On the contrary, an increase of the customs duties, whatever should be the motive of it, would be particularly hurtful to the Southern States, and would be very unwelcome to them. As it is the South that produces cotton, the principal article of export from the United States to France, the reprisals which the French government would not fail to make, would fall chiefly upon the South. Now the democratic party at present needs the support of the South, and is courting Virginia in particular, the most influential of the Southern States. The success of the plans of the democratic party, that is to say, the election of Mr Van Buren to the presidency, depends much upon the attitude taken by Virginia, not in 1836, the year of the election, but the present year, not tomorrow but to-day. Public opinion is yet undecided in Virginia; it is desirable, at any price, to prevent it from leaning in any degree to the side of the Opposition, and it is well understood that Virginia will not consent to laying any especial burdens on the South. The Virginia legislature is now in session, and one of its first acts will be the choice of a Senator in Congress. If Mr Leigh, the present Senator, is chosen, then it will be committed in favour of the Opposition, and perhaps lost to the democratic party. The loss of the legislature may involve that of the State; the loss of Virginia may involve that of the South. Considerations of this kind have much more weight here than would be imagined in Europe. In the midst of the changing institutions of this country, politicians live only from hand to mouth.
It sometimes happens that European governments are clogged in their foreign policy by domestic difficulties. General Jackson would have been more cautious, if he had not thought that such is the position of the French government at this moment. But be assured, that he also has his domestic embarrassments, which affect his measures. This is more peculiarly the case with him than with any other President, because he is more a man of party, more entangled in party meshes, than any of his predecessors. Congressional intrigues and sectional interests create the same difficulties here, particularly for an administration like his, which amongst us result from an ill-balanced population, and the burden of the past. The French government may be confident of this, and ought to act conformably.
[LETTER XVII.]
PUBLIC OPINION.
Louisville, December 22, 1834.
The first impression produced in the United States by General Jackson's Message, was astonishment, as the tone was wholly unexpected to every one. In Europe, I suppose that it will have excited more than surprise, and it will be a matter of wonder, how a measure so rash and reckless could have emanated from a government, which, from its origin, has been characterised by address and prudence. I have already attempted to give an explanation of this mystery, and I have stated, that this quasi declaration of war was altogether an individual affair of General Jackson, that in this, as in every thing else, he has acted from his own impulse. The enlightened statesmen, who surrounded him in the beginning of his government, and whose wise counsels repressed his ardour, no longer have any influence. One after another has been separated from him, and several, such as Mr Calhoun, who, during his first term, was Vice-President, are now become his irreconcileable enemies. His position, as the head of the democratic party, obliges him, therefore, to supply some fuel for the furious passions, which the late contests had kindled.
It would be a mistake to judge of the reception of a document of this character in this country, by what would take place under similar circumstances in Europe. Public opinion has not the same arbiters here as in European societies; what is called public opinion in Europe, is the generally current opinion among the middling and higher classes, that of the merchants, manufacturers, men of letters, and statesmen, of those who, having inherited a competency, devote their time to study, the fine arts, and, unfortunately too often, to idleness. These are the persons, who govern public opinion in Europe, who have seats in the chambers, fill public offices, and manage or direct the most powerful organs of the press. They are the polite and cultivated, who are accustomed to self-control, more inclined to scepticism than fanaticism, and on their guard against the impulses of enthusiasm; to whose feelings all violence is repugnant, all rudeness and all brutality offensive; who cherish moderation often even to excess, and prefer compromises and half-measures. Among persons like these, General Jackson's message would have met with universal condemnation, or rather if General Jackson had derived his ideas from such a medium, he would never have dictated such a message.
The minority, which in Europe decides public opinion, and by this means is sovereign, is here deposed, and having been successively driven from post to post, has come to influence opinion only in a few saloons in the large cities, and to be itself under as strict guardianship as minors, women, and idiots. Until the accession of General Jackson, it had, however, exercised some influence over all the Presidents, who were generally scholars, and all of whom, aside from their party connections, were attached to it by family and social relations, and by their habits of life. Up to the present time, this class had also preserved some influence over the two houses; but it has now completely broken with the President, or rather the President has broken with it; it has no longer any credit, except with one of the Houses, because the Senate still consists of men whom it may claim as belonging to it by their superior intelligence, education, and property. The democracy does not fail, therefore, to stigmatise the Senate as an aristocratic body, and to call it the House of Lords. The mass, which in Europe bears the pack and receives the law, has here put the pack on the back of the enlightened and cultivated class, which among us on the other hand, has the upper hand. The farmer and the mechanic are the lords of the New World; public opinion is their opinion; the public will is their will; the President is their choice, their agent, their servant. If it is true that the depositaries of power in Europe have been too much disposed to use it in promoting their own interests, without consulting the wishes and the welfare of the mass beneath them, it is no less true that the classes which wield the sceptre in America are equally tainted with selfishness, and that they take less pains to disguise it. In a word, North America is Europe with its head down and its feet up. European society, in London and Paris as well as at St. Petersburg, in the Swiss republic as well as in the Austrian empire, is aristocratical in this sense, that, even after all the great changes of the last fifty years, it is still founded more or less absolutely on the principle of inequality or a difference of ranks. American society is essentially and radically a democracy, not in name merely but in deed. In the United States the democratic spirit is infused into all the national habits, and all the customs of society; it besets and startles at every step the foreigner, who, before landing in the country, had no suspicion to what a degree every nerve and fibre had been steeped in aristocracy by a European education. It has effaced all distinctions, except that of colour; for here a shade in the hue of the skin separates men more widely than in any other country in the world. It pervades all places, one only excepted, and that the very one which in Catholic Europe is consecrated to equality, the church; here all whites are equal, every where, except in the presence of Him, in whose eyes, the distinctions of this world are vanity and nothingness.[AW] Strange inconsistency! Or rather solemn protest, attesting that the principle of rank is firmly seated in the human heart by the side of the principle of equality, that it must have its place in all countries and under all circumstances!