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

by Michel Chevalier

But it would be madness to think of repairing the broken walls of feudalism, or to wish to copy, in France or the United States, the English aristocracy, even with its mode of recruiting its ranks by those distinguished for merit and services; these orders of things have had their day. Yet all nations which aim to become or to remain powerful, must have an aristocracy; that is to say, a body, which, whether hereditary or not, may preserve and perpetuate traditions, give system and stability to policy, and devote itself to the most difficult of all arts, which every one at the present day thinks he knows without having learned it, that of governing. A people without an aristocracy may shine in letters and art; but its political glory must be as transitory as a meteor.

I know not if I allow myself to be deceived by my admiration for the past, although I do not conceal from myself how much of tyranny has been exercised over the great mass of mankind. But I cannot bring myself to believe, that the hereditary principle, or, in more general terms, the sentiment of family, should be entirely excluded from the aristocratical part of the new social order, which, although yet wrapped in uncertainty and mystery, is now struggling into existence on both sides of the Atlantic. The sentiment of family is not becoming extinct. Like all other social institutions, the constitution of the family has undergone various changes, since the beginning of the historical period. In the earlier times, every thing was swallowed up in the father, and the individuality—the rights, privileges, and duties—of the wife and children was the successive growth of ages; but through all these changes, the family sentiment has gained, rather than lost. If this progressive movement is not violently checked, the new institutions with which our civilisation is now big, must give a place in the political system to the family sentiment, and it is not easy to conceive how this can be done, without a certain infusion of the hereditary principle.

It may be objected, that, in the United States, the family sentiment is much weaker, than it is in Europe. But we must not confound what is merely accidental and temporary, with the permanent acquisitions of civilisation. The temporary weakness of the family sentiment was one of the necessary results of the general dispersion of individuals, by which the colonisation of America has been accomplished; the effect must cease with the cessation of the temporary cause which produced it, that is, with the interruption of emigration to the West. As soon as they have got their growth, the Yankees, whose spirit now predominates in the Union, quit the paternal roof never to see it again, as naturally and with as little emotion, as young birds desert forever their native nest as soon as they are fledged; but the predominance of the Yankees, at least, as they now are, does not seem to me destined to be perpetual; I do not see in them the ultimate and permanent type of the American.

Even amongst the Yankees themselves the family sentiment has maintained a strong hold, by means of the bible, the sanctity and strictness of the marriage tie, the ample powers left to the father in disposing of his property.

Within the three last centuries, the moveable elements have shot up with a wonderful vigour in western civilisation. Manufactures and the press, the organ of philosophy and profane learning, have destroyed the balance between the opposing forces of innovation and conservation, whose equilibrium is necessary to constitute order. These two new powers, whose tendency is to reform every thing, have gained the advantage over the old powers of society, and trampled down the twofold aristocracy of birth and talents, the clergy and the nobility. Must we, then, conclude that these two aristocracies, or even either of them, are stone dead; or must we not rather admit that order, that is to say, the equipoise of the innovating and the conservative powers, cannot subsist, unless authority is reconstructed in its ancient strength, without, however, retaining the brutal traits of its former character? Is not this a reason that the hierarchy should be established at least as firmly as in past times? Although it need not borrow from the past the unyielding, unelastic, and absolute features of the old aristocracies. And is there any principle of stability and solidity, comparable to that of hereditary transmission? One may be permitted, or rather is obliged, to doubt it.

Systems of great stability have, doubtless, been organised without hereditary succession. The Catholic hierarchy offers the most complete example of this fact; it has now stood eighteen hundred years. But in order to produce this result, it was necessary to root out the sentiment of family from the bosoms of its members, by binding them to celibacy; and to substitute for the natural principle of stability, that of hereditary succession, a merely artificial principle, that of rigourous discipline, and passive obedience,—or in other words, stability has here been obtained at the sacrifice of liberty.

The two powers of commerce and the press are eminently fluctuating and unquiet, only because they are not yet regularly organised. They are susceptible of being modified, and of being restrained in their innovating tendencies, so as to render the restoration of the conservative force in all its vigour less necessary. The industrial interest would certainly be less averse to the privileges of the lay aristocracy, if it were permitted to participate in them, or if it had its own peculiar prerogatives. Learning, of which the press is the sword, would have showed less antipathy towards the spiritual hierarchy, had not the latter repulsed and rejected it. It is not impossible that we may be destined to witness a sort of industrial nobility; it is even possible that we may come, by degrees, in the course of time, to entertain the question of a more or less complete monopoly of learning and the press under some form or another. Instead of throwing down the aristocracy, we might give it additional strength and stability, by connecting it with learning and industry, which would then serve as its buttresses, instead of becoming the instruments of its ruin. In such a system as this, the aristocracy would be less compact and less exclusive; it would soar less loftily over the rest of mankind; but it would cover more ground, it would gain in breadth and length what it lost in height, and it would leave nothing beyond the reach of its influence. Equality would probably gain by this arrangement; but human independence would lose by it.

It would be idle to attempt to guess at the future forms which the hierarchy may assume, to foresee the different interests of which society will hereafter be composed, or to name beforehand the institutions in which they will embody themselves. A multitude of combinations, which no one can divine, are possible. Many will take place, either successively in the same country, or simultaneously in different countries. But two things appear to me to be certain: one of these is, that new social phenomena of great magnitude are on the eve of being exhibited, either in America or in Europe; and the other, that the sentiment of family cannot be ultimately and absolutely erased from the political catalogue.

For Europeans, the immediate and complete abolition of a hereditary aristocracy seems to me beset with the greatest difficulties. The nations of Western Europe have received their laws and usages from the Germans and Romans, that is, from two stocks strongly impregnated with the sentiment of family; there is not an inch of their soil, a stone of their monuments, a line of their national songs, which does not awaken this sentiment by recalling this twofold origin; it seems, then, impossible that they should be ready to adopt at once a political system, in which it was allowed no place nor consideration. We may, however, be sure that the principle of hereditary succession must henceforth be limited within certain bounds. The idea of perpetuity, whether of punishment or of reward, is foreign from our age, and will not, certainly, be more acceptable to future ages. We live longer in the space of time than our fathers; the same number of years, therefore, represents a much greater duration than formerly. If the aristocratic investiture were to endure only for a few generations, aristocracy would not cease to be the most coveted of privileges and the most stable of institutions; while the jealousy of the non-privileged classes would be less keen in regard to its prerogatives, if the nobility bore upon its front the inscription; "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

This, however, would not be enough; the aristocracy of birth requires a spur. To exercise the most important functions, it is not enough that one has taken the trouble to be born. There is something monstrous in the privilege of the English peerage, of being legislators by hereditary right. In the Middle Ages it was necessary to have gained the spurs, before one could gird on the sword and raise the banner of a knight. In Rome, birth made Patricians, but not Senators. Similar restrictions would be useful in all countries; with a people like the French and the Southern Europeans, they would be indispensable.