Society, Manners and Politics in the United States / Being a Series of Letters on North America

by Michel Chevalier

What! it will be said, is there not, then, freedom of commerce in this classic land of liberty? No! the foreign commerce is not free in the United States, because the American people is not willing to expose the industry and commerce of a whole country to be ruined by the first rogue that comes along. The people of this country is eminently a working people; every one is at liberty to work, to choose his profession, and to change it twenty times; every one has the right to go and come on his business, at pleasure, and to transport his person and his industry from the centre to the circumference, and from the circumference to the centre. If the country does not enjoy the political advantages of administrative unity, neither is it hampered in the most petty details of industry by excessive centralisation. No man is obliged to go six hundred miles to solicit the license and personal signature of a minister, overloaded with business, and harassed by parliamentary solicitudes. But American liberty is not a mystical, undefined liberty; it is a practical liberty, in harmony with the peculiar genius of the people and its peculiar destiny; it is a liberty of action and motion, of which the American avails himself to spread himself over the vast territory that Providence has given him, and to subdue it to his uses. The liberty of locomotion is almost absolute with the exception of some restraints imposed by the observance of the Sabbath. The liberty, or rather independence, in matters of industry is also ample; but if it is abused by some individuals, the general tendency is to restrain them by law or by dictatorial measures, or by the influence of public opinion, sometimes expressed in the shape of mobs.

The restraints on internal trade are few; there are, however, some restrictions upon hawkers and pedlers who impose on the credulity of the country people. If no effective bankrupt-law has yet been enacted, severe penalties are provided against false pretences. If stock-jobbing has not been prohibited, it is not from want of will on the part of the legislators, for they are fully alive to the evils of unproductive speculation, which diverts from industry the needful capital; but because they do not see how it is to be effectually prevented. Besides, it is not easy to commit frauds in the United States, in the home trade; for here every body knows every body else, and every one is on the watch against others; and it is not difficult to ascend to the sources of a fraud. In respect to articles designed for the foreign trade, detection is not so easy. There is also here a sort of patriotism, which is by no means at war with the real interests of the parties, and which operates with the fear of public opinion, in keeping up a certain degree of honesty in domestic transactions, and a tone of morality, which, if not wholly above reproach, is certainly far superior to what prevails amongst us; whilst, to many persons, all is fair in dealings with foreigners, whom they look upon as a kind of barbarians.

Previous to 1789, we had numerous restrictions not only on foreign commerce, but on domestic industry, in France. These were all blown away by the Revolution; and certainly the destruction of most of them, which had become antiquated and inapplicable to the existing state of things, was a great gain; but we have run into the contrary extreme, and abolished not only the burdensome restraints, but the most salutary checks, and among them the inspection of exported articles. Yet on the whole we have gained in respect to domestic industry, by sweeping away those often cumbersome regulations; but in regard to our foreign trade, the evil has certainly overborne the good, as the decline of our maritime commerce fully proves.

On the peace of 1814, when the sea was again opened to our vessels, our foreign commerce fell into the hands of petty traffickers, whose cupidity exhausted the vocabulary of fraud. During the first years after the Restoration, the French name became discredited in all the markets of the Old and the New World. The Levant trade, of which we had the monopoly, passed into the hands of the English and Austrians. The stuffs, with which we formerly supplied the East, being no longer subject to inspection on exportation, fell short in measure and were inferior in quality. Formerly packages of our goods changed hands without distrust and without search; but it became necessary to submit them to a rigourous examination, for their contents often turned out to be quite different from the invoice. South America was the great theatre of these frauds; water was actually sold for Burgundy, rolls of wood for rolls of ribands. The Bordelese, who, not without reason, charge the prohibitive system with the decline of their prosperity, cannot be blind to the fact, that their own unscrupulous rapacity contributed pretty largely to this result.

As customers could no longer be found to deal with us, these frauds have necessarily been checked. Our foreign trade has gradually fallen into the hands of a few great houses, and this concentration, which has powerfully contributed to the prevalence of honorable dealings in English commerce, has done something towards reviving ours. The small dealers have been driven out of the field; and it is to this cause that we have to attribute the good condition of our trade with the United States. But let us not deceive ourselves; some sleights of hand are still played off; Bordeaux is not yet wholly purged of the infection; French commerce abroad is yet cankered by foul sores. It must be confessed, that, if our public policy has been marked by a good faith and a spirit of disinterestedness, that give us a right to denounce the Punic faith of perfidious Albion, the English race can proudly oppose the bold and honourable spirit of its commercial dealings to the pusillanimity and unworthy shifts of our own. Let us confess our shame, and submit to the necessary diet for the cure of so loathsome a leprosy.

The United States constitute a society which moves under the impulse and by the guidance of instinct, rather than according to any premeditated plan; it does not know itself. It rejects the tyranny of a past, which is exclusively military in its character, and yet it is deeply imbued with the sentiment of order. It has been nurtured in the hatred of the old political systems of Europe; but a feeling of the necessity of self-restraint runs through its veins. It is divided between its instinctive perceptions of the future and its aversion to the past; between its thirst after freedom, and its hunger for social order; between its religious veneration of experience, and its horror of the violence of past ages. Hence the apparent contradictions which appear in its tastes and its tendencies; but the confusion is only apparent.

In each State there are two authorities, distinct in their composition and their attributes. The one corresponds to the government in the European social system, to the old Cæsar. At its head is a magistrate who bears the old name of Governor,[DC] with the pompous title of commander-in-chief of the sea and land forces. This authority is reduced to a shadow. In the new States of the West, which have come into the world since the establishment of Independence, its attributes have been gradually suppressed, or rather the citizens have reserved the exercise of them to themselves. Thus the people itself appoint most of the public officers. The management of funds is rarely confided to the Governor, but is generally entrusted to a special board of Commissioners. The Governor has not the control of the forces of the State; strictly speaking, indeed, there are none; but in case of necessity, the Sheriff has the right to summon the posse comitatus, and to oblige all bystanders, armed or not, to render him assistance, and to act as police officers. There is no regular police, there are no passports; but nobody can stop at an inn without entering his name and residence on the register. This register is open to the examination of all in the bar-room, which is a necessary appendage of every public place, and there it remains at all times to be turned over by all. The bar-keeper fills, in fact, the post of commissioner of police, and the crowd that assembles in the bar-room to read the newspapers, smoke, drink whiskey, and talk politics, that is to say all travellers, would, in case of necessity, be ready to act the part of constables. This is real self-government; these are the obligations and responsibilities, that every citizen takes upon himself when he disarms authority. The power of the Governor, who was formerly the representative of royalty, the brilliant reflexion of the omnipotence of the proud monarchs of Europe, is crumbled to dust. Even the exterior of power has not been kept up; he has no guards, no palace, no money. The Governors of Indiana and Illinois have a salary of 1000 dollars a year, without a house or any accessories. There is not a trader in Cincinnati, who does not pay his head-clerk better; the clerks at Washington have 700 dollars a year.

This fall of power is to be explained by other considerations than those drawn from the principle of self-government. The ancient power was Cæsar, was military in its character. American society has denied Cæsar. In Europe, it has been necessary that Cæsar should be strong for the security of national independence; for in Europe we are always on the eve of war. The United States, on the contrary, are organised on the principle, that war between the States is an impossibility, and that a foreign war is scarcely probable. The Americans, therefore, can dispense with Cæsar, but we are obliged to cleave to him. Yet it is not to be inferred that they can and will long dispense with authority, or that they are even now free from its control. There is, in America, religious authority, which never closes its eyes; there is the authority of opinion, which is severe to rigour; there is the authority of the legislatures, which sometimes savours of the omnipotence of parliament; there is the dictatorial authority of mobs.