[DX] The French aristocracy which fought the fight with Richelieu was Protestant, and was more enlightened than the English aristocracy of the same day. French protestantism was the flower of Europe in every respect, even in industry. It is well known that the English and German manufactures made great progress immediately after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, which drove four hundred thousand of our fellow countrymen from France.
[LETTER XXXIII.]
DEMOCRACY.
New York, October 22, 1835.
Our old European societies have a heavy burden to bear; it is that of the Past. Each age is the guarantee of the acts of those that have gone before it, and imposes a similar obligation on those which follow it. We are paying interest on our fathers' errors; we pay it in the first place under the form of the public debt; we pay it also in the charges for the support of our fine army, for among the causes which oblige all Europe to keep the flower of its population under arms, we must reckon the animosities of our fathers. We pay it, and at a higher rate, in all those habits of distrust and suspicion, which have been bequeathed to us from times of anarchy and despotism. The accumulated weight of a long Past must, indeed, be an insupportable burden, since the Roman empire, first in Rome, and afterwards in Constantinople, whither it was removed to escape the load, crumbled and sunk beneath it. All nations, which have been the glory of the world, have been ground to a lifeless dust, like the ashes of the tombs, by the pressure of a Past, which hemmed them in on every side. Will the Europe of our age undergo the fate of its predecessors? There is reason to hope that it will be more fortunate; for, having their example before its eyes, it must be wiser than they, and it is at the same time more pliant in its temper, and more elastic in its forms.
One of my friends, some time ago visiting the great iron-works of Crawshay & Co., in Wales, was struck with the fact, that the numerous railroads connected with the works, were constructed on an old and very imperfect system. On inquiring the reason, and observing that the saving in traction, would pay the expense of a re-construction with the improved rail, "Nothing is more just," he was told; "but we retain our old flat rails, and we shall do so for a long time, because it would take two or three years to make a change; and in the mean while, it being impossible to keep the wagons running on both rails at the same time, we should have to stop operations, and to leave fifty thousand workmen without work and without bread. The difficulty is merely in the transition, but at present it seems to be insurmountable." So it is in regard to society. It is easy to see that one system has decided advantages over another, and that if society could be transported from one to the other by a blow of the wand, much would be gained; but between the two there is a great gulf. How can it be passed? How is it possible to assure vested right, to which nothing seems to be guarantied on the opposite side? How overcome the opposition of the privileged class, who resist the change? How check the impatience of the multitude, eager to enter into the enjoyment of the benefits which it expects to find on the other shore?
In regard to social reforms, the question is wonderfully simplified, by merely transplanting it, that is, by going into new countries to resolve it. The old country is then abandoned to old interests and old ideas, and the emigrant lands disengaged and unembarrassed, ready to undertake every thing, and disposed to try every thing. He has left behind him in the mother-country a thousand associations and relations, which surround existence, and give it, if you please, its ornaments and its charm, but which also tend to check its activity, and make society slow to answer the demands for reform. The first of all innovations is the change of soil, and this necessarily involves others. Vested rights do not emigrate; they are bound to the old soil; they know no other, and no other knows them. Privileges, which are respected because they are consecrated by time, do not venture upon a new soil, or if they hazard the trial, they cannot become acclimated there. A colony is like a besieged city; each one must serve with his person; each one passes only for what he is worth personally. In a society which has no Past, the Past counts for nothing.
It is to be remarked, therefore, that projects of social reform, conceived in the bosom of established societies, in which opportunity is afforded for the calm exercise of thought, have generally been obliged to be transported to other shores, and to take root in barbarous lands, in order to be carried into execution, and to be embodied under the form of a new society. Civilisation has advanced from the East toward the West, increasing in vigour at every remove, although the founders of new colonies have generally quitted a more civilised country for a barbarous one. Thus Italy and Greece, daughters of Asia and Egypt, have gone beyond their mothers; thus western Europe has eclipsed the glories of Greece and Rome. Soon after having given birth to the new nations, the old ones have perished violently, or have fallen into an obscurity worse than death, merely from a want of will or energy to apply the principles which gave vigour to their offspring,—principles of a new social order, founded on the wider extension of liberty and the greater diffusion of privileges,—to their own wants.
Providence had done much to prepare the European races, when transported across the ocean, for becoming the founders of great and powerful nations. The English-Americans, who were the last comers, and did not arrive until after the Spaniards had established their dominion over equinoctial and southern America, left the Old World only after it had been aroused and agitated by the intellectual revolution of which Luther was the Mirabeau, and of which in England, Henry VIII. was the Robespierre and the Napoleon. This great event had already sown those seeds in the human breast, which were to swell and expand through succeeding ages. England was already big with those habits of industry and order, which were destined to make her the first nation of the Old World in the sphere of industry and in political greatness. Her children, therefore, carried with them the germ of those principles and institutions, which were to secure to them the same supremacy in the New. They embarked, at least this was the case with those of New England, the pilgrims, the fathers of the Yankees, after having undergone the ordeal of fire and water, after having been seven times tried between the sledge and the anvil, between persecution and exile. They arrived wearied out with political quarrels, and bent on devoting their energies to pacific and useful purposes.
They seated themselves under a climate which differed little from that of their native skies. Thus they escaped the danger of becoming enervated by the influences of a warm and balmy atmosphere, like that in which the fiery spirits of the Castilian race were tamed; they landed on an almost uninhabited shore, and had only a few poor tribes of Red Skins for enemies and neighbours, whilst the Spaniards had to contend with the numerous armies of the brave Aztecs in Mexico, and their successors, the Creoles, have had to keep in check on the one side the Comanches and the Indios Bravos of the north, and on the other the Araucanians of the southern Cordilleras. If the English had encountered a numerous population like that which resisted Cortez, they would have had to conquer it, and doubtless they would have succeeded in so doing; but after the victory, they would have been obliged to keep it in subjection, and the yoke of the English race is harder than that of the Spaniards. Their social organisation would then have been founded on the servitude of the inferior castes, red and mixed; the new society would have been tainted with a deep-seated disease, which would have reduced it to a much lower state than European society, and have sunk it to the level of ancient communities, which were founded on personal slavery. It is not, indeed, completely free from this taint at present; since negroes have been brought into the country, and twelve States out of twentyfour are defiled with the pollution of slavery. The portion of the country which has been left for the pure white race, is, however, ample enough to receive a large community composed of the same materials with the European nations, and affording great facilities for combining them in a better order.