I think, therefore, that before I proceed to speak of the future, I cannot do better than collect within a small compass the reasons which best explain the present. In this retrospective chapter I shall be succinct; for I shall take care to remind the reader very summarily of what he already knows; and I shall only select the most prominent of those facts which I have not yet pointed out.
All the causes which contribute to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States are reducible to three heads:
I. The peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence has placed the Americans.
II. The laws.
III. The manners and customs of the people.
ACCIDENTAL OR PROVIDENTIAL CAUSES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE UNITED STATES.
The Union has no Neighbors.—No Metropolis.—The Americans have had the Chances of Birth in their favor.—America an empty country.—How this circumstance contributes powerfully to the Maintenance of the democratic Republic in America.—How the American Wilds are Peopled.—Avidity of the Anglo-Americans in taking Possession of the Solitudes of the New World.—Influence of physical Prosperity upon the political Opinions of the Americans.
A thousand circumstances, independent of the will of man, concur to facilitate the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States. Some of these peculiarities are known, the others may easily be pointed out; but I shall confine myself to the most prominent among them.
The Americans have no neighbors, and consequently they have no great wars, or financial crises, or inroads, or conquests to dread; they require neither great taxes, nor great armies, nor great generals; and they have nothing to fear from a scourge which is more formidable to republics than all these evils combined, namely, military glory. It is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence which military glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to be the head of their government, is a man of violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a free people; and indeed the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to the presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained, twenty years ago, under the walls of New Orleans; a victory which was, however, a very ordinary achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where battles are rare. Now the people who are thus carried away by the illusions of glory, are unquestionably the most cold and calculating, the most unmilitary (if I may use the expression), and the most prosaic of all the peoples of the earth.