[126] Democracy in America, vol. i. p. 305.
A FRENCHMAN’S VIEW OF IT.[127]
M. Claudio Jannet has recently sent forth from the little town of Aix, in Provence, a work on the United States of the present day which may be both interesting and profitable to American readers. It does not appear that M. Jannet has visited the country whose moral, social, and political condition he sets himself to describe. His information has been gathered from books, pamphlets, and periodicals; his conclusions are the result of deliberation rather than the hasty observations of a tourist, and they are all the more valuable because they are not distorted by the usual blunders and prejudices which obstruct the vision of the average Frenchman in America. The European traveller, particularly the French traveller, finds many things in our country to shock his prejudices and offend his tastes. The discomforts of the journey, the harshness of the climate, the extravagance of living, the imperfections of our domestic economy, the general crudeness of our new and incomplete civilization, the press and hurry of business, the lack of æsthetic culture, the vulgarity of popular amusements—all these things put him out of the humor to be just. He dislikes the surface aspects of American life, and, with the best disposition in the world, he commonly fails to see what lies underneath. He fills his note-book with dyspeptic comments,
and when he goes home he writes a volume of blunders, and all the Americans who read it laugh at it. Take, however, a conscientious Frenchman of sober and reflective turn of mind, shut him up in his own study, supply him with an abundance of the right kind of American books and newspapers, let him ponder over his subject at leisure in the midst of his accustomed comforts, and the chances are that he will write a very good essay on the condition of this country, and tell a great many wholesome truths which we ourselves hardly suspect.
M. Jannet’s book has been evolved in this way. His industry in the collection of materials seems to have been remarkable; and if his judgment has not always kept pace with it, the instances in which he has been misled are fewer than we should have expected. For most of his mistakes he can show the excuse of an American authority. It does not become us, therefore, to find too much fault with him. We are rather disposed to overlook errors in the statement of particular facts, and consider the really valuable and novel points in his essay, with the moral which he wishes us to draw from it. We shall find in what he says abundant food for reflection, even when we believe him to be wrong.
He sets out with an attempt to show that the spirit of revolution has been waging incessant war for nearly a hundred years upon “the work of Washington,” and that the Constitution, as it was devised by
the wise and conservative party represented by our first President, has been almost torn to shreds, and is destined to destruction by the aggressions of radicalism. M. Jannet’s references to “the school of Washington” seem rather odd to an American reader. We doubt whether there ever was a distinct political school to which that name could be properly applied; and it is not at all clear that there have been two well-defined and antagonistic political principles in conflict since the very foundation of the government, as Ormuzd and Ahriman, the spirit of good and the spirit of evil, waged perpetual warfare, in the Zoroastrian system, for the dominion of the world. The philosophical historian is fond of tracing in the revolutions of states and the development of political theories the steady growth of some fixed principle of action. But it is a specious philosophy which takes no account of accidents. M. Jannet has made the mistake of going too deep, and overlooking what lies right on the surface. He sees the spirit of radicalism, fostered by the influx of communistic and infidel immigrants from Europe, attacking the conservative safeguards originally established in our federal and State constitutions, assailing the rights of the States, extending the suffrage, sweeping the country into the vortex of uncontrolled democracy. “Popular sovereignty” is the watchword of this radical movement. “The doctrine of popular sovereignty,” says M. Jannet, “is based upon the idea that man is independent, and that consequently there can be no authority over him except with his own consent. This principle established, there can no longer be any question of limiting the suffrage by conditions of capacity,
of fitness, or of the representation of interests, since sovereignty is an attribute of the voter in his quality as a man. The exclusion of women and minors from the polls is only an abuse, a relic of old prejudices. Thus the most advanced party already places female suffrage at the head of its programme, and perhaps it will some day be established in the United States. The people, being sovereign by nature, cannot be checked in its will by any custom, any tradition, any respect for acquired rights. Whatever it wills is just and reasonable by the mere fact that it so wills. There can be no permanent constitution for the country; the constitution can be only what the people wills, or is thought to will, for the time being.” About the year 1850, according to our author, the heresy of “popular sovereignty,” otherwise the religion of revolution, obtained full headway, and the radical party, making skilful use of the anti-slavery sentiment which had hitherto been cultivated only by a small band of eccentric philanthropists, captured the masses of well-meaning, unreflecting voters. Liberty and emancipation were their watchwords; but their real purpose was only the supremacy of the mob. Slavery was the abuse which they pretended to attack, but they only feigned a horror for it in order to win over the small but zealous party of sincere abolitionists; their actual object was to abolish the federal Union with its limited powers, and set up a unitary democracy based upon the despotism of universal suffrage. “From the day when this party came into power by the election of Lincoln,” says M. Jannet, “nothing remained for the South but to take up arms to