Diary in America, Series Two

by Frederick Marryat

Is it not strange, and even ridiculous, that under a government established little more than fifty years, a government which was to be a lesson to the whole world, we should find political writers making use of language such as this: “We are for reform, sound, progressive reform, not subversion and destruction.” Yet such is an extract from one of the best written American periodicals of the day. This is the language that may be expected to be used in a country like England, which still legislates under a government of eight hundred years old; but what a failure must that government be, which in fifty years calls forth even from its advocates such an admission!!

M. Tocqueville says, “Custom, however, has done even more than laws. A proceeding which will in the end set all the guarantees of representative government at nought, is becoming more and more general in the United States: it frequently happens that the electors who choose a delegate, point out a certain line of conduct to him, and impose upon him a certain number of positive obligations, which he is pledged to fulfil. With the exception of the tumult, this comes to the same thing as if the majority of the populace held its deliberations in the market-place.”

Speaking of the majority as the popular will, he says, “no obstacles exist which can impede, or so much as retard its progress, or which can induce it to heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is fatal in itself, and dangerous for the future.”

My object in this chapter is to inquire what effect has been produced upon the morals of the American people by this acknowledged dominion of the majority?

1st. As to the mass of the people themselves. It is clear, if the people not only legislate, but, when in a state of irritation or excitement, they defy even legislation, that they are not to be compared to restricted sovereigns, but to despots, whose will and caprice are law. The vices of the court of a despot are, therefore, practised upon the people; for the people become as it were the court, to whom those in authority, or those who would be in authority, submissively bend the knee. A despot is not likely ever to hear the truth, for moral courage fails where there is no law to protect it, and where honest advice may be rewarded by summary punishment. The people, therefore, like the despot, are never told the truth; on the contrary, they receive and expect the most abject submission from their courtiers, to wit, those in office, or expectants.

Now, the President of the United States may be considered the Prime Minister of an enlightened public, who govern themselves, and his communication with them is in his annual message.

Let us examine what Mr Van Buren says in his last message.

First, he humbly acknowledges their power.

“A national bank,” he tells them, “would impair the rightful supremacy of the popular will.”

And this he follows up with that most delicate species of flattery, that of praising them for the very virtue which they are most deficient in; telling them that they are “a people to whom the truth, however unpromising, can always be told with safety.”