American Institutions and Their Influence

by Alexis de Tocqueville

The second and the most fatal of all the defects I have alluded to, and that which I believe to be inherent in the federal system, is the relative weakness of the government of the Union. The principle upon which all confederations rest is that of a divided sovereignty. The legislator may render this partition less perceptible, he may even conceal it for a time from the public eye, but he cannot prevent it from existing; and a divided sovereignty must always be less powerful than an entire supremacy. The reader has seen in the remarks I have made on the constitution of the United States, that the Americans have displayed singular ingenuity in combining the restriction of the power of the Union within the narrow limits of the federal government, with the semblance, and to a certain extent with the force of a national government. By this means the legislators of the Union have succeeded in diminishing, though not in counteracting, the natural danger of confederations.

It has been remarked that the American government does not apply itself to the states, but that it immediately transmits its injunctions to the citizens, and compels them as isolated individuals to comply with its demands. But if the federal law were to clash with the interests and prejudices of a state, it might be feared that all the citizens of that state would conceive themselves to be interested in the cause of a single individual who should refuse to obey. If all the citizens of the state were aggrieved at the same time and in the same manner by the authority of the Union, the federal government would vainly attempt to subdue them individually; they would instinctively unite in the common defence, and they would derive a ready-prepared organization from the share of sovereignty which the institution of their state allows them to enjoy. Fiction would give way to reality, and an organized portion of the territory might then contest the central authority.

The same observation holds good with regard to the federal jurisdiction. If the courts of the Union violated an important law of a state in a private case, the real, if not the apparent contest would arise between the aggrieved state, represented by a citizen, and the Union, represented by its courts of justice.{158}

He would have but a partial knowledge of the world who should imagine that it is possible, by the aid of legal fictions, to prevent men from finding out and employing those means of gratifying their passions which have been left open to them; and it may be doubted whether the American legislators, when they rendered a collision between the two sovereignties less probable, destroyed the causes of such a misfortune. But it may even be affirmed that they were unable to ensure the preponderance of the federal element in a case of this kind. The Union is possessed of money and of troops, but the affections and the prejudices of the people are in the bosom of the states. The sovereignty of the Union is an abstract being, which is connected with but few external objects; the sovereignty of the states is hourly perceptible, easily understood, constantly active; and if the former is of recent creation, the latter is coeval with the people itself. The sovereignty of the Union is factitious, that of the states is natural, and derives its existence from its own simple influence, like the authority of a parent. The supreme power of the nation affects only a few of the chief interests of society; it represents an immense but remote country, and claims a feeling of patriotism which is vague and ill-defined; but the authority of the states controls every individual citizen at every hour and in all circumstances; it protects his property, his freedom, and his life; and when we recollect the traditions, the customs, the prejudices of local and familiar attachment with which it is connected, we cannot doubt the superiority of a power which is interwoven with every circumstance that renders the love of one's native country instinctive to the human heart.

Since legislators are unable to obviate such dangerous collisions as occur between the two sovereignties which co-exist in the federal system, their first object must be, not only to dissuade the confederate states from warfare, but to encourage such institutions as may promote the maintenance of peace. Hence it results that the federal compact cannot be lasting unless there exists in the communities which are leagued together, a certain number of inducements to union which render their common dependance agreeable, and the task of the government light; and that system cannot succeed without the presence of favorable circumstances added to the influence of good laws. All the people which have ever formed a confederation have been held together by a certain number of common interests, which served as the intellectual ties of association.

But the sentiments and the principles of man must be taken into consideration as well as his immediate interest. A certain uniformity of civilisation is not less necessary to the durability of a confederation, than a uniformity of interests in the states which compose it. In Switzerland the difference which exists between the canton of Uri and the canton of Vaud is equal to that between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries; and, properly speaking, Switzerland has never possessed a federal government. The Union between these two cantons only subsists upon the map; and their discrepancies would soon be perceived if an attempt were made by a central authority to prescribe the same laws to the whole territory.

One of the circumstances which most powerfully contribute to support the federal government in America, is that the states have not only similar interests, a common origin, and a common tongue, but that they are also arrived at the same stage of civilisation; which almost always renders a union feasible. I do not know of any European nation, how small soever it may be, which does not present less uniformity in its different provinces than the American people, which occupies a territory as extensive as one half of Europe. The distance from the state of Maine to that of Georgia is reckoned at about one thousand miles; but the difference between the civilisation of Maine and that of Georgia is slighter than the difference between the habits of Normandy and those of Britany. Maine and Georgia, which are placed at the opposite extremities of a great empire, are consequently in the natural possession of more real inducements to form a confederation than Normandy and Britany, which are only separated by a bridge.

The geographical position of the country contributed to increase the facilities which the American legislators derived from the manners and customs of the inhabitants; and it is to this circumstance that the adoption and the maintenance of the federal system are mainly attributable.

The most important occurrence which can mark the annals of a people is the breaking out of a war. In war a people struggle with the energy of a single man against foreign nations, in the defence of its very existence. The skill of a government, the good sense of the community, and the natural fondness which men entertain for their country, may suffice to maintain peace in the interior of a district, and to favor its internal prosperity; but a nation can only carry on a great war at the cost of more numerous and more painful sacrifices; and to suppose that a great number of men will of their own accord comply with the exigencies of the state, is to betray an ignorance of mankind. All the peoples which have been obliged to sustain a long and serious warfare have consequently been led to augment the power of their government. Those which have not succeeded in this attempt have been subjugated. A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative of being abandoned to ruin by defeat, or to despotism by success. War therefore renders the symptoms of the weakness of a government most palpable and most alarming; and I have shown that the inherent defect of federal governments is that of being weak.

The federal system is not only deficient in every kind of centralized administration, but the central government itself is imperfectly organized, which is invariably an influential cause of inferiority when the nation is opposed to other countries which are themselves governed by a single authority. In the federal constitution of the United States, by which the central government possesses more real force, this evil is still extremely sensible. An example will illustrate the case to the reader.