’s ancient wealth declined and as the middle classes’ requirements grew faster than their resources, men became obsessed with ‘the slightest profit . . . and not a single one of them feels inclined to let any


of his advantages slip or to lose any fraction of his income’.93 The consequence, as he explained in the Ancien Régime and the Revolution was that the aristocracy sought to preserve its income by attaching itself to the central power. Though it secured its economic advantages, it gradually lost its political privileges, the political prerogatives of its feudal rights. By retaining the ‘pecuniary advantages’ attached to its ancient privileges, and in some cases greatly increasing those pecuniary advantages,94 the aristocracy slowly came to view these ancient feudal rights solely in monetary terms, the privileges having become nothing more than a lucrative source of income. In this way the nobility ‘ceased to play any part in public administration’.95 The result was that it gradually lost contact with its local inhabitants and the bonds of community loosened. As local communities became increasingly atomised a vast empire, including parish and canton affairs, was opened to the central power.96 The French nobility ceased to exercise any effective political power, though it retained its wealth. Tocqueville was anxious to show that the nobility’s ancient feudal rights had a common feature: ‘they were associated with the soil or its produce, and all alike bore heavily on the cultivator’.97 This meant that the nobility had a lucrative source of revenues stemming from land, but it had shed the political obligations those rights entailed, and hence its responsibilities to those who worked the land. The nobility became nothing more than, as Say and other Idéologues described them, ‘idlers’ and parasites. The consequences were disastrous. By relinquishing any part it might play in local affairs, the nobility paved the way for the central power to take on those responsibilities. The old feudal monarchy with the great lords acting as its hereditary representatives was defunct by the eighteenth century. A much more centralised and bureaucratised system came to replace it. Instead of the great lords acting as hereditary representatives to the crown – though some Governors of Provinces, as they were called, remained but were divested of all real power – the central power appointed an Intendant: ‘The Intendant was a young man of humble extraction’, who ‘cut a relatively humble figure beside the last representatives of the feudal aristocracy’.98 He obtained his office not through purchase, nor by right of birth, nor election. He was simply selected by the government amongst the junior members of the Royal Council (conseil du roi) and was never posted to a province where he had been a native. His function was to execute locally all the measures enacted by the government. The Intendant was under the direct control of the Minister of State and could be dismissed at any time. He was the sole representative of the government in his administrative district (généralité). He appointed ‘subdelegates’ who served under him. Each canton was assigned a subdelegate. Subdelegates were responsible to the Intendant, just as he was to the Minister of State, and like the Intendant, they could be dismissed at will. Though the Intendant was raised to the rank of noble, the subdelegate was always a commoner. The organisation of administrative power exposed both the


extent to which the nobility relinquished its ancient responsibilities and how the central power was able to amass powers over parishes and cantons. The Intendant was a powerful individual but a colourless one compared to the last representatives of the feudal aristocracy. The ancient nobility lost nothing of its glamour. Their members were wealthier than Intendants and benefited from the prestige ‘that always attaches to ancient institutions’. As members of the Court, ‘the nobles were in touch with the King and they commanded the French fleets and armies; in a word, their activities were of the showy kind that most impresses contemporaries and all too often focuses the attention of posterity’.99 Yet these positions, devoid of real power, contributed to haughty pride. Nobles viewed Intendants as ‘upstarts whose task it was to superintend the middle class and the peasants’.100 A great lord or man of noble birth, however impoverished he might be, would disdain any proposal to make him an Intendant; he would be positively insulted by it. There were many consequences stemming from this. The first and most readily discernible was that as the nobility concentrated on its ‘showy’ activities, the central power through its Intendants gained more and more power over local affairs. This development was accelerated by the nobility becoming increasingly aloof from local affairs, particularly those touching the middle classes and the peasantry, as it identified those areas with Intendants, ‘not the kind of people a gentleman would wish to associate with’.101 As the nobility became more and more aloof from local affairs, the middle classes and representatives of business gained greater and greater power over municipal matters. This development could be traced back to 1692 when Louis XIV abolished free municipal elections to local posts and sold those posts instead to certain members of the community, giving them the right to govern their fellow citizens. Towns could purchase their ancient rights of electing their executive officers, and many did, but the price they had to pay was considerable, and the crown frequently took those rights away only to re-sell them again. In other cases, the crown simply sold the rights in perpetuity to the highest bidder. Tocqueville considered the sale of municipal rights ‘the most shameful feature of the old régime’.102 Though it may have raised revenues for the crown, its political consequences were catastrophic. Whether it was the executive of the community (corps de ville) including the Mayor and other officials, or its General Assembly, municipal government had ‘degenerated into a petty oligarchy’ by the eighteenth century.103 What transpired was exactly what Montesquieu had described in his account of the corruption of the principle of monarchy.104 With assemblies composed more and more of members of the middle classes and representatives of corporations, serving their own interests, the numbers of artisans and ‘common people’ who, before these administrative changes, sat in large numbers in local assemblies, now made up fewer and fewer of their members. The result was that the distance between the classes widened; society became atom-


ised, and the growth of despotism accelerated. Despotism, in turn, fed this development. It deprived the governed of any sense of solidarity and interdependence; of goodneighbourly feelings and a desire to further the welfare of the community at large. It immure[d] them, so to speak, each in his private life and, taking advantage of the tendency they already have to keep apart, it estrange[d] them still more. Their feelings toward each other were already growing cold; despotism [froze] them.105 Tocqueville’s analysis recalled his own earlier discussion on the courtier spirit from both Chapter Seven of Part Two of the first volume of Democracy in America, on ‘the omnipotence of the majority in the United States and its effects’ and Chapter Twenty of Part Three of the second volume, ‘concerning place-hunting in some democratic countries’. In those accounts he highlighted the pernicious effects of narrow self-interest and how the corruption of private morality affected public manners. When placed in the context of his 1843 Letters on the Internal Situation of France, his 1844 article Administrative Centralisation and the Representative System, and his 1846 essay Of the Middle Class and the People, where he showed how administrative centralisation corrupted public manners and private virtues, it served as a powerful warning to the French. Tocqueville returned to the theme of his earlier writings on America, one firmly entrenched in Say’s writings too, when he contrasted America with other European nations, particularly France, and argued that in America where property ownership was widespread, individuals invested their time and energies in trade and industry. These endeavours were accompanied by an ethos in which the American asked for nothing more than ‘the state not to get in his way while he is working and to see that he can enjoy the fruit of his labour’.106 In France individuals’ relation to the state evolved differently. Here, when an individual ‘begins to feel his strength and extend his ambitions, the first idea that occurs to him is to get an official appointment’.107 A number of factors explained this difference. European nations with great centralised monarchies offered individuals a secure and rapid route to improving their fortunes in circumstances where equality of conditions eroded ranks. Rather than exercise their own initiative, individuals turned to the state in order to secure their wealth and fortunes. Tocqueville observed this phenomenon in his social investigations, and he explained it much as Say had done when, in his critique of physiocracy, he showed how the state by interfering in commercial activity, corrupted the manners and habits of its citizens. But Tocqueville took Say’s analysis one step further when, in the second volume of Democracy in America, he discussed how as equality of conditions developed, making the slightest inequality appear intolerable, political and administrative power could grow:


This ever-fiercer fire of endless hatred felt by democracies against the slightest privileges singularly favors the gradual concentration of all political rights in those hands which alone represent the state. The sovereign, being of necessity and incontestably above all the citizens, does not excite their envy, and each thinks that he is depriving his equals of all those prerogatives which he concedes to the state.108 Tocqueville drew a link between this and the practice of place hunting which, in corrupt democracies, ‘attracts more recruits than any other trade’.109 Place-hunting of this sort was identical to the spread of the courtier spirit throughout society. It created a great many social evils. It undermined ‘every citizen’s sense of independence’, it spread a ‘venal and servile temper throughout the nation’, and it led to ‘unproductive activity’ that unsettled the nation ‘without adding to its resources’.110 Its effects were wholly destructive, risking a nation’s ‘peace’ and placing ‘its very existence in great danger’.111 This was the consequence of a narrow self-interest fostered by administrative centralisation. Tocqueville showed in Democracy in America (1840), his political writings of the 1840s and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, that among the worst effects of the courtier spirit was the way it created the conditions for an incessant jockeying for positions. This was true of both the middle-classes and the nobility. The great nobles, who had a ‘natural affinity’ with the monarch, jockeyed for important posts;112 middle-class Frenchmen strived for lesser administrative or municipal posts. No ‘sooner did he find himself in possession of a small capital sum than he expended it on buying an official post instead of investing it in a business’.113 The jockeying for posts had the worst possible effects on the development of agriculture, trade and industry. It also created an important number of anomalies. The nobility and rich commoners directed their attention to the monarch and the court. The middle classes directed all their energies to the bureaucracy and the larger institution of the state. With the great nobility lured to court society, Paris and other large cities acted like magnets, drawing toward them nobles from all over France. The process was further exacerbated by the gradual erosion of local liberties. In what was the mirror opposite of Tocqueville’s American account of the merits of a weak capital city,114 he concluded that ‘the more the nobles lost their ancient rights without being granted any new ones and local freedoms died out, the more the upper-class migration to the cities intensified’.115 Here lay the seeds to the monarchy’s destruction. Just as Montesquieu showed how ‘a monarchy is ruined when the prince, referring everything to himself exclusively, reduces the state to its capital, the capital to the court, and the court to his person alone’,116 Tocqueville traced this erosion to the nobility which became further detached from both the peasantry and municipal affairs. It ceased to care about its obligations to the peasantry and ‘aban-


doned them to their own resources’.117 The bourgeoisie also contributed to this decline. It was drawn to official posts thereby becoming ‘segregated from the peasantry’. It was further estranged from the peasantry because its interests conflicted with peasant concerns; official posts were partially or totally exempt from obligations such as service in the militia, forced labour or the taille.118 The result of nobles being drawn to the crown and the bourgeoisie to the state bureaucracy was that the peasantry became the most isolated class within society, with other classes looking down on it. It became ‘an alien, incomprehensible race of men’.119 This being so, it remained for a time pure, uncorrupted by the governing ethos of greed.120 However, by abandoning local affairs the nobility undermined ‘the foundations of power which serve it in governing the entire nation’,121 ensuring that municipal affairs passed into the hands of a vast, expanding, and servile bureaucracy manned by a bourgeoisie whose interests were fundamentally at odds with those of the peasantry. At the same time as the peasant was being looked down on by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, his status as a landowner was developing. As we saw earlier, Tocqueville showed how the peasant had become a landowner and was emancipated from the control of his seigneur. This economic and social development, akin to the condition of the American farmer who wanted nothing more that ‘the state not to get in his way while he is working and to see that he can enjoy the fruit of his labour’, was entirely at odds with the concurrent developments affecting the nobility and the bourgeoisie. As these two latter classes became more closely bound to the crown and state, they maintained or were granted financial privileges. Someone had to pay for these privileges, and it was the peasantry which was forced to do so: ‘If the peasant had not owned his land he would hardly have noticed many of the charges which the feudal system imposed on all real estate.’122 But the peasant had become a landowner, and the ‘pecuniary advantages’ of ancient seigniorial rights were exacted from him at every opportunity. Tocqueville captured the injustice of this situation in a lengthy passage that merits quoting in full: I would ask you to picture to yourself the French peasant as he was in the eighteenth century – or, rather the peasant you know today, for he has not changed at all. His status is different, but not his personality. See how he appears in the records from which I have been quoting: a man so passionately devoted to the soil that he spends all his earnings on buying land, no matter what it costs. To acquire it he must begin by paying certain dues, not to the government but to other landowners of the neighborhood, who are as far removed as he from the central administration and almost as powerless as he. When at long last he has gained possession of this land which means so much to him, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he sinks his heart in it along with the grain he sows.


The possession of this little plot of earth, a tiny part, his very own, of the wide world, fills him with pride and a sense of independence. But now the neighbors aforesaid put in an appearance, drag him away from his cherished fields, and bid him work elsewhere without payment. When he tries to protect his seedlings from the animals they hunt, they tell him to take down his fences, and they lie in wait for him at river crossings to exact a toll. At the market there they are again, to make him pay for the right of selling the produce of his land, and when on his return home he wants to use the wheat he has put aside for his daily needs, he has to take it to their mill to have it ground, and then to have his bread baked in the lord’s oven. Thus part of the income from his small domain goes to supporting these men in the form of charges which are imprescriptible and irredeemable. Whatever he sets out to do, he finds these tiresome neighbors barring his path, interfering in his simple pleasures and his work, and consuming the produce of his toil. And when he has done with them, other fine gentlemen dressed in black step in and take the greater part of his harvest. When we remember the special temperament of the French peasant proprietor in the eighteenth century, his ruling interests and passions, and the treatment accorded him, we can well understand the rankling grievances that burst into flame in the French Revolution.123 What he described here was a peasantry which acquired economic independence but was unable to enjoy it because of a feudal system which ‘remained basic to the economic organisation of France’.124 The situation was unjust, the peasantry burdened with the cost of privileges enjoyed by the other classes. Tocqueville believed there were severe consequences which would stem from this because ‘of all the various ways of making men conscious of their differences and of stressing class distinctions, unequal taxation is the most pernicious, since it creates a permanent estrangement between those who benefit and those who suffer by it’.125 The issue was highlighted in the comparison he drew between France and England. Here he noted that ‘in England during the eighteenth century it was the poor who enjoyed exemption from taxation; in France it was the rich’.126 The situation in France was reminiscent of remarks Montesquieu made about the harshest of aristocratic governments;127 these were later repeated by Fodéré, Villeneuve-Bargemont and Tocqueville himself to describe the industrial aristocracy. Here was something at odds with democracy, individuals’ changing mentalities and their perceptions about exact justice. But the issue was more than one of injustice, it also highlighted the extent to which individuals were governed by narrow self-interest and how this contributed to a collective individualism that atomised society. Even the peasantry, which Tocqueville thought the furthest removed from the corrupting influences of narrow self-interest, believing it to be ‘that which was most solid in the


nation’,128 had in fact been influenced by it. As the number of peasants who became landowners grew, a small number of poor peasants remained, and these poorer individuals were abandoned not only by the nobility and the middle classes, but by richer peasants too. Thus not only was the peasant almost entirely deprived of any contacts with the upper classes; he was also separated even from those of his own class who might have been able to befriend and advise him. For once such persons had achieved a certain culture or prosperity they turned their backs on him. He was, in fact, cold-shouldered on all sides and treated like a being of a peculiar species.129 This had terrible economic consequences. Agriculture, commerce, and industry were slowed in their development to the extent that ‘life lapsed into a state of suspended animation’.130 The worst effects were predominantly social and political. With the classes pitted against each other because they had been encouraged to pursue their narrow self-interests, the monarch’s hold on them was strengthened; the great French kings divided ‘men so as the better to rule them’. In dividing men, however, the monarchs divided the nation. These developments Tocqueville traced back over ‘six generations’, although they were accelerated under Louis XIV. What interested him most in analysing the events that led up to the Revolution was how France’s men of letters, whose ‘intellectual brilliance . . . won them world-wide fame toward the middle of the eighteenth century’, through their theories of human nature, government, economics and administration, and their endeavours to make society anew, ironically and most curiously accelerated the developments that had for generations been set in train. Their theories, like the Intendants’ solutions to the problems of municipal government, led to a tightening of central government’s control over society.131

Physiocracy and the administrative revolution The many social injustices that existed in ancien régime society led France’s men of letters to advocate a complete transformation of laws and customs which they believed to be unjust and overly complex. They believed the social order needed simplifying and thought that by creating one based on elementary rules derived from the principles of reason and natural law, government and administration would become simpler and more transparent and social injustices would vanish. This belief became widespread and popular among the educated élite. Why? Tocqueville thought there were two reasons for this. First, the individuals who held these opinions in such high esteem were detached from the experience of practical politics. For this reason they favoured abstract theories


and generalisations. Tocqueville’s studies of social issues informed this belief, but his thoughts on people’s changing mentalities, their assessment of relations with others in formal terms defined by a notion of exact justice was also important. Second, an idea explored less in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution but rigorously analysed in Democracy in America (1840) was how the Cartesian method, with its reliance on individual judgement and its iconoclastic destruction of accepted formulae and traditions, conformed best to democracies.132 In Chapter Three of Part One of that volume, ‘why the Americans show more aptitude and taste for general ideas than their English forefathers’, Tocqueville examined how general and abstract ideas were widely popular in democracies. Two tendencies were at work here: equality and atomisation. As equality of conditions eroded class distinctions, individuals came to view each other more or less equally. This enabled each to widen ‘his view until it includes the whole. Truths applicable to himself seem equally applicable, mutatis mutandis, to his fellow citizens and to all men.’133 Social atomisation intensified this. General ideas became popular because with each individual ‘isolated and weak’, no single person could direct society. ‘At such times humanity always seems to progress of its own accord. So to explain what happens in the world, one is reduced to looking for certain great causes which, acting in the same fashion on each of our fellow men, lead them all of their own accord to follow one and the same road.’134 In this way individuals acquired a taste for general ideas. One of the most important of these general ideas was on the perfectibility of man. Tocqueville first confronted it in his and Beaumont’s attacks on false philanthropy in their 1830 preliminary report on prisons and three years later in The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France.135 He later examined it in his numerous social investigations and in Chapter Eight of the first part of Democracy in America (1840), where he contrasted aristocratic and democratic societies. In the former, individuals were classified by rank and bound to it so that they thought in terms only of amelioration and not fundamental change: societies of the future would be better ‘but not really different’. By contrast, in democracies, where ‘classes are brought together’ and ‘men are jumbled together and habits, customs, and laws are changing’ where ‘new facts impinge and new truths are discovered . . . old conceptions vanish and new ones take their place, then the human mind imagines the possibility of an ideal but always fugitive perfection’.136 Aristocratic nations were always inclined ‘to restrict the scope of human perfectibility’, but democratic ones frequently ‘stretch[ed] it beyond reason’.137 The French men of letters stretched the bounds of human perfectibility beyond what was reasonable. Why? Just as he and Beaumont attacked false philanthropists for their ‘philosophical reveries’ in their 1833 prison report,138 Tocqueville charged the men of letters for having ‘completely failed to perceive the very real obstacles’ to


their proposals for reform because they were entirely out of touch with practical politics – though in his 1836 essay The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution he argued this was to change at the end of the eighteenth century where they had acquired a recognised place in ‘the political world’.139 The complete lack of contact with practical politics was a direct consequence of the erosion of political liberty in France. With ‘the total absence of any political freedom, they [the men of letters] had little acquaintance with the realities of public life’.140 As such, the ideas they proposed were wholly abstract and entirely divorced of ‘the wisdom of the ages’. Tocqueville contrasted this French state of affairs with conditions in England. There, political thinkers and those who governed co-operated with each other. Theorists advanced new ideas while practitioners amended or circumscribed those ideas in the light of practical experience.141 Theory and practice coexisted in harmony. For both, history offered vital lessons and it was no surprise that the English should venerate it. France’s men of letters, however, ‘had a vast contempt for the past’ and all things historical.142 They advanced general ideas and, in turning their backs on the past, sought to create something entirely new. In France, theory and practice were divorced entirely.143 The contrast between France and England could not have been greater. Tocqueville believed the ideas of Britain’s greatest philosopher, David Hume, were those ‘of a statesman’, but France’s foremost thinker, Denis Diderot, expressed opinions which were strictly those of a ‘man of letters’.144 Tocqueville also focused on the ideas of the physiocrats, or as he called them, the Economists, in his examination of the ideas that influenced the revolution.145 These works figured less prominently in the histories of the period, including Guizot’s The History of Civilization in Europe, but like the writings of the men of letters, Tocqueville thought the writings of the Economists revealed something important about the true character of the period. Though he believed their writings to be different from those of many of the philosophes, focusing more sharply on practical politics,146 he was critical of most of their proposed administrative and government reforms which also showed ‘a vast contempt for the past’ and were governed by an overriding belief that administration should be uniform and anchored in a simple principle. Though they favoured ‘the free exchange of commodities and a system of laissez faire and laissez passer in commerce and industry’, they ignored the importance of political liberty to economy and society. It was something ‘that passed their imagination or was promptly dismissed from their thoughts if by any chance the idea of it occurred to them’.147 By divorcing liberty from commerce they undermined the foundation of commercial society and the prosperity commerce could bring. They also paved the way for the development of the state as a dominant economic power within society. Their zeal for simplified and uniform administration made them ‘thor-


oughly hostile to deliberative assemblies, to secondary organizations vested with local powers, and, generally speaking, to all those counterpoises which have been devised by free peoples at various stages of their history to curb the domination of a central authority’.148 In effect, they opposed those secondary institutions which safeguarded liberty: institutions that ensured the vitality of a system of opposing forces, a system embodying the principle of antagonism, the dynamic force of history. The solutions the physiocrats proposed for the nation’s economic and social ills were exactly what the state’s Intendants proposed when confronted with a local difficulty: greater centralisation. Clever jurists such as Le Trosne and eminent economists and philosophers like Mercier de la Rivière and the abbé Bodeau called not for checking the central power by enhancing municipal and provincial liberties, but rather argued for dispensing with these cumbersome freedoms and enhancing the central authority’s powers. This in order that it may ‘ “govern in accordance with the rules basic to the maintenance of a well-organized society” ’ and be made ‘ “all powerful” ’. The physiocrats believed France’s ills could only be eliminated by the state and the state alone. Only it had the power to transform the nation: According to the Economists the function of the State was not merely one of ruling the nation, but also that of recasting it in a given mould, of shaping the mentality of the population as a whole in accordance with a predetermined model and instilling the ideas and sentiments they thought desirable into the minds of all. In short, they set no limit to its rights and powers; its duty was not merely to reform but to transform the French nation – a task of which the central power alone was capable. ‘The State makes men exactly what it wishes them to be.’149 With China as their model for French administration, the physiocrats developed ideas they believed to be new and revolutionary. These were the ideas necessary to free a moribund administration from its problems, but as Tocqueville understood it, their lofty aspirations and high ideals mirrored developments that had long ago taken place. All the physiocrats did was to give theoretical, intellectual and moral legitimacy to those developments, accelerating the process of administrative centralisation that had long since been in train. In the years immediately preceding the Revolution a series of administrative changes were made which further undermined local liberties. Whether these involved provincial assemblies coming under central government control, or the suppression and then partial restoration of trade and craft corporations, the central authority was extending its control over the nation. Though this power penetrated all aspects of the society, it was ill organised, ill regulated and inefficient. Nonetheless, it maintained a


system of order, and this was a crucial element in assuring France’s prosperity during the reign of Louis XVI. The other and overriding reason for this prosperity was, according to Tocqueville, individual liberty. Just as he had showed in Democracy in America, his 1836 essay and his Souvenirs, individual liberty was the fundamental and lasting source of economic prosperity. On this point he exposed the fundamental contradiction that brought about the Revolution. Because individual liberty was the lasting source of economic prosperity it should have become more widespread in the years immediately preceding the Revolution, and particularly as equality of conditions had developed to a high degree in France. Instead what happened was that just as the social conditions governing France became more egalitarian, the nation’s political institutions became more centralised and more intrusive; they continued to uphold iniquitous privileges. These two developments were entirely at odds; their clash was inevitable. In drawing the direct correlation between political liberty and economic prosperity, Tocqueville argued that ‘those parts of France in which the improvement in the standard of living was most pronounced were the chief centers of the revolutionary movement’. This was because as the freest and therefore most prosperous areas they became the most hostile to the intrusive and unjust institutions of the state.150 Here he was careful to emphasise the importance of social justice in a society in which social conditions were becoming more equal. This was particularly true of his analysis of agricultural development in the years immediately preceding the Revolution, and of his account of the management of charity in France. In both cases he was highly critical of how administrative centralisation created striking anomalies and how these drove populations to resent the institutions of the state. He challenged the physiocratic belief that French agriculture was not productive enough because there were too many peasant farmers working their own private plots which were too small. Instead, he showed how the development of agriculture was hampered because of overcentralisation and an unjust system of taxation which hit small farmers hardest and left large property owners relatively untouched.151 Extreme centralisation rendered agriculture moribund and pauperised the small producers who worked the land: I would suggest that one of the consequences of extreme centralization is that agriculture ceases to be progressive and the peasant blindly keeps to the old methods of cultivation – thus confirming a famous remark of Montesquieu’s: ‘The soil is productive less by reason of its natural fertility than because the people tilling it are free.’152 With the number of peasant landowners increasing and social conditions becoming more equal, increased centralisation and taxation halted the


peasant’s advancement in society. Confronted with the spectacle of his inability to improve his living conditions when all those around him appeared to be advancing by leaps and bounds, the French peasant became, like the proletariat of Tocqueville’s day, an important revolutionary force. The implied comparison between peasantry and proletariat was a conscious one. Here Tocqueville not only attacked the brutality of industry but the greed of large property holders, particularly Parisian landlords who were unscrupulous in the exorbitantly high rents they charged workers, guaranteeing that workers remained poor.153 Yet this critique of capitalist greed was not accompanied by an endorsement of socialism; Tocqueville rejected that ideology. He believed socialism and physiocracy ‘thrive on the same soil’, with both leading to administrative centralisation and the destruction of liberty.154 He confessed in a letter to his nephew Hubert almost two years before the publication of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, that administration in France never served the general interest but always served the interests of a particular élite or group. 155 Before the Revolution it served the interests of a corrupted landed aristocracy, now it served the interests of the middle class and the new industrial aristocracy. For this reason he believed administrative centralisation contributed significantly to worsening the plight of peasants, workers and the poor. Socialism would simply change the political élite. It would do nothing to improve the condition of the dispossessed. It was because administration served the interests of an élite, corrupted the manners of the population, and bolstered rigid inequalities that it was the root cause of incessant revolutions in the democratic age.156 It agitated society and in the end weakened government.157 Though administrative centralisation had brought about a new and soft despotism, Tocqueville thought it could never extinguish the love for liberty entirely. This was because, though it might ensure material prosperity for a short period, it always rested on artificial inequalities in an age when social conditions should be equal. Though the Second Empire may have perfected a form of administrative despotism which conformed best to the democratic age, it still rested on injustice created by artificial inequalities. Workers and the other social classes may have been rendered a servile ‘race of pygmies’ by the régime, but Tocqueville’s desperate hope was that the peasantry would remain immune from this,158 and that within it a spirit of independence might develop, and liberty might arise anew: Because a class is low, one must not suppose that all its members are mean-spirited; that would be a great mistake. However inferior the class may be, he who is first within it and has no thought of leaving it has an aristocratic position which prompts his thoughts, strong pride, and self-respect and makes him capable of heroism and actions out of the ordinary.159


Yet he knew that administrative centralisation had thus far prevented the peasantry from developing a genuine spirit of independence. This was because it makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to endure it and often even regard it as beneficial.160 So how could the peasantry develop the ‘strong pride’ and ‘self-respect’ necessary to ‘heroism and actions out of the ordinary’? What Tocqueville had in mind was exactly what the Doctrinaires called for in the Great Debate of the 1820s. Like Guizot and Prosper Barante who advocated the creation of an open political élite which could bring classes together locally and draw back power from central government,161 Tocqueville called for an alliance between an enlightened aristocracy and the peasantry that was similar to what emerged in the English Revolution: an alliance that resisted the encroachments of the central power.162 He believed that if such an alliance could be formed in France the peasantry might develop a genuine spirit of independence. The development of such a spirit would be the first step to reanimating local liberties. Yet he feared administrative despotism, and the love of material comforts had become so powerful that change was not possible.163 Against these darker thoughts, however, he also believed that administrative despotism was incapable of creating anything of lasting greatness, and hence destined to fall. Tocqueville thought the reanimation of the spirit of independence was necessary to reviving local liberties. These in turn would bring about a revival of the nation’s fortunes, its national grandeur. For without freedom there could be no historical progress.

Conclusion

In his introductory remarks to Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville declared his intention to formulate a ‘new political science . . . for a world itself quite new’.1 The purpose of this new science was to ‘educate democracy’, ‘to purify its manners’, and to gradually ‘substitute understanding of statecraft’ for inexperience and a ‘knowledge of its true interests for blind instincts’. In order for it to succeed the new science had to be receptive to a wide range of different disciplines. It needed to be informed by history, philosophy, political economy, moral statistics and geography. To this end Tocqueville drew on the works of historians and political philosophers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Guizot, moralists like Pascal, the political economists Say, Malthus and Villeneuve-Bargemont, the statisticians Guerry and Quetelet, and geographers such as Volney. Though he incorporated the latest developments and scientific innovations, he never envisaged the science of politics to be a matter of theory alone. He did not believe, as the Idéologues before him had, that theory would provide the insights into the laws and regulating principles of society, and that, once discovered, the task of the statesman was, in following the dictates of science and reason, to apply them to politics. Reality and human nature were simply too complex to be treated in this way. But Tocqueville also understood that the new democratic world had rendered this kind of theoretical approach to politics inappropriate. Democracy had altered fundamentally the way individuals could comprehend their historical experience and by it, formulate political maxims. No longer could they obtain political understanding by adhering to classical notions of history ‘as a succession of closed cycles’. ‘New grounds for political understanding would have to be sought in the nature of the unprecedented historical process’ in which the nations of modern Europe were involved.2 Tocqueville believed this could be obtained only if the new science of politics was informed by political experience. Instructed by practice, the new science would serve ‘to adapt government to the needs of time and place; to modify it as men and circumstances require’. By combining theory and practice in this new science of politics he thought legislators 231

232 Conclusion

would be in a position to match means to ends systematically and thereby direct society effectively and ‘educate democracy’. This conception of political experience was decidedly paternalistic but it was not a return to the restricted politics of the ancien régime. Rather, it aspired to be inclusive and was sustained by two ideas: that a society could learn political prudence only through experience, and that by precluding experience despotism made political understanding impossible. In his later considerations on the social state of democracy which appeared in Democracy in America (1840), he feared democracy ‘lay itself peculiarly open to the establishment of a despotism’.3 This was particularly true of European nations like France whose leaders ‘made use of the ideas, feelings, and needs engendered by such a state of society to enlarge the sphere of their power’.4 This gave rise to populations lacking in political wisdom and prudence, with the inevitable result that they suffered from periods of revolution followed by periods of despotic rule. This was the tragedy of the French, he thought, a people who were ‘incapable’ of finding their ‘salvation’ except through ‘domination which [arose] out of saving [them] from anarchy’.5 It was not, however, an inevitable consequence of a democratic social state, as he learned from America and Britain. If a democratic society was wedded to a politics that fostered a high level of political participation, the risks of despotism would be lessened because the populace would, through experience, acquire the wisdom and prudence necessary to safeguard its liberty. In order for this to be successful, however, the risks associated with political excesses had to be lessened. And here Tocqueville was at his most aristocratic. Though he firmly believed democracies had to cultivate a high level of political participation, he feared the unrestrained participation of the untutored masses would lead to extremism. Yet he was also convinced that it was fatal for democracies to disenfranchise the common people. The solution to this dilemma he believed lay in ensuring that their political participation was limited by degrees, until they acquired sufficient political experience and foresight. As he put it soon after the publication of Democracy in America (1835): ‘different degrees of election make up the most powerful and maybe the only way democratic peoples can hand to the most capable the governance of society without rendering them independent of all the others’.6 Tocqueville was aware of the difficulties associated with this kind of idea. The different degrees of election could not be so distinct as to effectively divorce the political élite from the rest of society. This would lead to the inevitable fate that befell the governments of Louis XVI and Charles X. Nor could they be so similar as to ensure that the common people never acquired political wisdom and were driven by blind instinct: after all, historical experience had taught that if ‘remote advantages could prevail over the passions and needs of the moment, there would have been no tyrannical sovereigns or exclusive aristocracies’.7 Yet who would judge when the common people had sufficient political wisdom to allow them more polit-

Conclusion 233

ical participation alongside those most capable of governing society? Tocqueville’s answer to this question lay in his conviction that these were matters which could be resolved only through political and historical experience. It was the task of the new science of politics to be informed by that experience and in turn to guide political practice. Tocqueville believed engagement in political associations offered individuals one of the best ways to gain political experience and by it political wisdom and prudence: a conviction reinforced by what he saw in America. But it was also one of the chief characteristics of democracies that politics was more closely related to society than it had been in previous ages. He understood this and attributed it to democracy’s chief characteristic: equality of conditions. Because politics and society were so closely interrelated, he believed the political virtues he prized could be fostered only if individuals also took an active engagement in civil associations: If the inhabitants of democratic countries had neither the right nor the taste for uniting for political objects, their independence would run great risks, but they could keep both their wealth and their knowledge for a long time. But if they did not learn some habits of acting together in the affairs of daily life, civilization itself would be in peril. A people in which individuals had lost the power of carrying through great enterprises by themselves, without acquiring the faculty of doing them together, would soon fall back into barbarism.8 His investigations into prisons, poverty and child abandonment made acute his fear that one of the greatest dangers facing democracies was that individuals would loose the power to carry through those great enterprises by themselves. His knowledge of political economy served to inform his belief that the citizens of democracies were equally subject to another tendency within democracy: the lure of material comforts and wealth. He showed convincingly both in Democracy in America (1840) and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution that the attractions of a life of affluence were more enticing to individuals than political and civic pursuits whose benefits appeared remote. The yearning for a prosperous and comfortable life was understood by France’s ‘Bourgeois King’, Louis-Philippe. The 1830 Revolution which brought him to power was the final chapter in a ‘long and violent struggle between the ancient feudal aristocracy and the middle class’.9 But the victory of the middle class over the feudal aristocracy resulted in a depressing tranquillity reigning over politics. A ‘singular homogeneity’ divested parliamentary struggles of ‘every real cause and every true passion’. What emerged was a ‘new indifference’, a ‘torpidity in public life’.10 In this environment it was nearly impossible to cultivate the political virtues Tocqueville revered. At a time when political and civic experience were increasingly necessary to

234 Conclusion

counteract the individualising effects of the pursuit of wealth and material gain, and thereby safeguard liberties and the betterment of society, the French were becoming indifferent to politics and associative activity. A collective individualism came to dominate French society, the middle class having lost those virtues of moderation and common sense which Say believed crucial to enlightened self-interest and the flourishing of liberty. Throughout his adult life Tocqueville sought to understand how this came about. Once he grasped the origins of this development he endeavoured to inform his fellow countrymen about it, warning them of its dangers. As early as 1836 he explored the causes of the dissolution of social ties which were already well advanced by the eighteenth century, and the development of administrative centralisation which ensured that contact between classes became first unnecessary and then difficult. Centralisation destroyed any desire for the different classes to understand one another’s needs, loosening the bonds between them. The essay which emerged, The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution, though written for the English, his ‘second intellectual home’,11 served as the basis for his masterpiece and instructive history for the French, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. Here Tocqueville revealed the extent to which collective individualism had affected the French nobility, isolating it from the wider society, destroying both its sense of community and the recognition of its obligations to leadership. He showed how administrative centralisation prevented the emergence of a common fellowship in tune with changing historical and social circumstances, what providence had ordained: democracy. The monarchies of the eighteenth century had been successful in isolating the aristocracy from the rest of society. Yet there was a modern lesson to be derived from the examination of the past. Just as ancient monarchies had been successful in isolating the nobility from the rest of society, the July Monarchy and the Second Empire had proved themselves equally adept at fostering collective individualism, but now with the bourgeoisie. In the 1840s Tocqueville repeatedly warned his fellow countrymen that France was once again divided, but whereas under the ancien régime the nation had been divided between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, now it was divided between property holders and the propertyless.12 The Revolution of 1789 secured the right to property as a universal right, one from which many other rights stemmed, but its unequal distribution within nineteenth-century French society was at odds with the democratic revolution’s levelling effects. The unequal distribution of property within society, upheld by property’s inviolable status, soon acquired a standing as an intolerable barrier between the bourgeoisie and the working classes. As Tocqueville put it, the right to property would become the ‘great field of battle’ between these classes.13 There were great dangers in this. The right to property was the foundation of so many rights and liberal principles. Its abolition would strike a blow at the heart of liberalism itself, at the same time as fulfilling

Conclusion 235

the promise of the new socialist ideas he feared. These ideas were a genuine response to industrialisation and social ills, but as they emerged from an intellectual context that had been shaped by the writings of the philosophes and their radical followers, they were overly theoretical and optimistic and had not been sufficiently informed by experience. This being the case, socialism would commit the same mistakes as physiocracy before it, and just as physiocracy unwittingly strengthened administrative centralisation, socialism would, according to Tocqueville, also foster it. He feared that with the advent of socialism, the ‘bonds which the French Revolution destroyed’ would be re-established.14 Though socialism emerged from the democratic revolution, it had, he believed, nothing to do with democracy. Democracy allowed, as he put it, ‘the largest possible amount of liberty that may be granted to each citizen, rich or poor, powerful or humble’. It was ‘equal liberty’, but socialism was ‘equal servitude’.15 Socialism’s attack on private property was a new and sinister step toward centralisation.16 Whilst Tocqueville acknowledged the many problems which arose from property rights, he thought they at least played an important role in dispersing power within society. Yet within France’s developing industrial economy property was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and with it so too was power. The division between rich and poor appeared to be widening. The bourgeoisie, in its attempts to maintain its monopoly on property, retreated into a collective individualism. It found itself separated from the rest of society, thereby unwittingly aiding the cause of socialists. Tocqueville warned his fellow Frenchmen of the dangers of this new form of collective individualism. He endorsed Lamartine’s unforgettable phrase ‘laissez-faire and laissez-passer invariably meant nothing less than laissezsouffrir and laissez-mourir’,17 and he denounced narrow doctrines of political economy that fostered a climate of greed.18 He attacked the new and ruthless industrial aristocracy, ‘the most selfish and grasping of plutocracies’, and feared its collusion with the state, such that it treated government ‘like a private business’.19 He rejected political and philosophic ideas which portrayed the state as the principal impetus of modern civilization and he assailed the administrative and legal foundations to administrative centralisation. Tocqueville believed all of these elements conspired to divide rather than unite social classes. It was social division that was, for Tocqueville, the principal cause of France’s turbulent and tragic history. Yet Tocqueville thought these divisions could be bridged if the French fashioned a political community in tune both with the character of the democratic revolution and the principles of liberty. He believed such a commonwealth had to encourage the participation of the lower classes in political and social affairs. Yet in order that their engagement serve the interests of liberty rather than those of despotism, they required political and social leadership. France’s tragedy was that its social and political élite had demon-

236 Conclusion

strated a remarkable aptitude for focusing on its narrow or selfish interests and was therefore ill-prepared to fulfil its duty. Tocqueville believed England and America were salutary examples for the French. He thought their social and political élites open and receptive, characteristics he ascribed to a political and social organisation which upheld local autonomy and self-government. Local autonomy and self-government obliged individuals to come together to discuss their common needs. It disentangled them from their narrow concerns and drew them together. France too had had a history of robust local autonomy and self-government, and Tocqueville was conscious of an important number of local notables who were still committed to it. Though he disagreed with many of the legitimists among them who sought to defend local autonomy in order to erect a new hierarchical order, he feared that under the July Monarchy and Second Empire the future of local autonomy, and self-government itself, were threatened. From his very first work, The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, to his last published masterpiece, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, he emphasised the importance of local autonomy and self-government in safeguarding liberty. He was also aware of their value to fulfil elevated ideals such as social justice, and here his investigations into social issues informed his belief that a society lacking social justice was one in which liberty itself would wither. Though Tocqueville may have undertaken his first social investigation as a ‘passport’ to a wider study of the American republic, he believed, like his noble forebears, that he had a calling for public service. His and Beaumont’s examination of American prisons was the first of an important number of philanthropic writings. Their report stimulated an animated debate in France and throughout Europe on the prison regime best able to punish and rehabilitate criminals, preparing them for reintegration into society. Tocqueville’s own writings on pauperism, how best to alleviate its effects and ameliorate the plight of the poor, stress his faith in voluntary local initiatives. The schemes which attracted his attention, mutual aid societies, savings banks, agricultural colonies, forms of joint-ownership, were among the most progressive of his day. Each one was judged according to its beneficial effects in alleviating poverty and on whether it was propitious to liberty. In his investigations into the plight of the poor, Tocqueville harboured no illusions about the potential success of these initiatives. Each required a substantial commitment on the part of the well-off and the poor. And it was precisely this kind of commitment, as we saw, that was necessary in order to strengthen the bonds of community and thereby provide a firm basis for local self-governance. Though he admired the high ideals of philanthropists who called for the adoption of a legal right to welfare, he believed their ideal of perfection was not reflected in human nature; their schemes would unwittingly serve both to corrupt individual morals rather

Conclusion 237

than elevate them and open the way to the expansion of the state’s empire over civic life. Tocqueville was resolutely committed to the cause of humanitarianism. He invested much energy in improving the condition of the destitute in society. He took a personal interest in the plight of the poor of his region, and he was committed to charitable organisations and his local departmental general council. But, as we have seen, his interest in social issues was also motivated by a belief that they could inform his understanding of society. He had learned the value of analysis from Guizot’s ‘philosophical’ history and Say’s political economy. He discovered that every social organisation could be treated like a fact, akin to any other fact and hence open to investigation, and he supplemented this knowledge with his passion for unearthing statistical connexions between various social phenomena. Statistics enabled him to accumulate a large body of facts that could be integrated into, and used to shed light on, the wider fact of society. In this way he made advances on Guizot and Say by achieving the potential inherent in social investigations to illuminate the complex relation between private morality, public manners and types of political regime. Tocqueville’s studies of social issues came to be integral to his new science of politics: a science aimed at the high ideal of enlightening its citizens in how best to achieve the flourishing of liberty. It was Tocqueville’s enduring contribution to modern political and social thought.

Notes Introduction 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Another new translation is forthcoming with the Liberty Fund. 2. The tenth anniversary edition of The Journal of Democracy – the first edition of the millenium – and the first edition of the French review Raisons politiques are devoted to Tocqueville’s work and its importance to democracies today. See ‘Democracy in the World: Tocqueville Reconsidered’ Journal of Democracy, XI, 1 (January 2000) and ‘Le moment tocquevillien’ Raisons politiques, I (Février 2001). 3. Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven M. Tipten, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and commitment in American Life (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985); Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Sheldon S. Wolin, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Sharon R. Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 4. French political theorists on the whole have tended to look more carefully at these works, seeing Tocqueville both as political philosopher and historian. See, for instance, Pierre Manent, Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 1993); and Lucien Jaume, L’individu effacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris: Fayard, 1997). Sheldon S. Wolin’s Tocqueville Between Two Worlds has also focused on the importance of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution. 5. Some recent exceptions to this can be found in François Furet L’atelier de l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1982) and Harvey Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as historian reappraised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 6. Seymour Drescher had gone some way to showing the links between Tocqueville’s writings on poverty and his considerations on democracy. See Seymour Drescher, Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) and Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1968). 7. This point was made most recently by Alan Ryan in his review of Sheldon S. Wolin’s Tocqueville Between Two Worlds. See Alan Ryan ‘Visions of Politics’, New York Review of Books, 27 June 2002, pp. 35–8. 8. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1992) and David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). 9. This issue is now central to discussions on prison reform in the United Kingdom, as was recently shown in discussion on BBC 2’s news and current affairs programme Newsnight 1 July 2002. 10. Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism (Seymour Drescher, trans.) (Introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb) (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997). 238

Notes 239 11. Eric Keslassy, Le libéralisme de Tocqueville à l’épreuve du paupérisme (Paris: Harmattan, 2000), pp. 143–7. 12. From an early age Tocqueville appears to have despaired for the shallowness and self-centredness of his class. Letters from his friend Louis de Kergorlay indicate they shared the same gloomy opinion. See Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 13 August 1821 and 16 May 1823, OC, XIII, i, p. 56 and pp. 60–1. 13. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 432. 14. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 433. 15. Tocqueville to his brother Hippolyte, 4 December 1831, OC, XIV, p. 151. 16. For a detailed account of the events leading up to the creation of the Constitutional Charter see Paul Bastid, Les institutions politiques de la monarchie parlementaire française (1814–1848) (Paris: Sirey, 1954) chapter 3. See, too, Pierre Rosanvallon, La monarchie impossible: les chartes de 1814 et de 1830 (Paris: Fayard, 1994). 17. Conversation between Tocqueville and Nassau Senior, 20 February 1851, OC, VI, ii, p. 359. 18. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard and sister-in-law Alexandrine, 6 April 1830, OC, XIV, p. 63. 19. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 27 July 1851, OC, VI, ii, p. 133. 20. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard and sister-in-law Alexandrine, 6 May 1830, OC, XIV, p. 68. 21. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 30 July 1830, OC, XIV, p. 376. 22. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 377. 23. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 376. See, too, Tocqueville to his brother Hippolyte, 18 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 72. 24. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 5 October 1836, OCB, p. 436. 25. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 5 October 1836, OCB, p. 437. 26. Tocqueville to his brother Hippolyte, 18 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 72. 27. Because America lacked a dominant nobility or powerful monarch, Say had doubts about it being a useful example to the French. Nevertheless, he believed many lessons could be learned from America’s economy and the industrious conduct of its large middle class. For more on this, see Philippe Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique: essai sur les rationalisations de la connaisssance économique (1750–1850) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), pp. 160–2 and Richard Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 127. 28. Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, 4 October 1830, in André Jardin, Tocqueville (Lydia Davis with Robert Hemenway, trans.) (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1988) p. 90. 29. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 4 April 1832, OC, VIII, i, p. 111. 30. Scholars have consistently underestimated the importance Tocqueville attached to his prison investigations and the role he played in writing The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, preferring instead to focus on his major works. Seymour Drescher was the first to attempt to redress this imbalance. See his Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968), especially chapter 5. Recent research by Michelle Perrot has done much to stress the importance of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s prison investigation. See her introduction to OC, IV, i, pp. 22–3. For recent examples reflecting the traditional interpretation see

240 Notes

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

François Furet, In The Workshop of History (Jonathan Mandelbaum, trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) p. 167, Françoise Mélonio, Tocqueville et les Français (Paris: Aubier, 1993) p. 28, Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) p. 10, and Cheryl Welch, De Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 10. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 13 August 1833, OC, VIII, i, p. 124. Conversation between Tocqueville and Bowring, 24 August 1833, OC, V, ii, p. 32. Tocqueville to his father, 24 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 173. Tocqueville to Louis de Kergorlay, 27 September 1843, OC, XIII, ii, p. 121. See in particular Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, sometime in 1831 or 1832, OC, XIV, pp. 379–80. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, July 1832, OC, XIV, p. 383. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 1 April 1835, OC, VIII, i, p. 151. CCEP, I, p. 63. CCEP, I, p. 10. CCEP, I, pp. 89–90. Drescher, Dilemmas of Democracy, p. 93. Mill to Tocqueville, 30 December 1840, OC, VI, i, p. 331. See, too, Mill to Tocqueville, 11 May 1840, ibid., p. 328. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 3 July 1839, and Tocqueville to his father, 1 August 1839, OC, XIV, pp. 210–11. Jennifer Pitts, ‘Introduction’, to Tocqueville’s Writings on Empire and Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) p. xv. I hope to undertake a thorough study of this issue elsewhere. Charles Rémusat, ‘de l’esprit de réaction’, p. 794, in George Armstrong Kelly, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 26. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1835, OCB, I, pp. 427–9. Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, ‘sur la liberté de presse’, 2 January 1822, Discours (Paris: Librairie de Médicis, 1949) p. 40. AR, forward, p. xv. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 377. ‘Prospectus pour une nouvelle revue’ [end of 1833 or begining of 1834], OC, III, ii, p. 36. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 4 April 1832, OC, VIII, i, p. 113. OC, III, ii, p. 38. OC, III, ii, p. 39. OC, III, ii, p. 38. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 22 March 1837, OC, VI, i, p. 37. DA, I, introduction, p. 12.

1 The American Journey and Tocqueville’s Intellectual Awakening 1. 2. 3. 4.

Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, pp. 376–7. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 89. Jardin, ibid., p. 90. Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, 4 October 1830, cited in Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 89.

Notes 241 5. René Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l’opinion française, 1815–1852, II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962) part III, chapter 5. 6. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 89. 7. Tocqueville to his mother, 14 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 82, and Tocqueville to abbé Lesueur, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV p. 94. 8. Tocqueville in correspondence to his mother on 19 June and the abbé Lesueur on 30 June described their itinerary as following this ‘fashionable tour, la promenade à la mode’. OC, XIV, p. 105 and p. 110. Gideon Minor Davison, The Fashionable Tour. A Guide to Travellers Visiting the Middle and Northern States, and the Provinces of Canada (Saratoga Springs: G.M. Davison, 1822) The French translation of this work was by Bourgeois and appeared under the title Tournée à la mode dans les Etats-Unis, ou voyage de Charleston à Québec et d’Albany à Boston, par la route de Philadelphie, New York, Saratoga, Ballston-Spa, Mont-Réal, et autres villes ou lieux remarquables. . . . (Paris: Bertrand, 1829). Both Jardin and Rémond ascribe the authorship of Davison’s guide to his translator Bourgeois. See Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 95 and Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l’opinion française, I, p. 338. 9. George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938) reissued under the title Tocqueville in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 84. 10. Pierson, ibid., p. 89. 11. Tocqueville to his mother, 14 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 82. 12. OC, V, i, p. 227. 13. OC, XIV, p. 79. 14. OC, V, i, p. 210. 15. Tocqueville to the abbé Lesueur, 7 September 1831, OC, XIV, p. 130. 16. Idem. See also Tocqueville to his sister-in-law Émile, 7 September 1831, ibid., p. 132. 17. OC, V, i, pp. 210–11. 18. See, for instance, DA, I, p. 55 and p. 189, and AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 31. 19. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 151. 20. Lawrence Frederick Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp. 63, 70–5. 21. OC, V, i, pp. 226–7. 22. For more on Guizot’s influence on Tocqueville see Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville, pp. 20–40, and his introduction to Guizot’s History of Civilization in Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1997). See also Cheryl Welch, De Tocqueville, pp. 24–31; G. Varouxakis, ‘Guizot’s Historical works and J.S. Mill’s Reception of Tocqueville’, History of Political Thought, XX (Summer 1999) pp. 292–312, and Aurelian Craiutu, ‘Tocqueville and the Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Guizot, Royer-Collard, Rémusat)’, History of Political Thought, XX (Autumn 1999) pp. 456–93. 23. Tocqueville and Beaumont to Jared Sparks, 1 October 1831, OC, VII, pp. 29–33. 24. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 6 December 1843, OC, XIV, p. 236. 25. Tocqueville describes both Tuckerman and Channing as highly motivated philanthropists. OC, IV, i, pp. 299–300 and OC, V, i, pp. 99–100. 26. William E. Channing, Remarks on Associations, The Works of William E. Channing, I, p. 316. 27. Arthur W. Brown, William Ellery Channing (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1961) p. 78. See, too, A.M.C. Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian

242 Notes

28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Political Economy, 1798–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) pp. 180–215. George Armstrong Kelly, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992) p. 155. Tuckerman’s writings had a considerable influence among French philanthropists like de Gérando and F.-M.-L. Naville. See Naville’s De la charité légale, de ses effets, de ses causes et spécialement des maisons de travail et la proscription de la mendicité (Paris: P. Dufart, 1836). Howard M. Wach, ‘Unitarian Philanthropy and Cultural Hegemony in Comparative Perspective: Manchester and Boston, 1827–1848’, Journal of Social History, XXVI (1993), p. 539. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) p. 87. Howard M. Wach, ‘Unitarian Philanthropy’, p. 544. Joseph Tuckerman, A Letter on the Principles of the Missionary Enterprise (Boston: Isaac R. Butts and Co., 1826); An Essay on the wages paid to females for their labour; in the form of a letter, from a Gentleman in Boston to his friend in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1830). Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, pp. xxv. William E. Channing, Ministry for the Poor, Works, IV, pp. 267–8. William E. Channing, Evidences of Christianity, Works, IV, pp. 332–3. This was a problem already by the time they visited Albany in July. See Tocqueville to his father, 4 July 1831, OC, XIV, p. 113 and Tocqueville to his mother, 17 July 1831, OC, XIV, p. 115. For more on these discussions in France see Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chapter 11; Lucien Jaume, L’individu effacé, ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris: Fayard, 1997) pp. 379–405 and his ‘Tocqueville et la perspective libérale sur le jury’, La cour d’assises: bilan d’un héritage démocratique (Paris: La documentation française, 2001) pp. 111–24. For Tocqueville’s further considerations on the jury, see OC, III, ii, pp. 180–1. OC, V, i, pp. 284–5. See also Tocqueville to his mother, 6 December 1831, OC, XIV, p. 152. Ibid., p. 287. Tocqueville to his father, 20 December 1831, OC, XIV, p. 156. In the introduction to the second edition of The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, Tocqueville and Beaumont contended slavery extinguished the spirit of enterprise and innovation in these states. See OC, IV, i, p. 88. Lawrence Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: the movement for the abolition of slavery in France, 1802–1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 61 and 67, and Lawrence Jennings, French Reaction to British Slave Emancipation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988) p. 95. OC, V, i, p. 287. DA, II, chapter 15, p. 611. See also Tocqueville to Louis de Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 233. OC, V, i, p. 192. OC, V, i, p. 189. DA, II, part 4, chapter 4, p. 675. Tocqueville to Édouard, 20 January 1832, OC, XIV, p. 165.

Notes 243 49. Tocqueville to his father, 24 January 1832, OC, XIV, p. 166. 50. Tocqueville to Édouard, 20 January 1832, OC, XIV, p. 165. 51. Almost all scholars concur on this point. See for example, Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 91. 52. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 99 and Tocqueville to Louis de Kergorlay, end of January 1835, OC, XIII, i, p. 374. 53. Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831 and Tocqueville to his brother Hippolyte, 4 December 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 91–2 and pp. 150–1. See also Tocqueville to Kergorlay 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, pp. 225–36. 54. Preface to the twelfth edition, 1848, of DA, p. xiv and DA, I, introduction, pp. 12–13. 55. Tocqueville admitted as much in 1836. See Tocqueville to Beaumont, 22 November 1836, OC, VIII, i, p. 173. 56. Tocqueville to abbé Lesueur, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 96. 57. Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 92 and Tocqueville to Kergorlay, end of January 1835, OC, XIII, i, p. 374. 58. The importance of judicial power is dealt with in Part One Chapter Six. Tocqueville’s analyses of the legal profession can be found in Part One Chapter Eight, especially pp. 136–51. For his account of Americans’ respect for the law, see Part Two Chapter Six, p. 241. For the effects of population on public morality, see Part Two Chapter Nine, p. 278. And for the effects of private morality on public manners see Part Two Chapter Nine, pp. 286–315. 59. On how avidly Tocqueville followed those lectures, see Tocqueville to Beaumont, 18 March 1829, OC, VIII, i, pp. 76–7. 60. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 25 October 1829, OC, VIII, i, pp. 93–4. 61. Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l’opinion française, II, pp. 490–1, pp. 494–5. 62. DA, I, part 1, chapters 1 and 3. 63. HCE, first lecture, p. 12. 64. CCEP, I, p. 34. See, too, Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique, pp. 194–5 and Whatmore, Republicanism, pp. 141–2 and p. 147. 65. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 141. 66. TEP, p. v. 67. Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance, p. 77. See also Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 24 March 1834, OC, VI, ii, p. 65–6. 68. Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l’opinion française, 1815–1852, II, part III, chapter 5. 69. Donald Winch, Riches and Poverty: an Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 164. 70. OC, V, i, pp. 44–5. 71. For instance, Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 91–2, and Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 229–35. 72. James Fenimore Cooper, Lettres sur les moeurs et les institutions des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique du Nord (translated by Mlle H. Preble) (Paris: A.-J. Kilian, 1828). On Tocqueville’s interest in this book, see Tocqueville to Beaumont, 14 March 1831, OC, VIII, i, p. 105. 73. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 2, p. 339. 74. SL, part IV, book 20, pp. 337–53. 75. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, pp. 233–4. See, too, J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

244 Notes 76. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, p. 393. 77. See his conversations with Joel Poinsett, 12 and 17 January 1832, OC, V, i, pp. 145–6. 78. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC XIII, i, p. 232. 79. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 1, p. 338. 80. Félix de Beaujour, Aperçu des États-Unis, au commencement du XIXe. siècle, depuis 1800 jusqu’en 1810, avec des tables statistiques (Paris: Michaud, 1814) p. 155, and Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, II (Edinburgh: Cadell and Co./Simpkin and Marshall, 1829), p. 305. 81. Adam Seybert, Statistical Annals: Embracing Views of the Population, Commerce, Navigation, Fisheries, Public Lands, Post-Office Establishment, Revenues, Mint, Military and Naval Establishments, Expenditures, Public Debt and Sinking Fund of the United States of America: Founded on Official Documents: Commencing on the Fourth of March Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-Nine and Ending on the Twentieth of April Eighteen Hundred and Eighteen (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson and Son, 1818) p. 6. 82. OC, V, i, p. 104. 83. Joseph Tuckerman, ‘Introduction’, in Baron de Gérando, Visitor of the Poor, p. 3. 84. William E. Channing, Ministry for the Poor, pp. 276–7. See also William Henry Channing, Memoir of William Ellery Channing, III, p. 110. 85. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 394–5. Tuckerman’s essay on temperance, Letter to the Mechanics of Boston (1831), was given to Tocqueville and used by him in the appendix essay for The Penitentiary System, ‘Temperance Societies’. See OC, IV, i, p. 299 and pp. 326–7. 86. OC, IV, i, pp. 319–22. 87. DA, I, part II, pp. 238–9. 88. DA, I, part II, p. 282.

2 Embracing Liberal Political Economy and then Rejecting it: Tocqueville’s Reading of Say and Malthus 1. On the introduction of political economy into the academic curriculum see, Lucette Le Van-Lemesle, ‘La promotion de l’économie politique en France au XIXe siècle jusqu’à son introduction dans les facultés (1815–1881) Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, XXVII (1980), pp. 270–94 and Alain Alcouffe, ‘The Institutionalization of Political Economy in French Universities: 1819–1896’, History of Political Economy, XXI, (1989) pp. 313–44. 2. For more on the Globe see Jean-Jacques Goblot, La Jeune France libérale: Le Globe et son groupe littéraire, 1824–1830 (Paris: Plon, 1995). 3. Alan B. Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) pp. 98–9. 4. In Goblot, op. cit., p. 310. 5. Goblot, ibid., p. 310. 6. Goblot, ibid., pp. 311–12. On Physiocracy see, G. Weulersse, Le mouvement physiocratique en France (de 1756 à 1770) (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); Catherine Larrère, L’invention de l’économie au XVIIIe siècle: du droit naturel à la physiocratie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992). On the antecedents to physioc-

Notes 245

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

racy see Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: the political and social origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). See too Michael Sonenscher’s excellent, ‘The Nation’s Debt and the Birth of the Modern Republic: The French Fiscal Deficit and the Politics of the Revolution of 1789’, Parts 1 and 2, History of Political Thought, XVIII, 1 and 2 (1997) pp. 64–103 and pp. 267–325 and his ‘Physiocracy as a Theodicy’ History of Political Thought, XXIII, 2 (2002) pp. 326–39. Goblot, ibid., p. 312. Cited in Donald Winch, Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 353. Winch, ibid. Say defined industry as a ‘spirit of conduct’ (esprit de conduit). CCEP, I, p. 72. The Idéologue Destutt de Tracy characterised large estate owners as idlers (les oisifs). His opinion was immediately endorsed by Say and Say’s followers. See Cheryl B. Welch, Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) p. 84. On Laborde’s Orleanist credentials see Lawrence Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: the movement for the abolition of slavery in France, 1802–1848, p. 51. For Laborde’s influence in Legitimist circles see Lucien Jaume, L’individu effacé, ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français, p. 340. Cited in Goblot, op. cit., p. 311. Goblot, ibid., p. 314. Kelly, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism, p. 4. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 81. On Guizot’s influence in promoting the interests of the Globe, see Goblot, op. cit., p. 32. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 213. Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, pp. 95–104. Beaumont to Tocqueville, 24 August 1833, and Tocqueville to Beaumont, 12 January 1835, OC, VIII, i, pp. 128 and 149. ‘Notes sur L’économie politique: Jean-Baptiste Say [1828–1829]’, OC, XVI, p. 430. Goblot, op. cit., p. 331. OC, IV, i, pp. 313–18. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 7 December 1828, OC, VIII, i, p. 72. Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 114. CCEP, I, p. 93. From Winch, ibid., p. 353. CCEP, I, p. 56. CCEP, I, p. 72. For more on Say’s use of this term see Michael James, ‘PierreLouis Roederer, Jean-Baptiste Say, and the concept of industrie’, History of Political Economy, IX (1977) pp. 455–75 and Cheryl B. Welch, Liberty and Utility, pp. 82–3. OC, XVI, p. 426. OC, XVI, p. 427. OC, XVI, p. 431. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, pp. 51–4 and part II, chapter 9, p. 282. Guizot gave the fourteen lectures that made up his History of Civilization in Europe between 18 April and 18 July 1828. Tocqueville and Beaumont started reading Say in December of 1828. HCE, fourth lecture, p. 73.

246 Notes 35. OC, XVI, p. 430. 36. On the differences between Say and Smith on this point, see Philippe Steiner, ‘The Structure of Say’s Economic Writings’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1998 5, 2 (1998) p. 232. 37. OC, XVI, p. 430. 38. See Brogan’s introduction to OC, VI, ii, p. 49. See, too, Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 219. 39. Jean-Baptiste Say, Cours complet d’économie politique pratique, VI, (Paris: Rapilly Libraire, 1829), p. 386. 40. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 11 January 1837, OC, VI, ii, p. 79 and Tocqueville to Édouard, 6 December 1843, OC, XIV, p. 235. Despite his contention that he was never a political economist, others, including the members of the general departmental council of the Manche, believed him to have an expert knowledge of economic issues. See OC, X, p. 23 and Eric Keslassy, Le libéralisme de Tocqueville à l’épreuve du paupérisme, p. 243. 41. Tocqueville to Lord Radnor, 5 November 1843, OCB, II, p. 120. 42. CCEP, I, pp. 62–3. 43. CCEP, I, p. 34. 44. Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 21. 45. Winch, ibid., p. 23. 46. Winch, ibid., p. 169. 47. TEP, p. iii and CCEP, I, pp. 25–6. See also Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 156. 48. Nassau Senior, Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (London, 1852), p. 54, cited in Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp. 68–9. 49. Goblot, op. cit., p. 320. 50. Welch, Liberty and Utility, p. 9. 51. Jaume, L’individu effacé, p. 476. 52. CCEP, p. 36 and p. 62. 53. See, for example, Tocqueville’s notes on Guizot’s lecture of 5 December 1829. OC, XVI, p. 484. 54. HCE, second lecture, p. 31. 55. SL, book 11, chapter 4, p. 155. 56. Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 97. 57. Winch, Ibid., pp. 268–9. 58. CCEP, I, p. 48. 59. See Tocqueville to Édouard, 19 March 1844, OC, XIV, pp. 239–40. See also Tocqueville’s article for Le Commerce, 6 January 1845 in which he attacks the opinion, expounded by Say, that economics is a science applicable to all times, places and cultures. Roger Boesche, ‘Tocqueville and Le Commerce’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 44, 1983, pp. 285–6. 60. CCEP, I, p. 101. 61. CCEP, I, pp. 33–4. 62. See in the following chapter the section entitled ‘Liberty and Commerce’ and Harvey Mitchell, ‘Tocqueville’s Mirage or Reality? Political Freedom from Old Regime to Revolution’, Journal of Modern History, LX (1988) p. 53. 63. For more on Tocqueville’s affinities with, and relation to, Royer-Collard, see Armstrong Kelly, The Humane Comedy, pp. 17–27.

Notes 247 64. For the clearest statement of his belief in God but doubts about religious dogma, see Tocqueville to Édouard, 2 September 1840, OC, XIV, p. 215. 65. On the depth of that crisis see Jardin, Tocqueville, pp. 61–3. See too Tocqueville to abbé Lesueur, [1821–1822?], OC, XIV, p. 44 and Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, 22 October 1831, OCBT, VII, pp. 80–4. A letter from Louis de Kergorlay to Tocqueville is particularly revealing about the kinds of doubts Tocqueville had and how Kergorlay believed they might be overcome. See Louis de Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 16 May 1823, OC, XIII, i, pp. 60–3. 66. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 63. 67. Cheryl B. Welch, ‘Jansenism and Liberalism: The Making of Citizens in PostRevolutionary France’, History of Political Thought, VII (1986), p. 161. 68. CCEP, I, p. 99. 69. OC, III, ii, p. 38. 70. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 13 August 1833, OC, VIII, i, pp. 125–6. 71. Tocqueville to Lord Radnor, May 1835, OCB, II, p. 49. 72. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 2 August 1856, OC, XV, ii, p. 171 and Tocqueville to Mme Swetchine, 4 December 1856, OC, XV, p. 301. 73. OC, XVI, pp. 312–31. See, too, Jaume, l’individu effacé pp. 177 and 211. 74. Armand de Melun, Mémoires de Vicomte Armand de Melun (Paris: H. Oudin, 1891) p. 174. 75. OC, VI, ii, p. 502. 76. On Lesueur’s Jansenism see Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 42. 77. For more on Jansenism see René Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), René Taveneaux, La vie quotidienne des jansénistes aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles (Paris: Hachette, 1985), Jean-Pierre Chantin, Le Jansénisme (Paris: Cerf, 1996); Monique Cottret, Jansénisme et Lumières: Pour un autre XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998); and Henry Phillips, Church and Culture in SeventeenthCentury France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 78. Henry Phillips, Church and Culture, p. 193. 79. Welch, ‘Jansenism and Liberalism’, pp. 155–6. 80. Welch, ibid., p. 156. 81. Welch, ibid., p. 161. 82. Jaume, L’individu effacé, p. 475. 83. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 25 October 1829, OC, VIII, i, pp. 93–4. 84. André-Jean Tudesq, Les grands notables de France (1840–1849): étude historique d’une psychologie sociale, I (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964) p. 316 and p. 365. 85. OC, V, i, p. 45; Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 232; DA, I, part I, chapter 3, pp. 53–4. 86. Dominique Lejeune, Des sociétés de géographie en France et l’expansion coloniale au XIX e siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993) p. 91. 87. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, end of July 1833 and 23 August 1834, OC, XIV, p. 385 and p. 395. 88. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 284 and Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, pp. 70–71. In a conversation with Nassau Senior of 24 May 1835 Tocqueville argued that smallholdings assured security and wellbeing, the foundations to liberty. OC, I, pléiade edn., fn.1, p. 14. 89. This was also a problem stressed by Say. See Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique, pp. 159–60.

248 Notes 90. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, fn. 1, p. 278. 91. For more on this issue see Carol E. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in NineteenthCentury France: Gender, Sociability, and the uses of Emulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) p. 28. 92. DA, II, part II, chapter 19 p. 554. 93. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 94. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 556. See too Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 27 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 390. 95. See Édouard de Tocqueville, Du crédit agricole et de ses effets (Compiègne: E. Leradde, 1838); Des questions agricoles soumises à la legislature de 1843, bestiaux, vins, laines (Paris: Librairie agricole de la maison rustique, 1844); De l’intervention de l’esprit chrétien dans l’enseignement professionnel de l’agriculture (Paris: Amyot, 1853); l’agriculture en France en 1866 (Paris: Douniol, 1866). 96. OC, VII, p. 283. 97. CCEP, IV, pp. 305–19. 98. OC, IV, i, p. 320. 99. Tocqueville to his father, 24 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 173 and Beaumont to Tocqueville, 7 August 1833, OC, VIII, i, pp. 119–22. 100. OC, I, pléiade edn., pp. 1375–6. 101. OC, V, ii, pp. 42–3, p. 32 and Malthus’s remarks on promiscuous intercourse in An Essay on the Principle of Population, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) book I, chapter 2, p. 23. 102. Thomas Robert Malthus, Essai sur le principe de population, ou Exposé des effets passés et présents de l’action de cette cause sur le bonheur du genre humain (Traduit de l’anglais par Pierre Prévost) (Paris: J.J. Paschoud, 1823). 103. Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population book I, chapter 1, p. 15. 104. Malthus, ibid., book I, chapter 1, p. 19. 105. Malthus, ibid., book I, chapter 2, p. 24. 106. Malthus, ibid., book I, chapter 2, p. 23. 107. Winch, Malthus, p. 36. 108. Ibid., p. 57. 109. Malthus, op. cit., book III, chapter 3a, p. 73. 110. On this issue Say departed from Smith and Malthus. Jean-Baptiste Say, Letters to Thomas Robert Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce (London: George Harding, 1936). 111. Jaume, L’individu effacé, p. 475. 112. CCEP, I, pp. 101–3. 113. SL, part I, book 7, chapters 2 and 3, pp. 98–9. 114. TEP, p. xv.

3. Equality, Liberty and the Problem of Self-Interest: Democracy in America (1835) 1. Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, 4 November 1830, cited in Éduardo Nolla’s introduction to DA, I, Nolla edition, p. xxiii, and Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1831, OCB I, p. 414. These should be compared with a letter Tocqueville wrote to Kergorlay at the end of January 1835. In this letter he states that the idea of writing a book on America and the issue of a republic on a vast scale came to him during the journey and not before. In OC, XIII, i, p. 374.

Notes 249 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 92. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 99–100. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 100. The reviews in Le Semeur and the Journal des Débats, were united in drawing the parallels between Democracy in America and The Spirit of Laws. Unlike the reviews of du système pénitentiaire which were almost universal in their praise, the reviews of Democracy in America were more mixed. For a thorough account of the press reaction to Democracy in America see Nolla edition, I, p. xlii. Louis de Kergorlay encouraged Tocqueville to imitate Montesquieu’s style of writing. See Kergorlay to Tocqueville, end of October 1834, OC, XIII, i, p. 366. On Tocqueville’s comparative method see Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, I (Trans. R. Howard and H. Weaver) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 184, and Melvin Richter, ‘Comparative Political Analysis in Montesquieu and Tocqueville’, Comparative Politics, I (January 1969) pp. 129–60. DA, I, introduction, pp. 18–19 and Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 12 April 1835, OC, XV, i, p. 54. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 315. See Tocqueville to his father, 7 May 1835, OC, XIV, p. 178. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 227. Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820, p. 6. Armstrong Kelly, The Humane Comedy, pp. 54–5. Furet stresses this point of Tocqueville’s own work. See In the Workshop of History, p. 170. François de Corcelles, Documents pour servir à l’histoire des conspirations des partis et des sectes (Paris: Paulin, 1831), pp. 44–55. See, too, Cheryl B. Welch, Liberty and Utility, p. 167. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 71. TEP, pp. iv–v, and CCEP, VI, pp. 235–6. Tocqueville to his father, 4 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 100. For the general point about political economy see S. Collini, D. Winch and J. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, especially pp. 78–9. See also Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 5 and 164. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 192. SL, part iv, book 20, chapter 2, p. 339 and Adam Smith, WN, V.iii.7. For a full examination of the importance of justice to Smith see Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 98–102. OC, V, i, p. 278. On Guizot’s influence see Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville, pp. 20–40, and Aurelian Craiutu, ‘Tocqueville and the Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires’ (Guizot, Royer-Collard, Rémusat), History of Political Thought, XX (Autumn 1999) pp. 456–493. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 30 August 1829, OC, VIII, i, p. 80. HCE, first lecture, p. 21. HCE, first lecture, p. 22. See Larry Siedentop’s introduction to Guizot’s HCE for a good short account of Maine de Biran’s influence on Guizot. HCE, pp. xi and xxii–xxiii. See, too, Siedentop’s Tocqueville, pp. 71–2. For a longer discussion of Maine de Biran’s ideas see Lucien Jaume, L’individu effacé, part III, chapter 4, and Agnès Antoine, Maine de Biran. Sujet et politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999). Cheryl B. Welch, Liberty and Utility, p. 74.

250 Notes 29. Welch, ibid., pp. 74–7 and 82. 30. The point is also made by Cheryl Welch who draws parallels between Tocqueville and the French Annalistes historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. Welch, Tocqueville, p. 104. 31. DA, I, introduction, p. 19. 32. Tocqueville to Louis Molé, August 1835, OCBT, VII, p. 136. 33. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 5 July 1834, OC, VIII, i, p. 139. 34. HCE, first lecture, p. 23. 35. See Tocqueville to Jared Sparks, 11 September 1835, OC, VII, p. 62 and Tocqueville to an unidentified person, 1835 or 1836? OC, VII, p. 60. In this last letter Tocqueville requested statistical documentation on the number of American works on philosophy, religion, science, arts and literature. 36. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 12 April 1835, OC, XV, i, p. 54. 37. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 5 October 1828, OC, VIII, i, p. 60. 38. DA, I, Nolla edition, introduction, p. 14. 39. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 205. 40. Guizot never used the term principle of antagonism. Mill introduced the term ‘systematic antagonism’ in his reviews of Guizot’s work. See J.S. Mill, ‘Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History’, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XX (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), especially pp. 269–70. See also G. Varouxakis, ‘Guizot’s Historical Works and J.S. Mill’s Reception of Tocqueville’, History of Political Thought, XX (1999) pp. 296–305. 41. Montesquieu’s thesis on power checking power appears in SL, part II, book 11, chapter 4, p. 155. 42. HCE. Second lecture, p. 31. 43. HCE. Eleventh lecture, p. 188. 44. TEP, p. xxvii and CCEP, I, p. 105. 45. DA, I, Introduction, p. 9. My emphasis. 46. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 183. 47. See Tocqueville’s notes on Guizot’s fifth lecture of The History of Civilization in France, 9 January 1830; OC, XVI, p. 494. 48. HCE. Second lecture, p. 32. 49. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, pp. 233–4. 50. DA, I, introduction, p. 12. 51. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1835, OCB, I, pp. 427–9. 52. A. Craiutu, ‘Tocqueville and the French Doctrinaires’, p. 485. 53. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1835, OCB, I, p. 429. 54. Tocqueville makes this link explicit in his Souvenirs, OC, XII, p. 39. 55. For more on this see Pierre Rosanvallon, Le sacre du citoyen: histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), pp. 230–49, and his La démocratie inachevée: histoire de la souveraineté du peuple en France (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), pp. 93–126. 56. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 377 and OC, XII, p. 39. 57. HCE. First lecture, pp. 23–4. 58. For more on this, see Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, pp. 35–43 and Lucien Jaume, L’individu effacé, pp. 137–44. 59. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 88. 60. On the extent to which Tocqueville’s argument challenged common assumptions held by the French and could well be seen as polemical, see letter from Édouard de Tocqueville to Alexis of 15 June 1834. DA, I, Nolla edition, p. 69.

Notes 251 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95.

96.

DA, II, part III, chapter 18, pp. 616–27. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 1, p. 338. CCEP, I, p. 46. Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 91–2. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 403. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 396. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 18 May 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 224. Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 333. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 281. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 386. AR, part II, chapter 12, pp. 122–3. George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 603–6. ‘Notes sur Kent’, OC, V, i, especially, pp. 250–2, and George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 606–7. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, pp. 200–1. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 201. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 201. DA, I, part I, chapter 6, p. 104. Hacking, The Taming of Chance, pp. 90–91 and Jaume, L’individu effacé, p. 389. DA, I, part I, chapter 8, p. 138. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 49. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 33. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 36. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 39. OC, IV, i, pp. 234–5. Tocqueville observed that though Americans were more religious than any other people, the strength of their faith was waning. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, pp. 229–31. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 7, p. 343 and DA, I, pp. 46–7. ‘Prospectus pour une nouvelle revue’ [end of 1833 or beginning of 1834], OC, III, ii, p. 38. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 6 December 1843, OC, XIV, p. 236. OC, XVI, p. 497. This point is made convincingly by Harvey Mitchell in Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 147. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 6, p. 48. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 3, p. 44 and part IV, book 20, chapter 5, p. 341. See also DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 215. OC, V, ii, p. 91. OC, V, ii, p. 91. For more on this see Harvey Mitchell, ‘The changing conditions of freedom: Tocqueville in the light of Rousseau’, History of Political Thought, IX (1988) pp. 431–55. The status Tocqueville reserved to liberty is strikingly similar to the status assigned to it by Isaiah Berlin. See my ‘La liberté des modernes: Isaiah Berlin et les néo-républicains’, Politique et Sociétés, XX (2001) pp. 25–43. For more on the relation between liberty and commerce in Tocqueville’s thought, the reader should refer to Mitchell’s stimulating discussion in Individual Choice and the Structures of History, pp. 147–9. Harvey Mitchell, ‘Tocqueville’s Mirage or Reality? Political Freedom from Old Regime to Revolution’, Journal of Modern History, LX (1988), p. 53.

252 Notes 97. ‘I think that at all times I should have loved freedom, but in the times in which we live, I am disposed to worship it.’ In DA, II, part IV, chapter 7, p. 695. See also Tocqueville’s correspondence; his works are peppered with remarks about his love of liberty. See, for instance, Tocqueville to Mill, June 1835, OC, VI, i, pp. 293–4; Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, pp. 432–3; Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 6 December 1843, OC, XIV, p. 236. Tocqueville’s love of freedom is also an overriding theme of his Souvenirs. 98. See Tocqueville’s remarks on the relation between property and rights. DA, I, part II, chapter 6, pp. 238–9. 99. On that ideal see Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 183. 100. Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 147. 101. Robert Malthus, The Pamphlets of Thomas Robert Malthus (New York, 1970), p. 118. Taken from Collini, Winch and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, p. 74. 102. OC, V, i. Notebook E, p. 273. 103. OC, V, i. Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, p. 105 and Tocqueville to Édouard, 28 May 1831, OC, XIV, p. 91. Similar remarks can be found in Edme Mentelle/Conrad Malte-Brun, Géographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, mathématique, physique, statistique, politique et historique des cinq parties du monde Tome XIV (Paris: Desray, 1816), p. 280. 104. Smith’s account of the importance of personal parsimony and capital accumulation to human progress is discussed thoroughly in Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 66–80. Say ascribed these qualities to the concept of industry; see CCEP, I, p. 72. 105. OC, XII, p. 30. 106. Souvenirs, p. 13. Montesquieu holds the same opinion. See SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 22, pp. 350–1. See also Voyages, OC, I, p. 628. For more on this theme in Montesquieu’s work see Claude Morilhat, Montesquieu: politique et richesses (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), pp. 111–16. It was also discussed by Guizot; see HCE. First lecture, p. 15. 107. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 54. 108. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 232. 109. On Americans’ lack of conviviality see C.F. Volney, Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis, in OC, VII, (Paris: Bossanges Frères, Libraires, 1821) p. 377. 110. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 6, p. 48. 111. I am thinking principally of Tocqueville’s discussion on the importance of associations which will be dealt with later in this chapter. 112. DA, part II, chapter 9, p. 281. 113. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 282. 114. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 54 and part II, chapter 9, p. 282. 115. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 6, p. 48. 116. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 281. 117. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 281. See also Tocqueville to his mother, 6 December 1831, OC, XIV, p. 153. 118. OC, V, i, Alphabetic Notebook A, pp. 208–9; and DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 54. 119. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 54. 120. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 56. 121. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 56. 122. OC, V, i, Alphabetic Notebook A, p. 208, and Notebook E, p. 266. 123. SL, part 1, book 5, chapter 6, p. 48. 124. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 28 September 1834, OC, XIII, i, pp. 361–2.

Notes 253 125. AR, I, forward, p. xiii. 126. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 70. 127. See, for instance, DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 70, part II, particularly part II, chapter 6, pp. 231–45 and chapter 9, pp. 310–11. 128. DA, I, part II, pp. 234–5. Nolla edition, p. 184. See fn.m. These remarks should be compared with similar comments in HCE. Third lecture, p. 57. 129. This point is made convincingly by Harvey Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 150. 130. Aristotle, Politics, book III, 1276–7. 131. SL, part I, book 3, chapter 6, p. 26. 132. SL, part I, book 3, chapter 5, p. 25. 133. SL, part I, book 3, chapter 7, p. 27. Taken from Harvey Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 150. 134. Montesquieu’s discussion here was useful to Tocqueville because it enabled him to stress the danger of the courtier spirit. This spirit, a radical selfishness, according to Montesquieu, could undermine both honour and false honour. For Tocqueville, it undermined the workings of the invisible hand in commercial society. 135. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 1, p. 338. 136. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 21, p. 350. 137. Montesquieu states: ‘if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not unite individuals in the same way’. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 2, p. 338. 138. DA, I, part II, chapter 6, p. 237. 139. TMS, VII.ii.3.16. 140. WN, II.iii.28. Quoted in Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 106. 141. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 224. 142. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, pp. 224–5. 143. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 72. 144. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 72. 145. DA, I, part I, chapter 8, pp. 164–5. 146. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 6, p. 48. 147. Guizot makes this point in his fifth lecture of HCE, p. 85. 148. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 45. See also part II, chapter 9, pp. 287–301. 149. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 56 and Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, pp. 225–6. 150. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, pp. 304–5. 151. For a very good analysis of the role of associations in democratic societies see Jean-Claude Lamberti, La notion d’individualisme chez Tocqueville (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970). 152. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 386. 153. For more on these debates see Carol Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, p. 29. 154. See Tocqueville to his father, 7 October 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 138–9. Other influences included a collection of the Laws of Massachusetts, and a volume called the Town Officer. For more on these influences see G.W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, chapter 30, pp. 397–416. 155. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 62. 156. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 62. 157. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 62. 158. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 396. 159. DA, II, part III, chapter 15, p. 611.

254 Notes 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170.

171.

172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184.

185. 186. 187.

188. 189.

DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 63. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 66. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 95. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 91. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 95. Tocqueville to Alexis Stoffels, 4 January 1856, OCB, I, p. 468. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, pp. 93–4. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 94. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 94. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 64. For Guizot’s critique of local liberties see his tenth and eleventh lectures in HCE, p. 175, pp. 188–9. Revealing the extent to which in the past the French valued communal liberty was one of central objectives of Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution. See especially part II chapter 3, pp. 41–51. For example, DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 94. On the importance of administrative centralisation to Democracy in America (1835) my position differs considerably from Seymour Drescher who argued that the theme of administrative centralisation was ‘the great sociological reversal’ of Democracy in America (1840). I believe it is one of the crucial themes of the first volume. See Seymour Drescher, ‘Tocqueville and the Two Democracies’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXV (1964) p. 211. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 96. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 90. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 258. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 2, pp. 338–9. DA, I, part II, chapter 8, pp. 270–1. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 12, p. 345. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 12, p. 345. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 211. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 7, p. 49. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 224. Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux démocraties, pp. 150–1. Lamberti, ibid., p. 151. See note d in Nolla edition, II, part IV, p. 264. On the different conceptions of despotism in Tocqueville’s work see Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, pp. 147–56, 179–85. See also Lamberti, op cit., pp. 153–4. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 247. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 247. Louis Girard, Les libéraux français, p. 97. Lamberti makes this important point. But whereas he argues Tocqueville worked out the distinction between liberal spirit and revolutionary spirit in 1836–7 after grappling with Say’s political economy and the thought of the Doctrinaires, particularly Royer-Collard and Guizot, I believe Tocqueville, in adapting Say’s political economy and Guizot’s historical method to an analysis of society, already had a clear understanding of what liberal spirit was before completing Democracy in America (1835). See Lamberti, op. cit., p. 182. Tocqueville makes this distinction explicit in a letter to Eugène Stoffels, 5 October 1836. OCB, I, pp. 436–8. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 253. It should be pointed out, however, that in his introduction to Democracy in America (1835) Tocqueville was keen to warn his readers that due to the great diversity of subjects treated ‘whoever chooses can

Notes 255

190. 191. 192. 193. 194.

195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205.

206. 207. 208.

209.

210. 211. 212. 213. 214.

easily cite an isolated fact to contradict the facts I have assembled, or an isolated opinion against my opinions’. Tocqueville was keen that the work be read and judged ‘in the spirit in which it was written’ and by ‘the general impression it leaves’. DA, I, introduction, p. 20. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, fn.7, p. 260. Tocqueville to Stoffels, 5 October 1836, OCB, I, p. 436. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 247. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 248. On why Tocqueville considers the courtier spirit vile and its relation to the omnipotence of the majority corrupting, see DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 258. The emergence of an aristocracy within a democracy had already been analysed by Montesquieu. See SL, part I, book 8, chapter 2, p. 113. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 250. SL, part I, book 8, chapter 2, p. 112 and DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 259. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 96. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 399. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 247. For more on Tocqueville’s critique of utilitarianism, see Tocqueville to Gobineau, 22 October 1843, OC, IX, pp. 67–9. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 252. DA, I, part II, chapter 8, p. 263. AR, part III, chapter 3, pp. 162–3. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 254. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, pp. 254–5. Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, 21 April 1830. This letter is quoted in full in Aurelian Craiutu, ‘Tocqueville and the Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires’, p. 476. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 255. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 256. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 403. Montesquieu makes a similar claim about the ‘great commercial enterprises which are of the governments of the many’ SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 4, p. 340. OC, V, i, Pocket Notebook Number 3, 1 November 1831, p. 186. See also Tocqueville’s letter to his father 24 January 1832, OC, XIV, pp. 166–7. Beaumont’s letter to his mother of 20 January 1832 is also very revealing. See Lettres d’Amérique, pp. 211–12. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, pp. 258–9. See, for instance, speech given by Tocqueville to the Chamber of Deputies 18 January 1842, OC, III, ii, pp. 197–236. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, p. 260. DA, I, part II, chapter 8, pp. 262–3. DA, II, part IV, chapter 6, p. 691.

4 Legitimism and Political Economy: The Influence of Villeneuve-Bargemont 1. Villeneuve-Bargemont’s influence on Tocqueville has been noted but never seriously studied. See, for instance, Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, p. 108; Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux démocraties, p. 229, and Mélonio, introduction to OC, XVI. 2. Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 19 April 1829, OC, XIII, i, p. 166.

256 Notes 3. ‘Mémoire sur le paupérisme, 1835’, OC, XVI, p. 118. 4. Katherine Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology in Early Industrial France: Social Policy and the Working-Class Family, 1825–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), p. 36. 5. OC, I, pléiade edition, p. L. 6. Keslassy, Le libéralisme de Tocqueville, p. 43. Villeneuve-Bargemont, Histoire de l’économie politique ou études historiques, philosophiques et religieuses sur l’économie politique des peuples anciens et modernes (Paris: Guillaumin, 1841). 7. Ann F. La Berge, Mission and Method, the Early Nineteenth-Century French Public Health Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 129. See also her ‘A Restoration Prefect and Public Health: Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont at Nantes and Lille, 1824–1830’, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 5 (1978) pp. 128–37. 8. Mary Ignatius Ring, Villeneuve-Bargemont Precursor of Modern Social Catholicism, 1784–1850 (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1935), p. 123; La Berge, Mission and Method, p. 161. 9. L’Avenir was founded on 16 April 1830 by Henri Lacordaire, Félicité de Lamennais, Charles de Montalembert, Philippe Gerbet, and Charles de Coux. The paper was ultramontanist and sought to defend the Gallican Church. It was severely criticised by the established clergy and the Vatican. It ceased publication on 15 November 1831. Its ideas were officially condemned by Pope Gregory XVI on 12 August 1832. Tocqueville appears to have read the paper; he was certainly interested in its opinions, though he never felt a real affinity toward it. See Tocqueville to Beaumont, 24 August 1833, OC, VIII, i, p. 128 and Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 23 June 1832, OC, XIII, i, p. 257. 10. Ozanam was a close friend of Tocqueville’s friend Jean-Jacques Ampère. Tocqueville thought very highly of Ozanam, though his estimation of Ozanam’s writing was not so high. Nonetheless, it seems that Ozanam played a role in Tocqueville’s attempts to discover his religious faith. See Tocqueville to Mme Swetchine, 4 August 1856, and Mme Swetchine to Tocqueville 13 August 1856, OC, XV, ii, pp. 285–6 and 289. See also Tocqueville to J.-J. Ampère, 21 October 1856, OC, XI, p. 350. 11. Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology, p. 33. 12. F.-E. Fodéré, Essai historique et moral sur la pauvreté des nations, la population, la mendicité, les hopitaux et les enfants trouvés (Paris: Huzard, 1825), p. 281. 13. Pierre Bigot de Morogues, Recherche des causes de la richesse et de la misère des peuples civilisés (Paris: N.P., 1834), p. 19. 14. Fodéré, Essai, p. 323. 15. Fodéré, Essai, p. 280. 16. EPC, p. 389. 17. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, pp. 556 and 558. 18. Fodéré, Essai, p. 21. 19. Fodéré, Essai, p. 56. 20. Fodéré, Essai, pp. 241–2. 21. Fodéré, Essai, p. 241. 22. J.-C.-L Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’économie politique ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population, I (Paris: Delaunay & Treuttel et Wurtz, 1819), pp. 217–224; Paul Chanson, Sinonde de Sismondi (1773–1842), précurseur de l’économie sociale (Paris: Paillard, 1944), p. 102. 23. Fodéré, Essai, p. 219.

Notes 257 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Fodéré, Essai, p. 198. Fodéré, Essai, pp. 151–200. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, pp. 46–7. Tocqueville to Édouard, 19 March 1844 and 20 July 1850, OC, XIV, pp. 239–40 and p. 253. Tocqueville to Beaumont 27 February 1858, OC, VIII, iii, p. 544. It is also implied in a letter from Tocqueville to Nassau Senior 10 April 1848, OC, VI, ii, p. 101. Tocqueville also believed had a genuine spirit of association emerged between all the classes in society, France could achieve real greatness. Souvenirs, p. 13. Fodéré, Essai, p. 279 and EPC, I, p. 15. Hacking, The Taming of Chance, p. 118. Fodéré, Essai, p. 222 and EPC, I, p. 15. OC, V, ii, pp. 67, 78, 81. Fodéré, Essai, pp. 93–5. EPC, I, p. 10 and Tocqueville to Léon von Thun-Hohenstein, 2 February 1835, OC, VII, p. 283. François-Émmanuel Fodéré, Voyage aux alpes maritimes, ou histoire naturelle, agraire, civile et médicale, du comté de Nice et pays limitrophes, I (Paris: F.G. Levrault, 1821), pp. 161–2. Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 371–2. EPC, I, pp. 48 and 67. EPC, I, pp. 32–3. EPC, I, p. 39. EPC, I, p. 22. EPC, I, p. 24. EPC, I, p. 86. EPC, I, p. 81. EPC, I, p. 273. Fodéré, Essai., pp. 275–9 and EPC, I, p. 372. EPC, I, p. 383. EPC, I, p. 389 and pp. 416–17. Fodéré, Essai, p. 21 and EPC, I, p. 121 and pp. 499–500. EPC, I, p. 252. EPC, I, p. 119. EPC, I, p. 389. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 342. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 360. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, pp. 556–7. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, pp. 558. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 639. OC, XII, part II, chapter 1, p. 84 and chapter 9, p. 151; AR, part III, chapter 8, p. 204. EPC, I, p. 294. EPC, I, p. 300. EPC, I, pp. 296 and 305. EPC, I, p. 305. EPC, I, p. 416 and p. 465. EPC, I, p. 414. EPC, I, pp. 416–17. EPC, I, p. 414.

258 Notes 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95.

EPC, I, p. 252. EPC, III, p. 131. For more on mutual societies see Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, pp. 125–7. EPC, III, pp. 97–8. EPC, III, p. 98. EPC, II, p. 314. EPC, II, p. 317. OC, XVI, p. 154. OC, XVI, pp. 154–5. EPC, II, p. 17. EPC, II, p. 18. Tocqueville came to a similar conclusion about cities in America. See DA, I, part II, chapter 9, p. 278. On the problems underlying his use of statistics see Joanna Innes, ‘State, Church and Voluntarism in European Welfare, 1690–1850’, Charity, Philanthropy and Reform: from the 1690s to 1850 (Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes, eds) (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 24–7. EPC, I, p. 27. EPC, I, p. 27. EPC, II, p. 175 and p. 177. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, p. 158. EPC, II, pp. 372–3. EPC, II, p. 206 and pp. 372–3. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831, OC, XIII, i, p. 232 and DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 52. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, p. 70. EPC, II, p. 127. EPC, II, p. 222. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 10 April 1848, OC, VI, ii, p. 101. OC, V, ii, p. 80. See also Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 5 October 1836, OCB, I, p. 437. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, pp. 287–8. Agnès Antoine, ‘Politique et religion dans le XIXe siècle français’, Situations de la démocratie, (sous la direction de Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent et Pierre Rosanvallon) (Paris: Seuil-Gallimard, 1993), p. 241. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 7, p. 343. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 433. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 432. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 433.

5 Tocqueville and Beaumont on Prison Reform 1. When Tocqueville visited England in 1833, the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France also served as ‘the best passport I could desire’ to intellectual and reforming circles. Tocqueville to his father, 24 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 173. 2. These points were summarised clearly by Kergorlay. See Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 28 January 1833, OC, XIII, i, pp. 316–17. 3. Whatmore, Republicanism, p. 103 and Welch, Liberty and Utility, pp. 124–5. 4. OC, IV, i, p. 136.

Notes 259 5. The extent to which Tocqueville believed these elements were true of all societies can be seen in drafts of a work on British India he began in late 1843. See, for instance, the section entitled ‘Justice – établissement judiciaire des Anglais dans l’Inde: administration de la justice, criminalité’, OC, III, i, pp. 489–93. 6. OC, IV, i, p. 51. 7. OC, IV, i, p. 49. 8. Cited in Robin Evans, The Fabrication of Virtue: English prison architecture 1750–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 7. 9. Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House, letter VIII, The Panopticon Writings (Miran Bozˇovicˇ, ed.) (London: Verso, 1995), p. 50. 10. Catherine Duprat, ‘Punir et Guérir en 1819, la prison des philanthropes’ in Annales historique de la Révolution française, 228 (Juillet–Septembre 1977) pp. 204–46. 11. L.R. Villermé, Des prisons telles qu’elles sont et telles qu’elles devraient être par rapport à l’hygiène, à la morale et à l’économie (Paris: Méquignon-Marvis, 1820) and ‘Mémoire sur la mortalité dans les prisons’, Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, Tome I, no.1, (Paris: Gabon, 1829), pp. 1–100. E. Danjou, Des prisons, de leur régime et des moyens de l’améliorer (Paris: A. Égron, 1821). J.-F.T. Ginouvier, Tableau de l’intérieur des prisons de France (Paris: Baudoin frères, 1824); A.-H. Taillandier, Réflexions sur les lois pénales de France et d’Angleterre (Paris: B. Warée, 1824); L.-P. Baltard, Architectonographie des prisons ou parallèle des divers systèmes de distribution dont les prisons sont susceptibles, selon le nombre et la nature de leur population, l’étendue et la forme des terrains (Paris: Beaux-arts, 1829). 12. François Guizot, La peine de mort en matière politique (Paris: Béchet, 1822) and Rémusat’s articles for the Globe between 1825–1827; in particular, II, 162, 24–IX–1825; IV, 18, 23–IX–1826; IV, 73, 30–I–1827. 13. Goblot, La Jeune France Libérale, p. 328. 14. For the complete list of what they read by October 1830, the time they submitted Note sur le système pénitentiaire et sur la mission confiée par M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur à MM. Gustave de Beaumont et Alexis de Tocqueville, see OC, IV, i, p. 52. 15. OC, IV, ii, p. 13. 16. OC, IV, i, pp. 51–2, p. 113. 17. Louis René Villermé, ‘Mémoire sur la mortalité dans les prisons’ and Des prisons telles qu’elles sont. On Villermé’s methodology see Willaim Coleman, Death is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), chapter 4. 18. Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, La prostitution dans la ville de Paris, considérée sous le rapport de l’hygiène publique, de la morale et de l’administration (Paris: Baillière, 1836). On Parent-Duchâtelet’s methodology see La Berge, Mission and Method, pp. 50–54 and her ‘A.J.B. Parent-Duchâtelet: Hygienist of Paris, 1821–1836’, Clio Medica, XII (1977) pp. 281–2, 290. 19. OC, IV, i, p. 16. 20. OC, IV, i, p. 576. 21. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 24 March 1834, OC, VI, ii, p. 65. 22. Beaumont to Tocqueville, 7 August 1833, and Tocqueville to Beaumont, 1 November 1833 OC, VIII, i, pp. 119–20, 137. 23. Joseph Lottin, Quetelet, statisticien et sociologue (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1912). 24. Adolphe Quetelet, ‘Recherches statistiques sur le royaume des Pays-Bas’,

260 Notes

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Nouveaux mémoire de l’académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles, V (1829) p. 28. Cited in Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance, p. 105. Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s rejection of this kind of statement appears in the introduction to the second (1836) edition of The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, OC, IV, i, p. 126. Hacking, The Taming of Chance, pp. 107–8. Hacking, ibid., p. 108. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1831, OCB, I, p. 414. Roth, Pratiques pénitentiaires et théorie sociale (Genève: Droz, 1981), p. 289. Roth, ibid., p. 83. Charles Lucas, Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis, II (Paris: Bossagne/Béchet, 1828) p. 345 and Conclusion générale de l’ouvrage sur le système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis (Paris: Dehay/Béchet, 1830), p. lxiii. Tocqueville’s notes from his inspection are in OC, IV, ii, pp. 64–75. OC, IV, i, p. 66. OC, IV, i, pp. 67–8. OC, IV, i, pp. 215–16. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 99 and Tocqueville to Le Peletier d’Aunay, 7 June 1831, OC, IV, ii, pp. 17–18. OC, IV, i, p. 69. The questionnaire is reproduced in OC, IV, i, pp. 505–7. Tocqueville to his father 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 99; Beaumont to his mother, 7 June 1831, Lettres d’Amérique, p. 60. Beaumont to his brother Jules, 16 September 1831, Lettres d’Amérique, pp. 149–50. This point was made by Francis Lieber in his translation of Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s On the Penitentiary System in the United States, and its Application in France; with an appendix on Penal Colonies, and also, Statistical notes (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833), p. v. OC, IV, i, p. 55. OC, IV, i, p. 456. Tocqueville to the Minister of the Interior, 10 November 1831, OC, IV, ii, p. 39. OC, IV, i, p. 236. OC, IV, i, p. 37. OC, IV, i, p. 53. OC, IV, i, p. 53. OC, IV, i, p. 38. OC, IV, i, p. 212. OC, IV, i, p. 115 and pp. 239–41. See also Tocqueville to a member of the Société des science morales de Seine-et-Oise, 29 March 1836, OC, IV, ii, pp. 88–91. Tocqueville to Ernest de Chabrol, 18 October 1831, OC, IV, i, p. 517. OC, IV, i, p. 54. OC, IV, i, p. 72. OC, IV, i, p. 72. OC, IV, i, pp. 52–3. OC, IV, i, p. 241. OC, IV, i, pp. 115, 241–2 and Tocqueville to a member of the Société des science morales de Seine-et-Oise, 29 March 1836, OC, IV, ii, pp. 88–9. Goblot, La jeune France libérale, p. 329. Jean Marie Charles Lucas, De la réforme des prisons, ou de la théorie de l’emprison-

Notes 261

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

nment, de ses principes, de ses moyens, et de ses conditions pratiques (Paris: Legrand et Bergounioux, 1836), p. lix. Charles Lucas to Tocqueville and Beaumont, March 1831, OC, IV, i, p. 463. OC, IV, i, p. 69. Tocqueville to Ernest Chabrol, 18 October 1831, OC, IV, i, p. 38. OC, IV, i, p. 69. The complete list of nine questions can be found in Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s preliminary report of October 1830 to the Minister of the Interior. OC, IV, i, pp. 69–70. OC, IV, i, p. 152. OC, IV, i, p. 239. OC, IV, i, p. 238. DA, II, part III, chapter 21; OC, XII, part I, chapter 4, p. 63 and Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 15 February 1854, OC, XIV, p. 294. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 386. OC, IV, i, p. 88. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, pp. 346–7, 361. Jennings, French Anti-Slavery, pp. 61 and 67. OC, III, i, pp. 41–78. OC, IV, i, p. 241. OC, IV, i, p. 243. OC, IV, i, pp. 97, 175. OC, IV, ii, p. 72. OC, IV, i, p. 236. OC, IV, i, pp. 235–6. OC, II, i, p. 36 and AR, part II, chapter 11, pp. 112–13. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 10 April 1848, OC, VI, ii, p. 102. See, too, OC, XII, pp. 84–5. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 56. OC, IV, i, p. 253. Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 193. ‘Notes sur l’économie politique: Jean-Baptiste Say [1828–29]’, OC, XVI, p. 431. OC, IV, i, p. 210. Pierre-Marie-Sébastien Bigot de Morogues, Recherche des causes de la richesse et de la misère des peuples civilisées, pp. 23–4. OC, IV, i, p. 53. OC, IV, i, pp. 96–8, 210. OC, IV, i, pp. 203–4. OC, IV, i, p. 206. OC, IV, i, p. 243. OC, IV, i, pp. 240–1. OC, IV, i, p. 115. OC, IV, i, p. 68. OC, IV, i, pp. 54–5. OC, IV, i, p. 54. Tocqueville to his father, 7 October 1831, OC, XIV, pp. 137–8. OC, IV, i, p. 67. OC, IV, i, p. 198. OC, IV, i, pp. 329–41.

262 Notes 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131.

OC, IV, i, p. 203. OC, IV, i, p. 199. OC, IV, i, pp. 329–41. Beaumont to his brother Jules, 16 September 1831, Lettres d’Amérique, p. 149. Roberts Vaux, Letter on the Penitentiary System of Pennsylvania addressed to William Roscoe (Philadelphia: Jasper Harding, 1827), pp. 7–8. OC, IV, i, p. 219. Beaumont to his father, 16 October 1831, Lettres d’Amérique, p. 164. Two instruments were highlighted. The first was made up of chains, an iron collar and a metal device inserted in the prisoner’s mouth. The chains bound the prisoner’s ankles and wrists. These were linked by a chain or bar to an iron collar fitted around the prisoner’s neck. The prisoner was kept from uttering a sound by a kind of metal muzzle which was inserted into his mouth and ratcheted open. Prisoners were confined in this way for several days and deprived of food and drink. But there was an even more inhumane punishment. This involved placing the offending prisoner in a metal box, much like a coffin, which restrained the slightest movement and ensured total sensory deprivation. The offender received no food or water for the duration of the punishment, which could last many days. See Tenth Annual Report of the Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston, May 26, 1835 (Boston: Perkins, Marvin & Co., 1835), p. 883. OC, IV, i, p. 464. OC, IV, i, p. 465. OC, IV, i, p. 233. OC, IV, i, p. 235. DA, I, chapter 3, p. 55. OC, IV, i, p. 234. OC, II, ii, p. 332. DA, I, part I, chapter 6, pp. 240–1. OC, IV, i, p. 235. OC, IV, i, p. 235. OC, II, ii, pp. 348–9. See, too, Harvey Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, pp. 238–9. DA, I, part II, chapter 7, pp. 255–6. OC, IV, ii, p. 60. OC, IV, ii, p. 56. OC, IV, ii, p. 48. OC, IV, ii, p. 55. OC, IV, i, p. 233. Tocqueville was kept abreast of the latest studies through a steady stream of documents from American and European colleagues. Francis Lieber, Charles Sumner and the Boston Prison Discipline Society sent him material from America. Nikolas Julius and Carl Josef Anton Mittermaier sent reports on German prisons. Count Leo von Thun-Hohenstein sent information on prisons in AustroHungary, and the Marquis Carlo di Torrigiani sent him documents on the state of penal and legislative reform in Italy. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 19 October 1838, OC VIII, i, pp. 318–21. Tocqueville to Honoré Langlois, 17 August 1838, OC, X, pp. 98–104. OC, IV, ii, pp. 128–9. OC, IV, i, pp. 448.

Notes 263 132. Alexandre de Laville de Miremont, Observations sur les maisons centrales de détention à l’occasion de l’ouvrage de MM. de Beaumont et de Tocqueville sur les pénitenciers des États-Unis d’Amérique (Paris: De Crapelet, 1833), pp. 42–3. 133. These organisations included the État-major des hôpitaux parisiens, the Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale, the conseil de santé de Lausanne, the société royale de médicine de Bordeaux and the Académie royale de Médicine; all categorically denied solitary confinement drove prisoners insane. See, too, Tocqueville’s 1843 report of the parliamentary commission on prison reform. OC, IV, ii, pp. 143–5. 134. Deputies adopted the recommendations of Tocqueville’s 1843 report on 18 May 1844. Peers voted for Pennsylvania on 30 April 1847. 135. Tocqueville to a member of the Société des sciences morales de Seine-et-Oise, 29 March 1836, OC, IV, ii, p. 88. See, too, Tocqueville’s 1843 report of the parliamentary commission, OC, IV, ii, pp. 171–6. 136. OC, X, pp. 618–19. 137. OC, IV, i, pp. 309–12. 138. OC, IV, i, p. 116. For more on these societies see Lee Shai Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle, oeuvre morale: The Sociétés de Patronage of Nineteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies, XV (Spring 1987), pp. 99–120 and Carol Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, chapters 5–6. 139. OC, IV, ii, p. 111. 140. Régis Allier Études sur le système pénitentiaire et les sociétés de patronage (Paris: MarcAurel Frères, 1842), p. 10. 141. OC, IV, ii, p. 119. 142. Édouard Ducpétiaux, Colonies agricoles, écoles rurales et écoles de réforme pour les indigents, les mendiants et les vagabonds et spécialement pour les enfants des deux sexes en Suisse, en Allemagne, en France, en Angleterre, dans les Pays-Bas et en Beligique (Bruxelles: Th. Lesigne, 1851), pp. 50–1. 143. Allier, Études, p. 229. 144. Josephine Mallet, Les femmes en prison; causes de leurs chutes, moyens de les relever (Moulins/Paris: Desrosiers Chamerot, 1843). 145. OC, IV, i, p. 311. 146. Allier’s Études, pp. 36–7. 147. Allier, Études, pp. 207–8. Here the scheme is described in detail. It may have served as an administrative blueprint for Tocqueville’s own recommendations on a national network of houses for orphans and abandoned children. 148. OC, IV, ii, p. 110. 149. OC, II, i, appendix ‘des pays d’États’, p. 253. 150. DA, II, part II, chapter 2, p. 506. 151. DA, II, part III, chapter 4, p. 572. 152. DA, II, part II, chapter 4.

6 The Investigations into the Causes of Poverty and the Ways to Remedy it 1. 2. 3. 4.

OC, OC, OC, OC,

IV, IV, IV, IV,

i, i, i, i,

p. 50. p. 56. pp. 50–1. p. 51.

264 Notes 5. OC, IV, i, p. 51. 6. OC, IV, i, p. 51. The Catholic paper L’Avenir fought, from the time of its first issue of 18 October 1830, a vigorous campaign in favour of free primary school education. Tocqueville and Beaumont’s report was submitted to the Minister of the Interior on the 30th of October. 7. Hugh Brogan makes a similar point in his introduction to Tocqueville’s English correspondence. OC, VI, ii, pp. 34–5. Tocqueville was elected to the Society on 7 November 1834. Mémoires de la société académique de Cherbourg, XXVI (1961) p. 20. 8. Françoise Mélonio believes this to be true only of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. I believe it applies equally to the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg and to the departmental general council of la Manche to which he was elected in 1842. See Mélonio, Tocqueville et les Français, p. 49. 9. OC, IV, i, p. 49 and p. 96. 10. OC, XVI, p. 118. 11. OC, XVI, p. 118 and EPC, II, p. 3. 12. Tocqueville derived Balbi’s statistic from the ‘Tableau récapitulatif du nombre d’indigens existant en Europe’ of the second volume of Villeneuve-Bargemont’s Économie politique chétienne. EPC, II, pp. 8–9. 13. Pierre-Marie-Sébastien Bigot de Morogues, Recherche des causes de la richesses et de la misère des peuples civilisés (Paris: N.P., 1834), p. 24 and EPC, I, p. 2. 14. This point is made by Michel Bressolette, ‘Tocqueville et le paupérisme; l’influence de Rousseau’, Littératures: Annales publiées par la faculté des lettres de Toulouse, V (June 1969). 15. J.-J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), part II, pp. 67–9. 16. OC, XVI, p. 120. 17. Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, p. 45. 18. OC, XVI, pp. 120–1. 19. HCE, lecture eight, p. 140. 20. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 198. 21. DA, II, part II, chapter 1, p. 504, part II, chapter 13, p. 538. 22. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 211. 23. OC, XVI, p. 125. 24. OC, IV, i, p. 321. 25. DA, II, part III, chapter 1, p. 564. 26. OC, XVI, p. 125. 27. OC, XVI, p. 431. 28. EPC, I, p. 273. 29. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 27 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 390. See also Tocqueville to his Mother, 7 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 172. 30. OC, XVI, p. 125. 31. OC, IV, i, p. 50 and DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 32. OC, XVI, p. 126. 33. OC, IV, i, p. 236. 34. OC, XVI, p. 126. 35. OC, XVI, p. 126 and p. 137. 36. For the opposite thesis to my own see Keslassy, Le libéralisme de Tocqueville, p. 45. 37. Tocqueville wrote his report sometime between January and April 1835. He declared his serious interest in Malthus’s work in a letter to Léon von ThunHohenstein, 2 February 1835, OC, VII, p. 283.

Notes 265 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

81.

Malthus, Essay, p. 56 and p. 46. OC, XVI, p. 126. OC, XVI, p. 126. OC, XVI, p. 127. See, too, Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 24 March 1834 and 14 March 1835, OC, VI, ii, pp. 65–6 and p. 73. OC, XVI, p. 127. OC, XVI, p. 128. OC, IV, i, pp. 51–2 and pp. 236–7. OC, XVI, p. 137. OC, XVI, p. 127. OC, XVI, p. 127. OC, XVI, p. 127. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, p. 70–1. Bigot de Morogues, Recherches, p. 22 and EPC, II, p. 147–8. OC, XVI, pp. 127–8. Tocqueville to Édouard, 22 October 1842, OC, XIV, p. 231. OC, IV, i, p. 210. OC, IV, i, p. 65. OC, IV, i, pp. 243–4. OC, IV, i, p. 49 and pp. 96–7. OC, IV, i, p. 56 and OC, XVI, p. 128. OC, XVI, p. 128. OC, XVI, p. 129. OC, XVI, p. 129. OC, IV, i, pp. 320–1; OC, V, ii, pp. 41–2; OC, XVI, pp. 134–6. OC, XVI, p. 130. OC, XVI, pp. 130–1. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, XVI, p. 132. OC, IV, i, p. 321. OC, IV, i, p. 321. OC, XVI, p. 132. OC, XVI, p. 133. OC, XVI, p. 133. OC, XVI, pp. 133–4. OC, XVI, p. 126. OC, XVI, p. 131. OC, IV, i, p. 241 and pp. 248–61. For more on patronage see Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, chapter 5 and Alan R.H. Baker, Fraternity among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chapter 5. He and Beaumont had highlighted this important consideration in their 1833 report. Tocqueville made the same judgement in a letter on pauperism in Normandy. See OC, IV, i, pp. 245–57 and OC, XVI, p. 160. For more on the effects of the 1834 law see Baker, Fraternity Among the French Peasantry, pp. 37–42 and Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, chapter 2.

266 Notes 82. See, for instance, his review of Régis Allier’s Études sur le système pénitentiaire et les sociétés de patronage in OC, IV, ii, pp. 105–11. 83. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 84. OC, XVI, p. 124. 85. OC, XVI, p. 138. 86. OC, XVI, p. 138. 87. OC, XVI, p. 138. 88. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 680 and chapter 6, p. 692. 89. OC, IV, i, p. 243. 90. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 637. 91. OC, V, ii, pp. 90–1. 92. Mill to Tocqueville, 11 June 1835, OC, VI, i, pp. 291–2. 93. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 16 October 1836 and 3 December 1836, OC, VIII, i, p. 171 and p. 176. See, too, Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux démocraties, p. 174. 94. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 22 September and 16 October 1836, OC, VIII, i, p. 166 and pp. 168–71, and Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 3 October 1836, OC, XIV, p. 195. Tocqueville was elected a councillor only in 1842. 95. In their new introduction for the 1836 edition of their report Tocqueville and Beaumont made extensive use of Édouard Ducpétiaux, Statistique comparée de la criminalité en France, en Belgique et en Angleterre (Bruxelles: L. Hauman, 1835) and of William Crawford, Report on the Penitentiaries of the United-States, Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 11 August 1834. 96. OC, X, pp. 593–607, pp. 648–64, pp. 674–80, pp. 685–91; OC, III, ii, pp. 738–41 and pp. 742–4. 97. Tocqueville to his father, 24 January 1832, OC, XIV, p. 166. 98. Tocqueville to Jared Sparks, 11 September 1835, OC, VII, p. 62. 99. Tocqueville stated in a letter to Nassau Senior of 29 February 1838 that he had been working on the second part of Democracy in America ‘without respite for already three years’. OC, VI, ii, p. 82. 100. On the importance Tocqueville attached to the European context for the second Democracy in America, see Tocqueville to Édouard, 10 July 1838, OC, XIV, p. 200. 101. In a letter to his sister-in-law, Alexandrine, of 22 May 1835 Tocqueville stated: ‘I have not come to England to dream, but to think and to observe.’ OC, XIV, p. 180. 102. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 13 August, 1833, OC, VIII, i, p. 124 and Tocqueville to his father, 24 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 173. 103. Tocqueville to his father, 7 May 1835, OC, XIV, pp. 178–9. 104. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 15 November 1835, OC, VIII, i, p. 157 and Tocqueville to John Stuart Mill, June 1835, p. 294. 105. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 15 November 1835, OC, VIII, i, p. 157. 106. Beaumont to Charles Babbage, 16 June 1835, British Library Mss. 37189 (folio 134). 107. Emmet Larkin, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Journey in Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound Press,1990), pp. 14–15. Tocqueville’s participation in this conference is explored more fully in my ‘Democracy and the Rise of the Social Sciences: Tocqueville’s interest in the Statistical Sciences’, unpublished paper. 108. Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Dublin, During the Week from the 10th to the 15th of August 1835, Inclusive (Dublin: Philip Dixon Hardy, 1835) p. 94 and p. 125.

Notes 267 109. Proceedings, p. 46. See also ‘Report on the 5th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, The Athenaeum, 15 August 1835, p. 621. 110. OC, IV, i, p. 114. 111. Proceedings, p. 46. See too ‘Report on the 5th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, The Athenaeum, 15 August 1835, p. 621. 112. Guerry did not publish his Statistique morale comparée de la France et de l’Angleterre until 1860. But as early as 1834 Tocqueville wrote to Nassau Senior asking for any material the political economist judged might assist Guerry in his study. See Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 24 March 1834, OC, VI, i, p. 66. 113. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, end of January 1835, OC, XIII, i, pp. 373–5; Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, OC, XI, p. 9; Tocqueville to Corcelle, 12 April 1835, OC, XV, i, pp. 52–4; Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1835, OCB, I, pp. 427–9. 114. Nassau Senior to Tocqueville, 17 February 1835 and Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, pp. 66–8 and pp. 68–71. 115. Tocqueville to his father, 29 April 1835, OC, XIV, p. 175. 116. Tocqueville to his father, 24 August 1833, OC, XIV, p. 173. 117. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 13 August 1833, OC, VIII, i, p. 124. 118. Tocqueville to his sister-in-law Alexandrine, 22 May 1835, OC, XIV, pp. 179–80. 119. Tocqueville to Mill, June 1835, OC, VI, i, p. 294. 120. OC, V, ii, p. 67. 121. OC, V, ii, p. 81. 122. OC, V, ii, p. 78. 123. OC, XVI, p. 144 and DA, II, part II, chapter 20. 124. Tocqueville to his father, 16 July 1835, OC, XIV, p. 184. 125. OC, V, ii, p. 111. 126. Tocqueville to his father, 16 July 1835, OC, XIV, p. 184. 127. OC, V, ii, p. 132. 128. OC, V, ii, p. 133. 129. OC, V, ii, p. 133. 130. OC, V, ii, pp. 73–4. 131. OC, V, ii, p. 74. 132. EPC, I, p. 329. 133. OC, V, ii, p. 98. 134. Bigot de Morogues, Recherches des causes de la richesse et de la misère, p. 15 and EPC, III, pp. 220–1. 135. OC, V, ii, p. 135. 136. OC, V, ii, pp. 97–8. 137. See for instance his observations on the assize at Waterford, 22–23 July 1835, or that at Kilkenny, 25 July 1835, OC, V, ii, pp. 114–16, 124. 138. OC, V, ii, p. 151. 139. OC, V, ii, p. 126. 140. OC, V, ii, p. 118. 141. Tocqueville to a voter of the Manche, 28 September–14 October 1836 and Tocqueville to J.-F. Hervieu, 25 October 1836, OC, X, pp. 49–50 and pp. 52– 3. 142. The first of these was published in 1830 under the title La révolution de 1830 and the second Les différents partis politiques appeared three years later. See FrançoisHippolyte de Tocqueville, La révolution de 1830 (Cherbourg: Boulanger, 1830) and Les différents partis politiques (Paris: Dentu, 1833). The style and arguments of these books meant they were mistaken for works by his father, the Comte

268 Notes

143. 144.

145. 146. 147. 148.

149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175.

Hervé de Tocqueville. See Louis de Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 28 January 1833, OC, XIII, i, p. 316. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 16 October 1836, OC, VIII, i, p. 170. Tocqueville to his brother Hippolyte, 4 December 1831 and Tocqueville to Édouard and Alexandrine, 12 July 1835, OC, XIV, pp. 150 –1 and 182. Tocqueville himself always maintained a profound respect for the Bourbon royal family, however, by the end of the 1830s he believed them incapable of ensuring the liberty of the French. See draft of a letter from Tocqueville to his uncle Louis Le Peletier de Rosambo, 13 March 1839, OC, XIV, pp. 207–8. Tocqueville to Édouard, 3 October 1836, OC, XIV, p. 194. OC, XVI, p. 139. OC, IV, i, p. 54. Tocqueville to his father, 5 August 1835 and Tocqueville to his mother, 10 August 1835, OC, XIV, p. 188 and pp. 189–90. See, too, Emmet Larkin, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Journey to Ireland, pp. 14–15. On peasants’ resistance, or inability, to accumulate financial savings see Baker, Fraternity among the French Peasantry, pp. 105 and 124. OC, XVI, p. 159. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 14 May 1837, OC, VIII, i, p. 185. OC, XVI, p. 158. OC, XVI, p. 159. OC, XVI, p. 159. OC, XVI, p. 160. OC, XVI, p. 160. OC, XVI, p. 160. OC, III, ii, p. 740. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 637. Adolphe d’Angeville, Essai sur la statistique de la population française, considérée sous quelques-uns de ses rapports physiques et moraux (Bourg-en-Bresse: F. Dufour, 1836). L.-F. Huerne de Pommeuse, Des colonies agricoles et de leurs avantages (Paris: Huzard, 1832). OC, XVI, p. 140. OC, XVI, p. 140. OC, XVI, p. 141. AR, part II, chapter 9, p. 81. Tocqueville and Nassau Senior disagreed fundamentally on centralisation of property ownership. See, for instance, Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, pp. 69–70. OC, XVI, pp. 141–2. OC, XVI, p. 142. See, too, Tocqueville to Louis-Mathieu de Molé, 19 May 1835, OCB, II, p. 40. OC, XVI, p. 143. OC, X, p. 611. OC, XVI, p. 142. AR, part II, chapter 12, p. 123. ‘In our day landowners and farmers are still better able than other citizens to escape the control of social power.’ In DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 684. OC, XVI, p. 144. OC, XVI, p. 144. A similar observation is made in Democracy in America (1840). DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554.

Notes 269 176. EPC, III, pp. 582–3. 177. Speech by Tocqueville to the Comice Agricole de Valognes, 5 October 1839, OC, X, p. 736. 178. OC, XVI, p. 146. 179. OC, XVI, p. 146. 180. OC, XVI, p. 146. 181. Villermé concluded such schemes were not feasible because they required large capital outlays. See his Tableau de l’état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie, II (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1840) pp. 327–37. 182. OC, XVI, pp. 146–7. 183. OC, XVI, p. 147. 184. OC, XVI, p. 148. 185. OC, XVI, p. 153. 186. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 682. 187. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, pp. 636–7. 188. About twelve per cent. 189. OC, XVI, p. 154. 190. OC, XVI, p. 155.

7 The Investigations into Abandoned Children 1. Tocqueville to Prosper Enfantin, 1 November 1847, taken from OC, I (pléiade, edition) p. 1609. 2. OC, I, (pléiade edition), pp. 1617–18. 3. Tocqueville to Armand Dufaure, 29 July 1847, OCB, II, p. 130. 4. OC, XVI, p. 199–200. 5. OC, III, ii, p. 742. 6. OC, III, ii, pp. 742–3. 7. The suggestion came from Jean-Charles Rivet. 8. Tocqueville to Armand Dufaure, 29 July 1847, OCB, II, p. 131. 9. ‘Fragments pour une politique sociale [1847]’, OC, III, ii, p. 743. 10. ‘De la Classe Moyenne et du Peuple [1847]’, OC, III, ii, p. 740. 11. OC, III, ii, p. 740. 12. His American diaries and notes from his journey to England in 1833 reveal his interest in the topic. See OC, V, i, pp. 245–6, p. 253, and OC, V, ii, p. 32. 13. OC, IV, i, p. 50 and p. 263. 14. OC, IV, i, p. 248. 15. OC, IV, i, p. 253. 16. OC, IV, i, p. 251. 17. OC, IV, i, p. 251. 18. Tocqueville and Beaumont describe the different routines used by many of these institutions. OC, IV, i, p. 253. 19. OC, IV, i, pp. 261–2. 20. OC, IV, i, p. 263. 21. OC, IV, i, p. 262. 22. OC, X, p. 653. 23. OC, IV, ii, pp. 80–1. 24. OC, IV, i, pp. 262–6. 25. OC, IV, i, p. 254.

270 Notes 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

OC, X, p. 23. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 5 September 1843, OC, VIII, i, p. 500. Tocqueville to Édouard, 24 August 1842, OC, XIV, p. 229. Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 363. Benjamin Delessert, Journal des Débats, 31 May 1838, p. 3. OC, X, p. 691. OC, X, p. 662. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 15 September 1843, OC, XI, p. 115. For more on these issues see Rachel Fuchs, Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) and Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology in Early Industrial France, chapter 4. Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (London: Routledge, 1989), chapter 3. Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995), p. 92. Albert Dupoux, Sur les pas de Monsieur Vincent. Trois cents ans d’histoire parisienne de l’enfance abandonnée (Paris: Revue de l’assistance publique, 1958), pp. 183–6. William Coleman, Death is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 35–6. Bernard-Benoît Remacle, Des hospices d’enfants trouvés, en Europe, et principalement en France, depuis leur origine jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Treutel et Würtz, 1838), p. 167. EPC, II, p. 520. Jean-François Terme and Jean-Baptiste Monfalcon, Histoire des enfants trouvés (Paris: Paulin, 1840), p. 129. Terme and Monfalcon, Histoire des enfants trouvés, pp. 129–30. OC, IV, i, p. 233. Joseph Marie de Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique, II (Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie, 1839), p. 165. Adolphe-Henri Gaillard, Recherches administratives, statistiques et morales sur les enfants trouvés, les enfants naturels et les orphelins en France et dans plusieurs autres pays de l’Europe (Paris: Leclerc, 1837), p. 105. A. de Gasparin, Rapport au Roi sur les hôpitaux et les hospices et les services de bienfaisance (Paris: Impr. Royale, 1837). For a typical example of a demand for change made by a Prefect see: F.M. de Bondy, Mémoire sur la nécessité de réviser la législation actuelle concernant les enfants trouvés et abandonnés et orphelins pauvres (Auxerre: Gallot-Fournier, 1835). For examples of demands for changes made in general departmental council reports see: P.S. Lelong, Rapport sur les enfants trouvés et abandonnés fait au conseil général de la Seine-Inférieure (Rouen: N.Périaux, 1835) and A. Valdruche, Rapport au conseil général des hospices sur le services des enfants-trouvés dans le département de la Seine (Paris: Huzard, 1838). Ann La Berge, Mission and Method, p. 274. Katherine A. Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology p. 134. T. Curel, Parti à prendre sur la question des enfants trouvés (Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont et cie., 1845), p. 5. The issue of changing attitudes toward children is complex and any detailed discussion of it here would distract us from the topic of this chapter. See: Philippe

Notes 271

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Ariès, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime (Paris: Plon, 1960); Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood Since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992) and Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995); and Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). OC, X, p. 598. OC, X, p. 598 and p. 648. OC, X, p. 598. OC, X, p. 598. OC, X, p. 598 and p. 648. OC, X, p. 598. George D. Sussman, ‘Carriers of Cholera and Poison Rumors in France in 1832’, Societas, III (1973) pp. 233–51. OC, X, p. 658. OC, X, p. 601. OC, X, p. 688. OC, X, p. 689. OC, IV, ii, pp. 169–70. OC, X, p. 689. OC, XVI, p. 130. OC, X, p. 656. OC, X, pp. 656–7. OC, X, p. 657. OC, X, p. 658. OC, X, p. 659. OC, X, p. 658 and p. 679. OC, X, pp. 657–8 and p. 677. OC, X, p. 659. OC, X, p. 680. OC, X, pp. 686–7. OC, X, p. 663. OC, X, p. 662. OC, X, p. 663. Terme and Monfalcon, Histoire des enfants trouvés, p. 226. Terme and Monfalcon, ibid., p. 251. Alphonse de Lamartine, ‘Rapport au conseil général de Saône-et-Loire sur la question des enfants trouvés’, Oeuvres oratoires et écrits politiques, IV (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1865), p. 217. Alphonse de Lamartine, ‘Sur les enfants trouvés’, Oeuvres, II, p. 95. Alphonse de Lamartine, idem. Adolphe-Henri Gaillard, Recherches administratives, p. 48. and Résumé de la discussion sur les enfants trouvés (Paris: Lagny Frères, 1854), p. 11 OC, X, p. 653. OC, X, p. 653. OC, X, p. 653. OC, X, pp. 602–3. OC, X, p. 604 and p. 653. OC, X, p. 655. OC, X, pp. 674–6.

272 Notes 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

OC, X, p. 675. OC, X, p. 685. OC, X, p. 657 and p. 677. Joseph-Marie de Gérando, De la bienfaissance publique, II, p. 304. OC, X, p. 677. Joseph-Marie de Gérando, De la bienfaissance publique, II, p. 344. At the end of his 1845 report Tocqueville gave an example of the disastrous consequences that could arise from applying rules indiscriminately and uniformly. See OC, X, p. 664. 99. OC, X, p. 603 and pp. 655–6. 100. OC, X, pp. 677–8. 101. OC, IV, i, p. 236.

8 Democracy and the Threats to Liberty: Democracy in America (1840) 1. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 99. In ‘ages of equality . . . humanity always seems to progress on its own accord’. DA II, part I, chapter 3, p. 439. 2. Rémond, Les Etats-Unis devant l’opinion française, 1815–1852, part IV, chapter 1. 3. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 8 October 1839, OC, VIII, i, p. 379. See also Françoise Mélonio, Tocqueville et les Français, pp. 96–7. 4. Mill to Tocqueville, 11 May 1840, OC, VI, i, pp. 327–8. 5. Mill to Tocqueville, 11 May 1840, OC, VI, i, p. 328. 6. Tocqueville to Mill, 18 October 1840, OC, VI, i, pp. 329–30. 7. Tocqueville to Mill, 18 October 1840, OC, VI, i, p. 330. 8. The importance of this issue has been acknowledged most recently by Claudine Haroche, ‘Des formes et des manières en démocratie’, Raisons politiques, I (Février 2001) pp. 89–94. 9. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelles, 2 September 1837, OC, XV, i, p. 86. 10. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 15 August 1838, OC, XI, p. 67. 11. DA, II, part III, chapter 14, (Nolla edition) fn.b, p. 182. 12. Mill to Tocqueville, 30 December 1840, OC, VI, i, p. 331. 13. Tocqueville to Jared Sparks, 11 September 1835, OC, VII, p. 62. 14. In a letter to Nassau Senior dated 29 February 1838, Tocqueville stated he had been working on the second part of Democracy in America ‘without respite for already three years’. OC, VI, ii, p. 82. It is clear that he had already begun writing the text by the summer of 1836. See Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 3 June 1836, OC, XI, pp. 15–16. 15. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 25 August 1836, OC, XI, pp. 18–21 and Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, p. 33. 16. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 19 March 1838, OC, XV, i, p. 97. 17. DA, II, part IV, chapter 8, p. 703. 18. DA, I, introduction, pp. 9, 12. See, too, Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 21 February 1835, OCB, II, pp. 427–8 and Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 12 April 1835, OC, XV, i, pp. 53–4. 19. Tocqueville to his father, 3 June 1831, OC, XIV, p. 100. 20. Tocqueville maintained his enthusiastic interest in geography. In 1839 he wrote to Reeve saying that he was looking to put together an atlas (composer un bon

Notes 273

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

atlas) and enquiring whether Reeve might know of some very good English maps of India, China, Persia and the territories bordering the Caspian Sea. See Tocqueville to Reeve, 9 May 1839, OC, VI, i, p. 45. Tocqueville to his sister-in-law Alexandrine, 22 May 1835, OC, XIV, p. 180. For an account of how Tocqueville’s political career influenced the writing of Democracy in America (1840), see Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux démocraties, chapter 5. On the importance Tocqueville attached to practical politics informing his theories see Tocqueville to Édouard, 3 October 1836, OC, XIV, p. 195. EPC, I, p. 15. EPC, I, p. 24. EPC, I, p. 24. Very few scholars have acknowledged this. One recent exception is Philippe Steiner; see his Sociologie de la connaissance économique, p. 168. Tocqueville to Reeve 12 July 1839, and Tocqueville to Mill, 18 March 1841, OC, VI, i, pp. 45–6 and pp. 334–6. On the dangers associated with democratic society establishing itself on the ruins of an aristocracy, see DA, II, part II, chapter 3, p. 508. Tocqueville to Reeve, 9 September 1839, OC, VI, i, p. 48. DA, II, preface, p. 418. See too Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 12 April 1835, OC, XV, i, pp. 53–4 and Tocqueville to Mill, 14 November 1839, OC, VI, i, p. 327. Reeve to Tocqueville, 22 February 1840, OC, VI, i, p. 55. Tocqueville retained this belief even after the 1848 Revolution. See his speech on the right to employment. OC, III, iii, p. 174. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 12 January 1833, OCB, I, p. 425. Prosper de Barante, La vie politique de M. Royer-Collard: ses discours et ses écrits, II (Paris: Didier, 1861) p. 523. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 14 November 1837, OC, XI, p. 53. Tocqueville to Louis de Kergorlay, 12 August 1839, OC, XIII, ii, p. 64. TEP, p. xxviii and CCEP, I, p. 105. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 636. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 526. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 526. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. The same point is made by him and Beaumont in their 1833 prison report in their discussion on how Americans’ prudent common sense acted as a break on philosophical and philanthropic zeal. OC, IV, i, p. 170. Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, OCB, I, p. 433. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, pp. 197–8. OC, IV, i, p. 54 and 152. ‘Prospectus pour une nouvelle revue’ [end 1833 or beginning 1834], OC, III, ii, p. 38. Tocqueville to Lord Radnor, May 1835, OCB, II, pp. 43–50. The 1847 draft of a social programme for the young left represented an important statement to that effect. See OC, III, ii, p. 743. Tocqueville to Édouard, 6 December 1843, OC, XIV, pp. 236–8 and Tocqueville

274 Notes

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

to Beaumont, 27 December 1843, OC, VIII, i, p. 526. For Tocqueville’s speeches and writings on the issue see OC, III, ii, part III. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, pp. 527–8. Tocqueville to Édouard, 10 July 1838, OC, XIV, p. 200. Lucien Jaume makes a similar point. See his ‘Problèmes du libéralisme de Mme de Staël à Tocqueville’, Droits, XXX (2000) p. 159. DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 54. DA, I, Introduction, p. 17. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, (Nolla edition), fn.n, pp. 115–16. DA, I, Introduction, p. 17. Tocqueville to Lord Radnor, May 1835, OCB, II, p. 49. OC, III, i, p. 155. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 220. OC, II, i, especially pp. 49–52. EPC, I, p. 465. EPC, I, p. 465. DA, II, part II, chapter 10, p. 531. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, (Nolla edition), fn.g, p. 114. DA, II, part II, chapter 10, p. 531. DA, II, part II, chapter 10, p. 531. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 4, pp. 340–1. OC, II, i, p. 50. AR, part III, chapters 4–5. DA, II, part II, chapter 10, p. 531. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, p. 533. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, p. 533. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 1, p. 338, J.-B. Say, CCEP, I, pp. 103 and 109. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, p. 533. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, p. 534. SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 22, pp. 350–1. Guizot held a similar view. See HCE, first Lecture, p. 15. For more on Tocqueville’s thoughts on this issue see Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 137 and pp. 266–7. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 15 October 1835, OC, XV, p. 57. DA, II, part II, chapter 5, p. 513. Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique, p. 178. Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 137. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, pp. 534–5. DA, II, part II, chapter 11, p. 536. DA, II, part II, chapter 2, p. 507. DA, II, part II, chapter 2, p. 506. DA, II, part II, chapter 2, p. 506. DA, II, part II, chapter 8, p. 527. DA, II, part II, chapter 3, p. 508. DA, II, part I, chapter 3, p. 440. Tocqueville to Lord Radnor, 5 November 1843, OCB, II, p. 120. DA, II, part II, chapter 15, p. 544. DA, II, part II, chapter 4, p. 511. DA, II, part II, chapter 7, p. 522. DA, II, part II, chapter 5, pp. 513–17. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 33.

Notes 275 96. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, end of July 1833 and 23 August 1834, OC, XIV, pp. 384–5 and p. 395. See, too, Jardin, Tocqueville, p. 381. 97. He asserted that ‘real property’, as distinct from personal property, was ‘cultivable land’. National wealth was composed of both real and personal property. See DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 215–16. 98. DA, II, part II, chapter 18, p. 550. 99. DA, II, part II, chapter 18, p. 551. 100. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 552. 101. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, pp. 553–4. 102. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 553. 103. EPC, I, book 1, chapter 13. 104. Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structure of History, p. 148. Say was also aware of this problem, but he had faith in industrial societies tending to become more egalitarian. Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique, pp. 159–62. 105. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 555. 106. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 556. 107. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 555. 108. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 556. 109. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, pp. 556–7. 110. HCE, fifth lecture, p. 90. See, too, Tocqueville’s definition of a caste in his 1836 essay. OC, II, i, p. 37. 111. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, pp. 557–8. 112. EPC, I, chapter 13, p. 389. 113. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 558. 114. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 558. 115. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 686. 116. AR, part 1, chapter 1, p. 14. See, too, Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 6 April 1838, OC, XI, p. 60. 117. DA, II, part II, chapter 20, p. 558. 118. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 119. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 120. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 121. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 122. DA, II, part II, chapter 19, p. 554. 123. OC, XVI, p. 144. 124. On the important political and social advantages of an extensive distribution of landed property, see Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, pp. 70–1. 125. DA, II, part III, chapter 7, p. 583. 126. DA, II, part III, chapter 7, p. 584. 127. DA, II, part III, chapter 2, p. 566. 128. DA, II, part II, chapter 13, p. 538. 129. DA, II, part III, chapter 7, p. 584. 130. DA, II, part III, chapter 11, p. 598. 131. For a different opinion from my own see Seymour Drescher, ‘ “Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare”: Tocqueville’s Most Neglected Prognosis’, Journal of Modern History, LXIV (September 1992) pp. 429–54. 132. OC, III, ii, p. 97 and p. 101. 133. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 637. 134. DA, I, part II, chapter 10, p. 360 and p. 376.

276 Notes 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164.

OC, XII, pp. 117–18. OC, III, ii, p. 95 and pp. 131–2. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 645. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 645. HCE, first lecture, p. 15. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 6 April 1838, OC, XI, p. 60 and Tocqueville to his father, 28 May 1856, OC, XIV, p. 324. DA, II, part III, chapter 13, p. 604. OC, XVI, p. 131. DA, II, part III, chapter 13, p. 604. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 674. DA, II, part III, chapter 2, p. 566 and OC, III, ii, p. 110. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 678. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 677. DA, II, part IV, chapter 1, p. 667. DA, II, part IV, chapter 1, p. 668. Tocqueville to Édouard, 10 July 1838, OC, XIV, p. 200. DA, II, part IV, chapter 6, p. 691. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 675. See, too, Tocqueville to Beaumont, 8 July 1838, OC, VIII, i, p. 311 and Tocqueville to Édouard, 10 July 1838, OC, XIV, p. 200. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 675. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 677. Tocqueville to Édouard, 10 July 1838, OC, XIV, pp. 200–1. What Tocqueville described here was a new development. But as a careful reader of Montesquieu, Tocqueville may well have anticipated this on the basis of Montesquieu’s analysis of a possible theoretical outcome in the monarch’s dealings with important financiers. See SL, part IV, book 20, chapter 10, p. 344. See also Morilhat, Montesquieu: politique et richesses, p. 116. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 681. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 684, and AR, part II, chapter 4. See fn.3, DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 682. DA, II, part IV, chapter 5, p. 685. Mill makes a similar point. See CW, XVIII, p. 197. DA, II, part IV, chapter 7, p. 695. OC, III, ii, p. 96. DA, II, part IV, chapter 7, p. 695.

9 Administrative Centralisation and the Threats to Liberty: The Composition of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

OC, II, ii, p. 289. OC, XII, p. 30. OC, XII, p. 31. OC, XII, p. 31. OC, III, ii, pp. 113–14. OC, III, ii, p. 131. OC, III, ii, p. 131. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, p. 233. It is not known whether Tocqueville studied Gibbon’s work. What is known, however, is that he was familiar with it. In the second volume of Democracy in

Notes 277

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

America Gibbon is referred to in notes that were later discarded from the published text. Adolphe Circourt also discussed Gibbon’s work with Tocqueville. See DA, II, part II, chapter 15, fn.j, p. 131, (Nolla edition) and Adophe de Circourt to Tocqueville, 25 August 1856, OC, XVIII, p. 331. On the kind of historical work Tocqueville had in mind, see Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, pp. 229–34 and Tocqueville to Beaumont, 26 December 1850, OC, VIII, ii, pp. 343–4. See, too, Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 7 March 1854, OC, XIV, p. 295. ‘Réponse de Guizot’, republished from the Moniteur universel, 25 January 1861, in OC, XVI, pp. 343–44. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, p. 231. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 6 December 1836, OC, XI, p. 29. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, p. 232. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 7 March 1854, OC, XIV, p. 295. See too Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, XIII, ii, p. 232 and Tocqueville to Beaumont, 26 December 1850, OC, VIII, ii, p. 343. Tocqueville to George Lewis, 6 October 1856, OCBT, VII, p. 410. AR, forward, p. xii. Conversation with Nassau Senior, 13 February 1854, OC, VI, ii, p. 408. AR, forward, p. viii. See also Tocqueville to Reeve, 25 January 1856, OC, VI, i, p. 156. Already by 1850 he understood that the ancien régime in Europe was dead. See Tocqueville to Edward Everett, 15 February 1850, OC, VII, pp. 133–4. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 2 July 1853, OC, VI, ii, pp. 160–1. Ibid., p. 162. In 1854 Tocqueville believed The Ancien Régime and the Revolution should be no more than two volumes, but by 1856 he was contemplating a work of three volumes. See Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 7 March 1854, OC, XIV, p. 295 and Tocqueville to Reeve, 6 February 1856, OC, VI, i, p. 161. As early as 1851 Kergorlay believed that Guizot was the only other person who could write a history along the lines of what Tocqueville had in mind for the Ancien Régime and the Revolution. See Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 19 January 1851, OC, XIII, ii, p. 235. AR, forward, p. xii. And Tocqueville to Mme Swetchine, 7 January 1856, OC, XV, ii, p. 268. Mill to Tocqueville, 15 December 1856, OC, VI, i, p. 350. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 22 February 1856, OC, VIII, iii, p. 374. Tocqueville to his father 28 May 1856, OC, XIV, p. 324 and the second letter On the Internal Situation of France, OC, III, ii, p. 101. See, too, Tocqueville to his wife, February 1856, OC, XIV, p. 594. Mrs Grote, however, thought Tocqueville’s ‘political philosophy may be regarded as the best suited to the times we live in’. See Nassau Senior to Tocqueville, 20 October 1856, OC, VI, ii, p. 193. Tocqueville to his father, 28 May 1856, OC, XIV, p. 324. See Tocqueville to Mrs Austin, 29 August 1856, OC, VI, i, p. 192. Tocqueville to Mme Swetchine, 1 July 1856, OC, XV, ii, pp. 275–6, and Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 2 July 1856, OC, XIV, p. 326. Tocqueville to Mme Swetchine, 4 August 1856, OC, XV, ii, pp. 284–5. See also Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 23 December 1856, OC, XIII, ii, p. 317. Tocqueville to Ampère, 21 October 1856, OC, XI, p. 351 and Mme de Circourt to Tocqueville, 22 July 1856, OC, XVIII, p. 324. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 6 August 1856, OC, VIII, iii, p. 427.

278 Notes 35. Beaumont to Tocqueville, 8 July 1856, OC, VIII, iii, p. 423. 36. See Tocqueville to Reeve, 25 January 1856 and 6 February 1856, OC, VI, i, pp. 155–7 and 160–1. 37. Circourt to Tocqueville, 21 July 1856, OC, XVIII, p. 323. 38. Mme Swetchine to Tocqueville, 13 August 1856, OC, XV, ii, pp. 286–7. 39. On the their shared ideas, see Tocqueville to Corcelle, 2 June 1856, OC, XV, ii, p. 161. 40. Steiner, Sociologie de la connaissance économique, pp. 205–6. 41. Tocqueville to his father, 24 July 1852, OC, XIV, p. 283. Tocqueville to his brother Édouard, 17 September 1852, OC, XIV, p. 286 and Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 7 March 1854, OC, XIV, p. 296. 42. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, p. 233. 43. Tocqueville to Beaumont, 26 December 1850, OC, VIII, ii, p. 344. See also Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC, XIII, ii, p. 232, Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels OCBT, V, p. 463, and Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 7 March 1854, OC, XIV, pp. 295–6. 44. OC, XII, p. 30. 45. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 15 February 1854, OC, XIV, p. 294. 46. AR, forward, p. xiii. 47. See, for instance, OC, III, ii, pp. 131–2 and p. 739. 48. Tocqueville to his Father, 24 July 1852, OC, XIV, p. 283. 49. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 15 February 1854, OC, XIV, p. 293. 50. AR, forward, p. xv. 51. AR, part I, chapter 1, p. 4. 52. AR, part I, chapter 5, p. 21. 53. AR, part I, chapter 2, p. 8. 54. AR, part I, chapter 2, p. 8. 55. HCE, fourth lecture, p. 64. 56. DA, II, part IV, chapter 1, p. 667. 57. DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 634. 58. AR, part I, chapter 3, p. 10. 59. AR, part I, chapter 3, p. 11. 60. Joseph de Maistre, Considérations sur la France (Paris: Complexe, 1989), p. 87. 61. AR, part I, chapter 3, p. 11. 62. AR, part I, chapter 3, p. 12. 63. DA, I, part I, chapter 2, p. 36. 64. AR, part I, chapter 4, p. 15. 65. AR, part I, chapter 4, p. 16. 66. AR, part I, chapter 4, p. 18. 67. AR, part I, chapter 4, p. 18. 68. HCE, fifth lecture, p. 91. 69. François Guizot, Histoire de la Révolution d’ Angleterre, préface, p. xi cited in Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, p. 275. See also HCE, fourteenth lecture, p. 229. For a more detailed analysis of this point in relation to Guizot’s thought see Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, p. 275 and Lucien Jaume, L’Individu effacé, pp. 135–7. 70. Tocqueville’s assessment of this work can be found in a long letter to Beaumont dated 5 October 1828, OC, VIII, i, pp. 47–72. 71. AR, part I, chapter 5, p. 20. 72. Tocqueville drew his conclusion very easily from Guizot’s fourteenth lecture in

Notes 279

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

the History of Civilization in Europe, especially Guizot’s analysis of antagonism and its relation to liberty in his introductory remarks to that lecture, pp. 228–9. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 24. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 23. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 24. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 23. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 25. Tocqueville knew this to be the logical consequence of equality of conditions. See DA, II, part III, chapter 21, p. 635. On the fierce spirit of independence of the American farmer, see DA, I, part I, chapter 3, p. 55 and part II, chapter 4, p. 189. OC, IV, i, pp. 234–5. SL, part I, book 8, chapter 6, p. 116. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 21 February 1835, OC, VI, ii, p. 70. OC, II, i, p. 62. See also Mitchell, Individual Choice and the Structures of History, p. 121. OC, II, ii, p. 62 and HCE, fourth lecture, pp. 69–70. For a general discussion on this issue see Harvey Mitchell, ‘The Changing Conditions of Freedom: Tocqueville in the Light of Rousseau’, History of Political Thought, IX, No. 3, Winter 1988, pp. 431–53. AR, part III, chapter 4, p. 169. See, too, HCE, eleventh lecture, pp. 188–9. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 169. AR, preface, p. xiv. OC, II, i, p. 61. DA, I, part I, chapter 5, p. 62; OC, II, i, p. 61; AR, part II, chapter 3, p. 41. AR, part II, chapter 1, pp. 26–7. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 25 March 1855, OC, XIV, p. 307. DA, II, part III, chapter 6, p. 581. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 28. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 27. OC, II, i, p. 39. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 29. AR, part II, chapter 2, p. 36. AR, part II, chapter 2, p. 36. The analysis here is identical to Tocqueville’s account in his 1836 essay. See OC, II, i, pp. 38–9. AR, part II, chapter 2, p. 36. AR, part II, chapter 2, p. 36. AR, part II, chapter 3, p. 43. AR, part II, chapter 3, p. 45. SL, part I, book 8, chapter 6, pp. 116–17. AR, forward, p. xiii. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 633. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 633. DA, II, part IV, chapter 3, p. 673. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 633. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 633. DA, II, part III, chapter 20, p. 633. OC, II, i, p. 38. AR, part II, chapter 9, p. 90. DA, I, part II, chapter 9, pp. 278–9.

280 Notes 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

146. 147. 148. 149. 150.

AR, part II, chapter 12, p. 122. SL, part I, book 8, chapter 6, p. 117. AR, part II, chapter 12, p. 124. AR, part II, chapter 9, p. 92. AR, part II, chapter 12, pp. 120 and 136. This process was described in similar terms in Tocqueville’s 1836 essay. See OC, II, i, p. 39. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, letter dated 1854, OC, XIV, p. 290. OC, II, i, p. 39. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 30. AR, part II, chapter 1, pp. 30–1. AR, part II, chapter 1, p. 31. AR, part II, chapter 9, p. 88. AR, part II, chapter 10, p. 98. SL, part I, book 5, chapter 8, p. 52. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 25 July 1855, OC, VI, ii, p. 183. AR, part II, chapter 12, p. 124. AR, part III, chapter 7, p. 197. ‘Everywhere in France the local governments were stricken with this disease, and all Intendants drew attention to it. But the only remedy they could think of was to tighten the central government’s control over the local authorities.’ AR, part II, chapter 3, p. 45. DA, II, part I, chapter 1, pp. 429–33. For more on this issue see Robert Legros, L’idée d’humanité: introduction à la phénoménologie (Paris: Grasset, 1990), pp. 143–9, and his L’avènement de la démocratie (Paris: Grasset, 1999), pp. 110–12. DA, II, part 1, chapter 3, p. 439. DA, II, part 1, chapter 3, p. 439. OC, IV, i, pp. 53–4 and p. 170. DA, II, part I, chapter 8, p. 453. DA, II, part I, chapter 8, p. 454. OC, IV, i, p. 197. OC, II, i, p. 48. AR, part III, chapter 1, p. 140. AR, part III, chapter 1, p. 145. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 159. Tocqueville makes a similar point in his Souvenirs. See OC, XII, pp. 83–4. AR, part III, chapter 1, p. 153. Guizot expressed the same opinion in his fourteenth lecture in HCE, p. 230 and p. 242. This was an ideologically charged term that had a great deal to do with Tocqueville’s abhorrence to developments in public administration and economics, disciplines becoming more mathematical and theoretical and increasingly divorced from the moral and political concerns. Tocqueville’s distaste for the new economics is most clearly revealed in correspondence between Tocqueville and Nassau Senior. See, in particular, Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 2 November 1856, OC, VI, ii, p. 194. For his dislike of public administration see Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 15 February 1854, OC, XIV, p. 293. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 158. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 159. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 159. AR, part III, chapter 3, p. 162. AR, part III, chapter 4, p. 175.

Notes 281 151. 152. 153. 154.

155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162.

163.

AR, part III, chapter 6, p. 190. AR, part II, chapter 12, p. 123. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 2 November 1856, OC, VI, ii, p. 194. In a letter to J.-B. Roussel of 14 December 1851, Tocqueville contended of socialism that ‘The moment we had seen socialism, we should have predicted the reign of the sword. One engenders the other.’ OC, X, p. 561. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 12 January 1854, OC, XIV, p. 291. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 15 February 1854, OC, XIV, pp. 293–4. DA, II, part IV, chapter 4, p. 677. Tocqueville to his nephew Hubert, 1854[?], OC, XIV, p. 290. See also AR, part III, chapter 8, p. 207. DA, II, part III, chapter 5, p. 573. DA, II, part IV, chapter 6, p. 692. Larry Siedentop, ‘introduction’, to François Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe, p. xvii. This was an important theme of the Souvenirs. See OC, XII, p. 63. See, too, Tocqueville’s report on constitutional reform, 8 July 1851, OC, III, iii, pp. 439–40. See conversations between Tocqueville and Nassau Senior, 10 April 1854, OC, VI, ii, pp. 429–30. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, 2 June 1856, OC, XV, ii, p. 160. See, too, Conversation with Nassau Senior 20 April 1858, OC, VI, ii, p. 492.

Conclusion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

DA, I, introduction, p. 12. Stefan Collini et al., That Noble Science of Politics, p. 15. DA, II, part 4, chapter 6, p. 690. DA, II, part 4, chapter 6, p. 690. Tocqueville to Mary Mottley, 17 August 1830, OC, XIV, p. 377. Tocqueville to Francisque de Corcelle, sometime after 15 October 1835, OC, XV, i, p. 57. DA, I, part II, chapter 5, p. 210. DA, II, part II, chapter 5, pp. 514–15. ‘Question financière’ [1848], OC, III, ii, p. 735. OC, III, ii, p. 736. See, too, OC, XII, pp. 30–1. Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 27 July 1851, OC, VI, ii, p. 132. OC, III, ii, p. 736. OC, III, ii, p. 737. Repeated in OC, XII, p. 37. OC, III, iii, p. 193 and pp. 172–3. OC, III, iii, p. 195. OC, III, iii, p. 171. Le Commerce, 30 December 1844. See, for instance, Tocqueville to Nassau Senior, 2 November 1856, OC, VI, ii, p. 194. OC, XII, p. 31.

Bibliography

A full list of Alexis de Tocqueville’s works can be found in the List of Abbreviations on pages x–xii.

Primary sources Allier, Régis Études sur le système pénitentiaire et les sociétés de patronage (Paris: MarcAurel Frères, 1842). Angeville, Adolphe d’ Essai sur la statistique de la population française, considérée sous quelques-uns de ses rapports physiques et moraux (Bourg-en-Bresse: F. Dufour, 1836). Anon. Letters on the comparative merits of the Pennsylvania and New York Systems of Penitentiary Discipline. By a Massachusetts Man (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1836). Anon. ‘Report on the 5th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, The Athenaeum, 15 August 1835. Anon. ‘Statistique comparée de l’état de l’instruction et du nombre de crimes’, Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, 6, 1831, 204–206. Aubanel, M.C. Mémoire sur le système pénitentiaire, accompagné de plans et devis de prisons d’après le système Panoptique, par M. Vaucher-Crémieux (Genève: P.-A. Bonnant, 1837). Balbi, Adrien Tableau politico-statistique de l’Europe en 1820 (Lisbonne: Typographie royale, 1820). ——— Essai statistique sur le royaume de Portugal et d’Algarve comparé aux autres États de l’Europe (Paris: Rey et Gravier, 1822). ——— Balance politique du globe en 1828, ou essai sur la statistique générale de la terre, d’après ses divisions politiques actuelles et les découvertes les plus récentes (Paris: J. Renouard, n.d.). ——— Abrégé de géographie (Paris: J. Renouard, 1833). Baltard, Louis-Pierre Architectonographie des prisons ou parallèle des divers systèmes de distribution dont les prisons sont susceptibles, selon le nombre et la nature de leur population, l’étendue et la forme des terrains (Paris: Palais des beaux-arts, 1829). Barante, Prosper de Le vie politique de M. Royer-Collard: ses discours et ses écrits (Paris: Didier, 1861). Barbé-Marbois, François Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de cette colonie par la France aux États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1829). Beaujour, Félix de Aperçu des États-Unis, au commencement du XIXe. siècle, depuis 1800 jusqu’en 1810, avec des tables statistiques (Paris: Michaud, 1814). Beaumont, Gustave de Lettres d’Amérique 1831–1832 (Etabli et annoté par André Jardin et George Pierson) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973). Benoiston de Chateauneuf, Louis F. Considérations sur les enfans-trouvés dans les principaux États de l’Europe (Paris: Martinet, 1824). ——— ‘De la durée de la vie chez le riche et chez le pauvre’, Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, 3, 1, 1830, 1–15. Bentham, Jeremy Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House, The Panopticon Writings (Miran Bozˇoviˇ c, ed.) London: Verso, 1995. 282

Bibliography 283 Bigot de Morogues, Pierre-Marie-Sébastien Essai sur les moyens d’améliorer l’agriculture en France (Paris: Tourneux, 1822). ——— Influence des sociétés littéraires savantes et agricoles, sur la prospérité publique (Orléans: Huet-Perdoux, 1823). ——— De la misère des ouvriers et de la marche à suivre pour y remédier (Paris: Huzard, 1832). ——— Du Luxe considéré comme conséquence nécessaire des progrès de la civilisation et de l’industrie (Orléans: Danicourt-Huet, 1832). ——— De l’utilité des machines, de leurs inconvénients, et des moyens d’y remédiés en assurant l’extension et les progrès de notre agriculture (Paris: Impr. royale, 1833). ——— Recherche des causes de la richesse et de la misère des peuples civilisés (Paris: np., 1834). ——— Du paupérisme et de la mendicité, et les moyens d’en prévenir les funestes effets (Paris: P. Dondey-Dupré, 1834). ——— La politique basée sur la morale et mise en rapport avec les progrès de la société, ou constitution morale du gourvernement (Paris: Dondey-Dupré, 1834). Bondy, F.M. de Mémoire sur la nécessité, de réviser la législation actuelle concernant les enfants trouvés et abandonnés et orphelins pauvres. Auxerre: Ballot-Fournier, 1835. Bonnet, J. Esprit Réponse aux principales questions qui peuvent être faites sur les Etats-Unis de l’Amérique par un citoyen des Etats-Unis (Lausanne: Luquienes, 1795). ——— Tableau des Etats-Unis au commencement du XIXe siècle (Paris: Testu et Dentu, 1816). Boys de Loury, Jules ‘Mémoire sur les modifications à apporter dans le service de l’administration des nourrices’, Annales d’hygiène publique, 27, 1842. British Association for the Advancement of Science, Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Dublin, During the Week from the 10th to the 15th of August 1835, Inclusive (Dublin: Philip Dixon Hardy, 1835). Buret, Eugène De la misère des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France: de la nature de la misère, de son existence, de ses effets, de ses causes, et de l’insuffisance des remèdes qu’on lui a opposés jusqu’ici, avec les moyens propres à en affranchir les sociétés (Paris: Paulin, 1840). Buxton, Thomas Fowell An Inquiry, Whether Crime and Misery are Produced or Prevented by Our Present System of Prison Discipline (London: John and Arthur Arch, 1818). Chabrol, Ernest Dictionnaire de législation usuelle, contenant les notions du droit civil, commercial, criminel et administratif (Paris: au bureau, 1835). ——— Dictionnaire général des lois pénales, disciplinaires et de police (Paris: Mansut, 1842–1843). Channing, William E. The Works of William E. Channing (Boston: J. Munroe, 1848). Chaptal, Jean-Antoine de De l’industrie française (Paris: Antoine-Augustin Renouard, 1819). Chateaubriand, François René Voyages en Amérique et en Italie, Oeuvres complètes, VI (Paris: Ladvocat, 1827). ——— Atala (Paris: Flammarion, 1964). Colombel, Hyacinthe Mémoire sur les terres vaines et vagues (Nantes: Mellinet-Malassis, 1828). Colombot, Pierre Manuel d’hygiène et de médicine pratique des prisons (Chaumont: Cousot, 1824). Cooper, James Fenimore Lettres sur les moeurs et les institutions des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique du Nord (H. Preble, trans.) (Paris: A.-J. Kilian, 1828).

284 Bibliography Cooper, Thomas Some Information respecting America (London: J. Johnson, 1795). ——— Renseignements sur l’Amérique (Hambourg: Pierre François Fauche, 1795). Corcelles, François de Documents pour servir à l’histoire des conspirations des partis et des sectes (Paris: Paulin, 1831). Coux, Charles de ‘Cours d’économie sociale’, L’Université Catholique, Recueil Religieux, Philosophique, Scientifique et Littéraire, I (Paris: E.J. Bailly et Cie., 1834). Crawford, William Report en the Penitentiaries of the United States, ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 11 August 1834. Cunningham, Francis Notes recueillies en visitant les prisons de la Suisse et remarques sur les moyens de les améliorer, avec quelques détails sur les prisons de Chambéry et de Turin (Genève et Paris: J.J. Paschoud, 1820). Curel, T. Parti à prendre sur la question des enfants trouvés (Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont et cie, 1845). Danjou, E. Des prisons, de leur régime et des moyens de l’améliorer (Paris: A. Égron, 1821). Davison, Gideon Minor The Fashionable Tour. A Guide to Travellers Visiting the Middle and Northern States, and the Provinces of Canada (Saratoga Springs: G.M. Davison, 1822). ——— Tournée à la mode dans les Etats-Unis, ou voyage de Charleston à Québec et d’Albany à Boston, par la route de Philadelphie, New York, Saratoga, Ballston-Spa, Mont-Réal, et autres villes ou lieux remarquables . . . (M. Bourgeois, trad.) (Paris: Bertrand, 1829). Deby, P.N.H. De l’agriculture en Europe et en Amérique, considérée et comparée dans les intérêts de la France et de la monarchie (Paris: Huzard, 1825). Duchâtel, Charles comte Tanneguy Considérations d’économie politique sur la bienfaisance, ou de la Charité dans ses rapports avec l’état moral et le bien-être des classes inférieurs de la société (Paris: Guiraudet et Jouaust, 1836). Ducpétiaux, Edouard De l’état de aliénés en Belgique, et des moyens d’améliorer leur sort (Bruxelles: Laurent Frères, 1832). ——— Rapport sur l’état actuel des prisons en Belgique (Bruxelles: n.p., 1833). ——— ‘Questions relatives à l’hygiène des prisons et des établissemens de bienfaisance’, Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, 9, 1833, 272–295. ——— Statistique comparée de la criminalité en France, en Belgique et en Angleterre (Bruxelles: L. Hauman, 1835). ——— Mémoire sur l’établissement du pénitencier central pour les jeunes délinquants (Bruxelles: J.B. Tircher, 1840). ——— Colonies agricoles, écoles rurales et écoles de réforme pour les indigents, les mendiants et les vagabonds et spécialement pour les enfants des deux sexes en Suisse, en Allemagne, en France, en Angleterre, dans les Pays-Bas et en Belgique (Bruxelles: Th. Lesigne, 1851). Dupin, Charles Voyages dans la Grande-Bretagne entrepris relativement aux services publics de la guerre, de la marine et des ponts et chaussées (Paris: Bachelier, 1821–1824). ——— Du travail des enfants qu’emploient les ateliers, les usines et les manufactures, considéré dans les intérêts mutuels de la société, des familles et de l’industrie (Paris: Bachelier, 1840–1847). ——— Constitution, Histoire et avenir des caisses d’épargne de France (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1844). Fodéré, François-Emmanuel Traité de médecine légale et d’hygiène publique, ou de police de santé, adapté aux codes de l’empire français, et aux connaissances actuelles, VI (Paris: De Mame, 1813). ——— Voyage aux alpes maritimes, ou histoire naturelle, agraire, civile et médicale, du comté de Nice et pays limitrophes (Paris: F.G. Levrault, 1821).

Bibliography 285 ——— Essai historique et moral sur la pauvreté des nations, la population, la mendicité, les hopitaux et les enfants trouvés (Paris: Huzard, 1825). Gaillard, Adolphe-Henri Recherches administratives, statistiques et morales sur les enfants trouvés, les enfants naturels et les orphelins en France et dans plusieurs autres pays de l’Europe (Paris: Leclerc, 1837). ——— Résumé de la discussion sur les enfants trouvés (Paris: Lagny Frères, 1854). Gasparin, Adrien-Étienne-Pierre Rapport au Roi sur les hôpitaux et les hospices et les services de bienfaisance (Paris: Impr. Royale, 1837). Gérando, Joseph-Marie Discours prononcé à la Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale (Paris: Huzard, n.d.). ——— Le visiteur du pauvre (Paris: Colas, 1820). ——— De la bienfaisance publique (Paris: Jules Renouard et cie, 1839). ——— Des progrès de l’industrie, considérés dans leurs rapports avec la moralité de la classe ouvrière (Paris: Jules Renouard et cie, 1841). Ginouvier, J.-F.T. Tableau de l’intérieur des prisons de France (Paris: Baudoin Frères, 1824). Gouroff, Antoine Jeudy de Recherches sur les enfants-trouvés et les enfants illégitimes, en Russie, dans le reste de l’Europe, en Asie et en Amérique (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1839). Guerry, A.M. Essai sur la statistique morale de la France (Paris: Crochard, 1833). Guizot, François La Peine de mort en matière politique (Paris: Béchet, 1822). ——— The History of Civilization in Europe (William Hazlitt, trans.) (Larry Siedentop, ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997). ——— Études sur la Révolution d’Angleterre, portraits politiques des hommes des différents partis (Paris: Didier, 1862). Hall, Basil Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828 (Edinburgh: Cadell and Co./Simpkin and Marshall, 1829). Henrion de Pensey, Pierre-Paul-Nicolas Du pouvoir municipal (Paris: T. Barrois, 1820). ——— Des biens communaux et de la police rurale et forestière (Paris: T. Barrois & B. Duprat, 1833). Hoare, Samuel Rules proposed for the Government of Gaols, Houses of Correction and Penitentiaries (London: The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders, 1820). Horton, R. Wilmot An Inquiry into the Causes and Remedies of Pauperism. Second Series containing correspondence with M. Duchâtel (London: Edmund Lloyd, 1830). Huerne de Pommeuse, L.F. Des canaux navigables considérés d’une manière générale, avec les recherches comparatives sur la navigation intérieure de la France et celle de l’Angleterre, II (Paris: Huzard & Gide, 1822). ——— Mémoire sur les colonies agricoles de bienfaisance de la Hollande et de la Belgique (Paris: Société royale et centrale d’agriculture, 1829). ——— Des colonies agricoles et de leurs avantages pour assurer des secours à l’honnête indigence, extirper la mendicité, réprimer les malfaiteurs et donner une existence rassurante aux forçats libérés, tout en accroissant la prospérité de l’agriculture, la sécurité publique, la richesse de l’État (Paris: Huzard, 1832). ——— Questions et réponse relatives aux moyens d’établir en France de colonies agricoles de divers genres (Paris: Huzard, 1836). Julius, Nikolas Henirich Die Amerikanischen Besserungs-systeme. Erörtert in einem Sendschreiben an herrn W. Crawford (Leipzig: F.U. Brodhaus, 1837). ——— Du système pénitentiaire américain en 1836, suivi de quelques observations par M. Victor Foucher (Paris: Blin, Libraire Iditeur, 1837). Laborde, Alexandre de De L’esprit d’association dans tous les intérêts de la communauté

286 Bibliography ou Essai sur le complément du bien-être et de la richesse en France par le complément des institutions (Paris: Librairie de Gide Fils, 1821). Labourt, L.-A. Recherches historiques sur les enfants trouvés, ou examen de la question de savoir, s’il convient ou non de substituer en France, des Maisons dites d’orphelins aux hospices d’enfants trouvés (Paris: J.-B. Dumoulin, 1845). Lamartine, Alphonse de La France Parlementaire (1834–1851), Oeuvres oratoires et écrits politiques (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1864). Laville de Miremont, Alexandre de Observations sur les maisons centrales de détention à l’occasion de l’ouvrage de MM. de Beaumont et de Tocqueville sur les pénitenciers des ÉtatsUnis d’Amérique (Paris: de Crapelet, 1833). Lelong, P.S. Rapport sur les enfants trouvés et abandonnés fait au couseil général de la Seine-Inférieur. (Rouen: N. Périaux, 1835). Lélut, Louis-François ‘De l’influence et l’emprisonnment solitaire sur la raison des détenus’, Séances et travaux de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, V. Paris: Moniteur Universel, 1844, 213–232. ——— ‘Une visite aux prisons cellulaires de France’, Séances et travaux de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, X. Paris: Moniteur Universel, 1846, 321–344. Lérue, Jules Adrien de De la bienfaisance publique et privée dans le département de la Seine-Inférieure (Rouen: A. Péron, 1851). Lewis, George ‘Secondary Punishments’, The Law Magazine or Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence VII, 1832, 1–44. Lieber, Francis A Popular Essay on Subjects of Penal Law, and on Uniterrupted Solitary Confinement at Labor as Contrdistinguished to Solitary confinement at night and Joint Labor by Day in a Letter to John Bacon, Esquire (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, 1838). ——— The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber (Thomas Sergeant Perry, ed.) (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882). Livingston, Edward Project of a New Penal Code for the State of Louisiana (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824). ——— Système de loi pénale pour l’État de la Louisiane comprenant les codes, 1. des délits et des peines, 2. de procédure, 3. de discipline des prisons, 4. des preuves (NouvelleOrléans: Benjamin Levy, 1825). ——— Introductory Report to the Code of Prison Discipline: Explanatory of the Prinicples on which the Code is founded. Being part of the System of Penal Law, prepared for the State of Louisiana (London: John Millar, 1827). ——— A System of Penal Law for the State of Louisiana: Consisting of A Code of Crimes and Punishments, A Code of Procedure, A Code of Evidence, A Code of Reform and Prison Discipline, A Book of Definitions (Philadelphia/Pittsburg: James Kay, Jun & Brother/ John I. Kay & Co., 1833). Lucas, Charles Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis (Paris: Bossange/Charles Béchet, 1828). ——— Conclusion Générale de l’ouvrage sur le système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis (Paris: Timothée Dehay/Mme Ve Charles-Béchet, 1830). ——— De la réforme des prisons, ou de la théorie de l’emprisonnement, de ses principes, de ses moyens, et de ses conditions pratiques (Paris: Legrand et J. Bergounioux, 1836). ——— Économie politique: de l’extinction de la mendicité par le perfectionnement de l’agriculture (Paris: Huzard, 1839). ——— ‘Observations concernant les changemens apportés au projet de loi sur le régime des prisons’, Revue de législation et de jurisprudence, V, 157–242. ——— ‘Exposé des différents essais d’emprisonnement cellulaire et de leurs résultats

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Index Académie Française, 166 Académie royale de Médicine, 263 n.133 Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, 8, 9, 20, 117, 131, 136, 146, 161, 180 Adams, John Quincy, 20, 23, 28 administration, 23, 164, 180, 209 administrative centralisation, 60–1, 65–6, 83–94, 129, 197–201, 208–30, 234–6, 254 n.171 agriculture, 27, 30, 34, 40–1, 48–9, 59, 74–5, 98–100, 103–4, 108–9, 132–3, 135, 140–59, 168, 181, 191–2, 195, 213, 221, 224, 228, 236 Allier, Régis, 132–3 America, 6–9, 13, 20–8, 42, 49, chapter 3 passim, 123–4, 126–31, 134, 141, 148, 162–4, 169, 178–201, 202, 207, 209–17, 220, 222, 232, 236 American Revolution, 7 see also Boston; Cincinnati; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; prisons L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 55 Amis de l’enfance, 133 Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 205 ancien régime, 13, 21, 59, 162, 194, 204–34 see also France Angeville, Adolphe, 156 Annales de la charité, 11 Annales de législation et d’économie politique, 137 Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale, 119, 263 n.133 Appert, Benjamin, 117 Aristotle, 77 Arnauld, Antoine, 46 Aron, Raymond, 249 n.7 Assemblée Nationale, 207 associations, 27, 38, 49, 81–4, 124, 126, 133–4, 146–7, 159, 183, 191, 198, 233, 253 n.151, 257 n.28

Association religieuse pour le progrès de l’Agriculture en France, 48 atomisation, 12, 14, 60, 190, 209, 223, 225 Austin, Mrs. (Sarah Taylor), 277 n.30 L’Avenir, 96, 256 n.9, 264 n.6 Babbage, Charles, 149 Balbi, Adriano, 106, 136 Barclay, James J., 26 Baltard, L.-P., 117 Barante, Prosper, 230 Barrot, Odilon, 14 Bastid, Paul, 239 n.16 Beaumont, Gustave de, 6–8, chapter 1 passim, 39, 46, 50, 57–8, 60, 76, chapter 5 passim, 135–6, 139, 140–2, 149–50, 153–5, 162–3, 165, 185, 206–7, 225, 236 Marie ou de l’esclavage aux États-Unis, 20 The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, see Tocqueville, Alexis Beaumont, Jules de, 262 n.105 Beaujour, Felix de, 32–4 Beccaria, Cesare, 116 Bellah, Robert N., 238 n.3 Benoiston de Châteauneuf, Louis F., 106, 168 Bentham, Jeremy, 6, 107, 117–19, 120, 122 Panopticon Prison, 117 Bentham, Samuel, 117 Berlin, Isaiah, 251 n.94 Bérulle, Pierre de, 46 Bichat, Xavier, 59 Bigot de Morogues, Pierre, 96–7, 126, 132–3, 136, 140, 152 Biran, Maine de, 58–9 Birmingham, 3, 150, 181 Blackburn, William, 116 Blackstone, William, 8–9, 67, 139, 204 Bloch, Marc, 250 n.30

302

Index 303 Blosseville, Ernest de, 23, 81 Bodeau, abbé, 227 Bodin, Jean, 30 Bonald, Louis de, 64 Bordeaux Bordeaux, duc de, 6, 19 Société royale de médicine de Bordeaux, 263 n.133 Boston, 22–3, 25–7, 32 Boston Prison Discipline Society, 22, 128 see also prisons Bourbons Bourbon Restoration (1814), 4 see also Louis XVIII; Charles X; Bordeaux, duc de Boullée, Étienne-Louis, 166 Bowne, Walter, 21 Bowring, John, 8, 50 British Association for the Advancement of Science, 149, 154 Broglie, Victor de, 122 Brougham, Henry Peter, 1st Lord, 27, 150 Bunsen, Christian von, 205 Burke, Edmund, 209 Buxton, Thomas, 118 Cabanais, Pierre-Jacques-Georges, 30 Canada, 21–2, 27 Carrel, Armand, 7 Chabrol, Ernest, 23, 26, 81 Chalmers, Thomas, 37 Channing, William Ellery, 23–5, 32, 35, 49, 50, 84, 146 Charbonnerie, 122 charity, see welfare Charles X, 5–6, 13, 19, 208, 232 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 7, 32 Chevalier, Michel, 189 children, abandoned, 2, 11, 60, 133, 146, 160, chapter 7 passim China, 91, 227 Cincinnati, 27 see also prisons Circourt, Adolphe de, 205 class, 2, 4, 8, 13, 25, 71–6, 102, 142–5, 150–3, 156–61, 183, 190, 192–200, 207, 212–30, 232–33 Cleland, James, 149

Clergy, see religion commerce, 11, 21, 32, 57, 59–60, 65–6, 70–81, 140–1, 195–7, 214, 221, 224, 226 Compte général de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France, 120 Comte, Auguste, 119, 190 Comte, Charles, 45, 60 Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 58 Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-NicolasCaritat, Marquis de, 30, 44, 50, 52, 55, 121, 139 Constant, Benjamin, 55, 58, 64 Le Constitutionnel, 207 Cooper, James Fenimore, 33 Cooper, Thomas, 30 Coplestone, Edward, 24, 100 Corcelle, Francisque de, 46, 55–6, 149, 179 Corcelle, François de, 56 Correspondant, Le, 46 Cours familier de littérature, 206 see also Lamartine Coux, Charles de, 96, 256 n.9 Crawford, William, 148 crime, 24, 98–9, chapter 5 passim, 135, 141–2, 148–9, 154–6, 161–4, 180 juvenile crime, 2–3, 21, 121, 125, 132–3, 162–4 Cunningham, Francis, 118 Dames de la Miséricorde, 165 Damiron, Jean-Philibert, 36 Danjou, E., 117 Davison, Gideon Minor, 20, 241 n.8 Davison, John, 100 Débats, Les, 207 Delessert, Benjamin, 105, 157, 165 democracy, 1, 2, 8, 11, 12, 14–15, 20, 23, 27–9, chapter 3 passim, 137–8, 146–7, 149, chapter 8 passim, 203–7, 223, 225, 231–7 see also Tocqueville, Alexis despotism, 12, 27, 43, 45, 64, 90–3, 184, 192, 198–201, 208, 220–30, 235, 254 n.184 see also administrative centralisation Destutt de Tracy, Antoine-Claude-Louis, 9, 55, 58, 59, 72, 116 Diderot, Denis, 226

304 Index Doctrinaires, 5, 12, 39, 45, 59–60, 64, 86, 117, 180, 208, 210, 230, 254 n.187 see also France, ‘Great Debate’; Guizot; Royer-Collard Drescher, Seymour, 238 n.6, 239 n.30, 245 n.171 Droz, Joseph, 181 Dubois, Paul-François, 13, 36 Dupont-White, Charles, 207 Duchâtel, Charles Tanneguy, 36–9, 41, 43, 49, 50, 52, 97, 100, 109–11, 140, 145 articles for Le Globe, 36–9, 41, 50 Ducpétiaux, Édouard, 132, 148, 171, 266 n.95 Dufaure, Jules Armand Stanislas, 159, 269 ns.3 and 8 Dumont, Étienne, 118, 120, 122 Dunoyer, Charles, 45, 60 Dupin, André-Marie, 39, 42 Dupin, Charles, 39, 96, 157, 159 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel, 37 Duvergier de Hauranne, Prosper, 36 Eden, Frederick Morton, 50 Elizabeth I, 139 Enfantin, Prosper, 37, 269 n.1 England, 7, 75, 136, 139–60, 178, 196, 204, 207, 211–12, 214–15, 217, 223, 226, 230, 232, 234, 236 and English political economy, 100–11, 138, 181–2 see also Birmingham; British Association for the Advancement of Science, Manchester; Tocqueville on English Poor Laws equality, 12, 34, 41, 60, 62–6, 110, 136–8, 184, 191–200, 204, 208–30 Everett, Alexander, 23 Everett, Edward, 23, 277 n.20 Federalist, The, 67 Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, 108 Febvre, Lucien, 250 n.30 Fleury, abbé Claude, 108 Fodéré, François Emmanuel de, 96–104, 151, 181, 192, 223 Fondation Montyon, 165 Forbes, William, 104

France, 7, 12, 13, 141, 154–60, 163–4, 178–201, chapter 9 passim, 232–6 ancien régime, 13, 21, 162, 194, 204–34 Constitutional Charter (1814), 5–6 Great Debate, 13, 208, 230 July Monarchy, 13, 80, 96, 99, 146, 183, 202, 208, 234, 236 Prison reform, chapter 5 passim Restoration (1814), 4, 202 Revolution of 1789, 12, 29, 63–4, 71, 86, 88, 202–4, 208, 209–30, 232–5 Revolution of 1830, 6, 12, 19, 64, 73, 233 Revolution of 1848, 156, 197, 203, 208 First Empire, 208 Second Empire, 203, 206, 234, 236 Unthinkable Chamber, 5 see also Bordeaux; children; crime; hospitals; Paris; poverty; tour Furet, François, 238 n.5, 239–40 n.30 Gaillard, Adolphe-Henri, abbé, 165, 170 Garnier, Joseph, 207 Gasparin, Andrien-Étienne-Pierre, comte, 166 Gazette de France, 55 Gazette de Normandie, 131 Gérando, Joseph-Marie, baron de, 24, 35, 165, 171–2 geography, 30, 56–7, 59, 68, 74, 180, 203, 231 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Gerbet, Philippe, 256 n.9 Germany, 205, 211–12, 214, 217 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Gibbon, Edward, 203 Gilpin, Henry, 26 Ginouvier, J.-F.-T., 117 Globe, Le, 13, 36–9, 122, 140 Godwin, William, 50, 52, 121, 139 Gosselin, André, 9 Gouroff, Antoine Jeudy de, 166 Greg, William Rathbone, 149 Grégoire, Henri, abbé, 47 Gregory XVI, Pope, 256 n.9 Grote, Harriet, 277 n.28 Guerry, A.M., 31, 99, 119, 149, 267 n.112

Index 305 Guizot, François, 8, 9, 23, 29, 30–1, 39, 41, 44–5, 56, 58–66, 70, 73, 87, 94, 117, 119–20, 137, 146, 166, 178–80, 194, 198, 203, 205, 208–9, 212–13, 216, 226, 231, 237, 254 n.187 History of Civilization in Europe, 9, 23, 29, 41, 44, 56, 58–61, 64–5, 119–20, 137, 178, 194, 210, 212, 216, 226 History of Civilization in France, 9, 29, 44, 56, 58–61, 64, 70, 119–20, 178 Origins of Representative Government in Europe, 60 on ‘philosophical’ history, 9, 30, 58, 61, 203, 237 and aide-toi le ciel t’aidera, 13 see also Doctrinaires; France, ‘Great Debate’; Tocqueville, Alexis Guy, Father, of Montpellier, 170 Hacking, Ian, 242 n.38 Hall, Basil, 32, 33, 34 Hallam, Henry, 150 Hanway, Jonas, 107, 116, 117 Havin, Léonor, 206 Henry VIII, 139 Hervieu, J.-F., 267 n.141 hospices, see hospitals hospitals, general, 164–5, 167, 171–2 Howard, John, 107, 116, 118 Huerne de Pommeuse, L.-F., 48, 132, 157, 159 Hugo, Victor, 207 Humboldt, Alexander von, 205 Hume, David, 34, 107, 226 Idéologues, 7, 9, 43–4, 48, 55–6, 58, 59–60, 71–2, 180, 218, 231 see also Biran; Destutt de Tracy; Say individualism, 134, 183, 190–2, 197–9, 208–9, 223, 234–6 Industrie, L’, 45 industry, 2, 11, 23–4, 33, 60, 65–6, 70, 71–81, 97–104, 135, 140–7, 151–3, 157–9, 181–2, 187, 192–200, 207–9, 221, 224–6, 235 Innes, Joanna, 258 n.77 institutions local, 12, 22, 54, chapter 3 passim, 115, 146, 191, 200, 218–29, 236

political, 13, 54, 66–71, 191, 200 see also justice; philanthropy; prisons; voluntary societies; welfare Jackson, Andrew, 20, 22, 28, 92 Jansenius, Cornelius, 46 Jansenism, 14, 45, 52, 80 see also Lesueur; Pascal; Tocqueville, Alexis Janvier, Eugène, 39 Jaume, Lucien, 238 n.4, 242 n.38, 278 n.69 Jones, Richard, 100 Jouffroy, Théodore, 36–7 Journal des débats, 9, 55 Journal des économistes, 189 Julius, Nikolas, 131, 262 n.127 justice, 4, 53, 57, chapter 5 passim, 142, 161–2, 186, 196–7, 208, 215, 223, 225, 228, 236 judiciary, 26–7, 29, 68, 85, 137, 200 juries, 26–7, 68, 191 La Bruyère, 179 Laborde, Alexandre de, 38, 48–9, 105 Lacave-Laplange, P.-J.-J., 159 Lacordaire, Henri, 46, 186, 256 n.9 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 170, 206, 235 Lamberti, J.-C., 254 ns.184 and 187, 255 n.1 Lamennais, Félicité de, 256 n.9 Landsdowne, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquis of, 149 Langlois, Honoré, 262 n.129 Lanjuinais, Jean-Denis, 46–7 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, FrançoisFrédéric-Alexandre, duc de, 7, 29, 32, 105, 115 Lausanne conseil de santé de Lausanne, 263 n.133 see also prisons Laville de Miremont, Alexandre de, 263 n.132 Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 117 Legitimism, 38, 48–9, 52, 55, chapter 4 passim, 126, 132–3, 136, 140, 145, 152, 207 see also Bigot de Morogues; Coux; Fodéré; Université Catholique; Villeneuve-Bargemont

306 Index Le Peletier d’Aunay, Louis-Honoré-Félix, baron, 118, 260 n.35 Leroux, Pierre, 13, 36 Lesueur, abbé, 14, 46–7 Le Trosne, Guillaume-François, 227 Lewis, George Cornewall, 277 n.16 liberty, 12, 14–15, 27, 34–5, 44–6, 48, 53, 62, 67–94, 110, 115, 133, 146–7, 182–203, 208–30, 232–7, 252 n.97, 254 n.170 Liberalism, 55, 71, 135, 207, 234, 187 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Lieber, Francis, 25, 50, 131 Limayrac, Paulin, 207 Lingard, John, 8, 60, 212 Livingston, Edward, 28, 115, 118 Locke, John, 58 Lolme, Jean-Louis de, 8, 67 Louis XIV, 219, 224, 228 Louis XVI, 232 Louis XVIII, 4 see also France, Restoration; Constitutional Charter Louis-Napoleon, 203, 206, 208 see also France, Second Empire Louis-Philippe, 6, 38, 64, 233 see also France, July Monarchy Lucas, J.-M. Charles, 115, 117, 118, 122–3, 131 Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis, 115, 117 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Lynds, Elam, 21 Mabillon, Jean, 116–17 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 204 Macaulay, Zachery, 24 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 90 Maistre, Joseph de, 64, 209–10 Mallet, Josephine, 132 Malte-Brun, Conrad, 30, 106 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 10, 24, 37–8, 42–5, 48–53, 57, 60, 66, 74, 76, 94, 99–109, 111, 121, 139–41, 147, 152, 156, 179–80, 186, 190–1, 197, 202, 231, 264 n.37 Essay on the Principle of Population, 24, 33, 38, 44, 49, 50–2, 66, 74, 100, 139, 144, 156, 180, 248 n.101 Manchester, 3, 150, 181

Manent, Pierre, 238 n.4 manners, 7, 8, 11, 29, 34, 42, 54, 60, 69, 78, 115–16, 124, 138, 179, 180, 182, 188, 202–4, 220, 229, 237 Mansfield, Harvey C., 238 n.1 manufacturing, see industry Maryland, 35, 50, 84, 110, 124 Mathieu de Dombasle, C.-J.-A., 98–9 McCulloch, John Ramsay, 10, 140, 209 McIlvaine, Joseph, 26 McLane, Louis, 28 Mélonio, Françoise, 239–40 n.30, 255 n.1, 264 n.8 Melun, Armand de, 46, 170 Mentelle, Edme, 30, 106 Mercier de la Rivière, P.-F.-J.-H., 227 Mill, John Stuart, 11, 150, 177–9, 204–5 Minto, Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Earl of, 150 Mitchell, Harvey, 238 n.5, 251 n.84, 253 n.129 Mittermaier, Carl Josef Anton, 262 n.127 Molé, Louis-Mathieu, comte de, 250 n.32 Monfalcon, J.-B., 165, 170 Montaigne, Michel de, 179 Montalembert, Charles, comte de, 46, 256 n.9 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat baron de, 8, 9, 22, 29, 30, 33, 34, 44–5, 53, 54–7, 61–6, 69–70, 72–80, 85–7, 89, 90, 94, 110, 116, 125, 141, 178, 180, 182, 185, 188, 190–2, 196–7, 205, 214–15, 217, 219, 221, 223, 231, 253 n.134, 255 n.194 The Spirit of Laws, 9–10, 33, 44, 53, 55, 61, 77–8, 85, 116, 178, 188, 219, 221, 253 n.134, 255 n.194 Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans, 191–2, 203 Napoleon I, 4, 208 see also France, First Empire National, Le, 55 New Orleans, 27–8 New York, 21, 26–7 see also prisons Nicole, Pierre, 46 Niebuhr, Barthold, 205

Index 307 Ozanam, Fédéric, 96, 256 n.10 Parent-Duchâtelet, Alexis-Jean-Baptiste, 99, 119, 120 Paris, 67, 221–2, 229 État-major des hopitaux parisiens, 263 n.133 see also prisons Pascal, Blaise, 14, 46–8, 52, 62, 70–1, 73, 76, 180, 185, 189, 231 pawnshops (monts-de-piété), 104–6, 159–61 Perrot, Michelle, 239 n.30 Peyrat, Adolphe, 207 Philadelphia, 23–4, 26–7, 117–8 Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, 26 Philadelphia Prison Society, 127–8 see also prisons Philanthropy, 23–6, 32, 34–5, 38–9, 48–9, 107–10, 121–2, 134, 138–47, 164, 172, 225–6, 236–7 see also prisons Physiocracy, 37, 40, 42–5, 220, 224–9, 235 Pitts, Jennifer, 240 n.44 Plato, 179 Plée, Léon, 206 Plutarch, 179 political economy, 2, 9–11, 24–5, 30–2, 35, chapter 2 passim, 56–9, chapter 4 passim, 116, 125, 140–2, 145, 149–53, 157–9, 164, 180, 191, 203, 209, 213, 231 Pontmartin, Armand de, 207 poverty, 2, 11, 23–6, 31, 35, 57, 60, 74, 96–7, 101–2, 104–11, 116, 126, chapters 6 and 7 passim, 181, 191–8, 236–7 Presse, La, 207 Prevost, Agathon, 157 Prevost, Pierre, 50 prisons America: Auburn Penitentiary (New York State) 21, 22, 26, 118; Auburn Penitentiary system, 7–8, 26, 118, 127–8, 165; Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary (New York City), 21; Boston Prison Discipline Society, 22, 128; Cincinnati House of

Correction, 21; Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia), 21, 26, 118, 127–8; houses for juvenile offenders, 162–3; New York House of Refuge for Delinquent Minors (New York City), 21; Pennsylvania system, 7–8, 26, 91, 118, 127–8, 130–1; Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, 24; Sing Sing (Mount Pleasant, New York State), 21; Walnut Street Gaol (Philadelphia), 117; Weathersfield Penitentiary, (Connecticut), 126, 128–9 France: Hôtel de Bazencourt (house of correction for juveniles, Paris), 130; maison de refuge de la rue de l’Oursine (Paris), 128, 131, 163; Poissy, 121; La Roquette, 128; Royal Society of Prisons, 117; Saint-Lazare (women’s prison, Paris), 130, 163; Soissons, 126; Toulon penal colony, 130; Versailles, 121 Switzerland: Geneva, 115, 120, 129–30; Lausanne, 115, 120, 129–30 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Producteur, Le, 37 Puritans, 69, 210–11 see also religion Putnam, Robert D., 238 n.3 Radnor, William Pleydell-Bouverie, 3rd Earl, 50, 191 Ranke, Leopold von, 205 Reeve, Henry, 150, 182–3 religion, 4–5, 14, 22, 23–6, 32, 46–8, 69, 77, 79, 80, 110, 116, 125, 151–2, 181, 183, 185–90, 199, 213, 217, 251 n.85 Remacle, Bernard-Benoît, 165, 171 Rémusat, Charles, 36, 39, 87, 117, 122, 207 republicanism, 55, 65, 71, 207, 211 revolution, 29, 64, 102, 125, 129, 147, 156, 162, 190, 192, 197, 202, 211, 232, 235 see also America; France Revue américaine, 7 Revue des Deux Mondes, 207

308 Index Revue française, 122 Ricardo, David, 10, 37, 40, 43, 100, 140, 152, 209 on English corn laws, 37, 140, 152 theory of rents, 37 Richter, Melvin, 249 n.7 Rivet, Jean-Charles, 269 n.7 Roebuck, John, 150 Roederer, Pierre-Louis, 116 Roman law, 83 Rosanvallon, Pierre, 239 n.16, 250 n.55, 278 n.69 Rossi, Pellegrino, 120, 137 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 22, 62, 70–1, 73, 76, 87, 136, 180, 185, 189, 190, 217, 231 Roussel, J.-B., 281 n.154 Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, 9, 11, 36, 39, 45, 47, 56, 64, 149, 179, 183, 254 n.187 Ryan, Alan, 238 n.7 Sacy, de, (pseudonym), see Beaumont, Gustave de Saint Augustine, 46 Saint-Beuve, Charles, 36, 47, 55, 177 Saint-Evremond, Charles de Margetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de, 179 Saint-Simonianism, 36, 37, 45 St. Vincent de Paul, 165 Sandel, Michael J., 238 n.3 savings banks, 104–5, 109, 154–5, 157–9, 161, 200, 236 Say, Jean-Baptiste, 7, 9–10, 30–3, 36–7, 39–46, 48–50, 52, 58–66, 70–3, 75, 77–9, 87, 94, 97, 100–1, 111, 138, 178, 181–4, 188, 190–2, 202, 209, 214, 218, 220, 231, 234, 237, 254 n.187 Cours complet d’économie politique, 9, 10, 32–3, 36, 39, 42, 50, 57, 65, 72–3, 77–9, 191 Traité d’économie politique, 10, 40, 43, 56, 63, 191 on industry, 37, 40, 44–5, 52, 59, 66 see also Tocqueville, Alexis Savigny, Friedrich Karl von, 137, 205 Schiller, Friedrich von, 210 Schlegel, Wilhelm von, 205

self-interest rightly understood, 38–9, 52, 57, 77–94, 125–6, 156, 182–9, 221, 223–4 Senior, Nassau William, 43, 46, 50, 109, 139, 149–50, 157, 204 Seybert, Adam, 34 Schleifer, James, 254 n.184, 255 n.1 Siècle, Le, 11, 206 Siedentop, Larry, 239–40 n.30 Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph, 44, 55 Sismondi, Simonde de, 43, 97, 98, 181 Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, 43, 98 slavery, 11, 27, 102, 193, 197 Smith, Adam, 10, 37, 40, 42–5, 48, 57, 70–3, 79–80, 97, 100–1, 107, 110, 141, 147, 190, 196–7, 214, 252 n.104 Wealth of Nations, 43–4, 72–3 Theory of Moral Sentiments, 43 Smith, George Washington, 26 socialism, 207–8, 229, 235, 281 n.154 société de la charité maternelle, 165 société de la morale chrétienne, 11, 117, 133 société française pour l’abolition de l’esclavage, 11, 27, 124 société des orphelins, 133 société de Saint Vincent de Paul, 96 Sparks, Jared, 22, 81, 84 Staël, Germaine de, 55 state, 2, 64, 78, 121–32, 133, 143, 147, 194–201, 202, 221, 224–9, 235, 237 statistics, 11, 31–2, 45, 56–7, 96, 106–7, 116, 136, 149, 166, 180, 231, 258 n.77 Steiner, Philippe, 239 n.27, 273 n.26 Stoffels, Eugène, 149 Sumner, Charles, 262 n.127 Swetchine, Madame de, 46 Taillander, A.-H., 117 Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice de, 30 Taylor, W.B. Sarsfield, 131 Temps, Le, 55 Terme, J.-F., 165, 170 Thiers, Adolphe, 14, 203 Thomassy, Raymond, 161 Throop, Enos, 21

Index 309 Thun-Hohenstein, Leon von, count, 49, 262 n.127 Tocqueville, Alexis de interests and opinions: on Canadiens, 21–2; and Charles X, 5–6, 19, 233; and English Poor Laws, 39, 48, 49–50, 52, 84, 100, 108–10, 136, 139–47, 153; and Louis XVIII, 5; and Louis Napoléon, 203; and Louis-Philippe, 6, 19; crisis of religious faith, 45–6; dispute with Charles Lucas, 122–3, 131; interest in British India, 259 n.5; and geography, 9, 30, 48, 54, 180; and statistics, 9, 11, 31–2, 116, 118, 148–9, 180, 237, 250 n.35; Jansenist influences on, 45–8, 52, 75, 84, 108; Legitimist beliefs, 4, 6, 13, 49, 71, 133, 268 n.144; new liberalism, 4, 5, 15, 110–11, 161, 231–2; study of François Guizot, 9–10, 29–31, 41, 42, 44, 56, 58, 59–61, 64–5, 194, 212, 237; and Koran, 186; and J.B. Say, 9–10, 30–3, 40–2, 44, 45, 48, 125–6, 237; on theory and practice, 2, 15, 127, 139, 162, 170, 172, 180, 225–7, 231–2 journeys: to America (1831–2), 6–7, chapter 1 passim, chapter 3 passim, 30, 123, 134, 192, 195, 202; Canada (1831), 21–2, 27; England (1833), 8, 49, 50, 138, 142, 148; England and Ireland (1835), 3, 27, 76, 100, 147–8, 149–53, 180–1, 192; England (1857), 204–5; Germany (1854), 205; Sicily (1826–7), 32, 48, 56 career: acquiring editorial control of Le Commerce, 14, 153, 197; association with the ‘Young Left’, 161–2, 273 n.49; election to Chamber of Deputies, 14, 164; membership of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, 130, 132, 136, 146, 148, 161, 180, 264 n.8; and Annales de la charité, 95; and General Departmental Council of the Manche, 25, 148, 153, 164, 237, 266 n.94; and Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg, 136, 264 ns.7 and 8; and société d’économie

charitable, 95; plans for a political review (1833), 13–14, 46, 70, 76, 185; as secretary to parliamentary committee on slave emancipation, 11, 124; and parliamentary committee on prison reform, 130–2, 168, 263 n.134; study of taxation, 161 writings: Administrative Centralisation and the Representative System, 197, 211, 220; Ancien Régime and the Revolution, 1, 2, 11, 12, 22, 42, 48, 67, 76, 83, 84, 91, 93, 102, 116, 124–5, 129, 133, 145, 153, 157–8, 172, 188, 194, 200, 203–30, 233–4, 236; Democracy in America (1835), 8–11, 14, 20, 22–3, 27–32, 35, 41–5, 48–9, 52, chapter 3 passim, 95, 102, 108, 110, 116, 124, 129, 137, 146, 148, 149, 150, 156–7, 177, 179, 180, 182, 186–7, 191, 198, 203, 205, 210–11, 213, 220, 228, 231–2, 254 n.187; Democracy in America (1840), 10–11, 32–3, 49, 59, 60, 69, 73, 76–7, 86, 88, 93–4, 102–3, 124, 133, 137–8, 147–8, 151, 153, 158–9, 173, chapter 8 passim, 203, 205–9, 213, 217, 220–1, 225, 228, 232–3; analytical method of Democracy in America (1835 and 1840), 11, 29–32, 42, 54, 56–66, 71, 76, 86, 116, 180, 204, 206, 231; Letters on the Internal Situation of France (1843), 148, 161, 196–7, 207, 220; The Middle Class and the People (1847), 73, 148, 156, 162, 196, 220; The Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France, 1830 preliminary report, 120, 121–3, 127, 135, 154, 185, 225; 1833 edition, 7, 20, 25, 32, 35, 39, 48, 50, 57, 64, 69, 116, 118–31, 135, 138, 141–3, 145, 147, 154, 162–5, 185, 215, 225, 236, 265 n.80; 1836 edition, 126, 132, 148, 149, 154; Reports on abandoned children, 39, 48, 50, 59, 60, 95, 148, 191–2, 213, 225, 233, 263 n.147; 1843 report, 166; 1844 report, 166–9, 171; 1845 report, 169, 171;

310 Index 1846 report, 167–9, 171; Reports on pauperism, 2, 3, 11, 35, 39, 48, 50, 59, 60, 76, 93, 95, 106, chapter 6 passim, 166, 172, 191, 192, 213, 225, 233; 1835 report, 48, 49, 95, 136, 138, 144, 147–9, 154, 156–7, 168–9, 194, 198; 1837 report, 48, 95, 106, 138, 144, 147, 151, 153, 155–60, 168, 194–5, 200; Letter on Pauperism in Normandy, 153–6, 265 n.80; Reports on common lands, 158, 214; The Social and Political Condition of France Before the Revolution (1836), 76, 88, 125, 145, 148, 153, 178, 187–8, 203–4, 209, 226, 228, 234; Souvenirs, 1, 84, 93, 102, 124, 194, 202–3, 208, 228 Tocqueville, Louis Edouard de (brother of Alexis), 26, 36, 49, 56, 95, 133, 154 Tocqueville, Émilie Evrard de Belisle de Saint-Rémy, Mme Hippolyte de, 154 Tocqueville, François-Hippolyte de (brother of Alexis), 153–4 Tocqueville, Hervé de (father of Alexis), 4, 23, 36, 50, 81, 95 Pour la charte provinciale, 23 Coup d’oeil sur l’administration française, 81 Tocqueville, Hubert de (nephew of Alexis), 277 n.10, 280 n.145 Tocqueville, Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosambo (mother of Alexis), 4 Tocqueville, Mary Mottley, Mme de (wife of Alexis), 8–9, 154, 205 Torrigiani, Carlo Marquis di, 262 n.127 tour, 165, 167, 170–2 see also children, abandoned Tuckerman, Joseph, 23–5, 27, 32, 34–5, 49, 50, 84, 146

Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 213 tyranny of the majority, 84–94 Université Catholique, 96 see also legitimism utilitarianism, 44, 122, 184, 190–1, 255 n.199 Vaux, Roberts, 23–4, 26–7, 32, 34 Villemain, Abel François, 207 Villeneuve-Bargemont, Alban, 10, 49, 60, 66, 76, 93–4, chapter 4 passim, 132–3, 136, 138, 140, 145, 149, 151, 156, 165, 179–82, 186–7, 189, 191–2, 194, 223, 231, 255 n.1 Économie politique chrétienne, 95–6, 101, 104, 106, 156, 180, 187 Villèle, Joseph, comte de, 5, 36, 37 Villermé, Louis, 99–100, 110, 117, 119, 145, 158, 166 Vivelle, Félix de, 157, 160 Volney, Charles-François-Chassebeuf, comte de, 30, 43, 48, 56, 58, 73, 231, 252 n.109 voluntary societies, 133, 145, 154, 159, 161, 236 sociétés d’émulation, 133, 145, 161 sociétés de patronage, 145, 161 Washington, D.C., 28, 67 Watteville, Baron de, 168 Welch, Cheryl B., 239–40 n.30, 250 n.30 welfare, 2, 25, 107–10, 133, 139–47, 161–2, 167, 169–70, 200, 228, 236 wet-nursing, 165, 166–8 see also children, abandoned Whately, Richard, 24, 50, 100 Whatmore, Richard, 239 n.27 Whewell, William, 100 Winch, Donald, 252 n.104 Wolin, Sheldon S., 238 n.3

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