Фредерик Марриет
Diary in America, Series Two
Volume Two—Chapter Two
Public Opinion, or the Majority
The majority are always in the right, so says Miss Martineau, and so have said greater people than even Miss Martineau; to be sure Miss Martineau qualifies her expression afterwards, when she declares that they always will be right in the end. What she means by that I do not exactly comprehend; the end of a majority is its subsiding into a minority, and a minority is generally right. But I rather think that she would imply that they will repent and see their folly when the consequences fall heavily upon them. The great question is, what is a majority? must it be a whole nation, or a portion of a nation, or a portion of the population of a city; or, in fact, any plus against any minus, be they small or be they large. For instance, two against one are a majority, and, if so, any two scoundrels may murder an honest man and be in the right; or it may be the majority in any city, as in Baltimore, where they rose and murdered an unfortunate minority21; or it may be a majority on the Canada frontier, when a set of miscreants defied their own government, and invaded the colony of a nation with whom they were at peace—all which is of course right. But there are other opinions on this question besides those of Miss Martineau, and we shall quote them as occasion serves.
I have before observed, that Washington left America a republic; and that in the short space of fifty years it has sunk into a democracy.
The barrier intended to be raised against the encroachments of the people has been swept away; the senate (which was intended, by the arrangements for its election, to have served as the aristocracy of the legislature, as a deliberative check to the impetus of the majority, like our House of Lords), having latterly become virtually nothing more than a second congress, receiving instructions, and submissive to them, like a pledged representative. This is what Washington did not foresee.
Washington was himself an aristocrat; he shewed it in every way. He was difficult of access, except to the higher classes. He carried state in his outward show, always wearing his uniform as General of the Forces, and attended by a guard of honour. Indeed, one letter of Washington’s proves that he was rather doubtful as to the working of the new government shortly after it had been constituted. He says:—
“Among men of reflection few will be found, I believe, who are not beginning to think that our system is better in theory than in practice, and that notwithstanding the boasted virtue of America, it is more than probable we shall exhibit the last melancholy proof, that mankind are incompetent to their own government without the means of coercion in the sovereign.” (Washington’s letter to Chief Justice Jay, 10th March, 1787.)
This is a pretty fair admission from such high authority; and fifty years have proved the wisdom and foresight of the observation. Gradually as the aristocracy of the country wore out (for there was an aristocracy at that time in America), and the people became less and less enlightened, so did they encroach upon the constitution. President after president gradually laid down the insignia and outward appearance of rank, the senate became less and less respectable, and the people more and more authoritative.
M. Tocqueville says, “When the American revolution broke out, distinguished political characters arose in great numbers; for public opinion then served, not to tyrannise over, but to direct the exertions of individuals. Those celebrated men took a full part in the general agitation of mind common at that period, and they attained a high degree of personal fame, which was reflected back upon the nation, but which was by no means borrowed from it.”
It was not, however, until the presidency of General Jackson, that the democratic party may be said to have made any serious inroads upon the constitution. Their previous advances were indeed sure, but they were, comparatively speaking, slow; but, raised as he was to the office of President by the mob, the demagogues who led the mob obtained the offices under government, to the total exclusion of the aristocratic party, whose doom was then sealed. Within these last ten years the advance of the people has been like a torrent, sweeping and levelling all before it, and the will of the majority has become not only absolute with the government, but it defies the government itself, which is too weak to oppose it.
Is it not strange, and even ridiculous, that under a government established little more than fifty years, a government which was to be a lesson to the whole world, we should find political writers making use of language such as this: “We are for reform, sound, progressive reform, not subversion and destruction.” Yet such is an extract from one of the best written American periodicals of the day. This is the language that may be expected to be used in a country like England, which still legislates under a government of eight hundred years old; but what a failure must that government be, which in fifty years calls forth even from its advocates such an admission!!
M. Tocqueville says, “Custom, however, has done even more than laws. A proceeding which will in the end set all the guarantees of representative government at nought, is becoming more and more general in the United States: it frequently happens that the electors who choose a delegate, point out a certain line of conduct to him, and impose upon him a certain number of positive obligations, which he is pledged to fulfil. With the exception of the tumult, this comes to the same thing as if the majority of the populace held its deliberations in the market-place.”
Speaking of the majority as the popular will, he says, “no obstacles exist which can impede, or so much as retard its progress, or which can induce it to heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is fatal in itself, and dangerous for the future.”
My object in this chapter is to inquire what effect has been produced upon the morals of the American people by this acknowledged dominion of the majority?
1st. As to the mass of the people themselves. It is clear, if the people not only legislate, but, when in a state of irritation or excitement, they defy even legislation, that they are not to be compared to restricted sovereigns, but to despots, whose will and caprice are law. The vices of the court of a despot are, therefore, practised upon the people; for the people become as it were the court, to whom those in authority, or those who would be in authority, submissively bend the knee. A despot is not likely ever to hear the truth, for moral courage fails where there is no law to protect it, and where honest advice may be rewarded by summary punishment. The people, therefore, like the despot, are never told the truth; on the contrary, they receive and expect the most abject submission from their courtiers, to wit, those in office, or expectants.
Now, the President of the United States may be considered the Prime Minister of an enlightened public, who govern themselves, and his communication with them is in his annual message.
Let us examine what Mr Van Buren says in his last message.
First, he humbly acknowledges their power.
“A national bank,” he tells them, “would impair the rightful supremacy of the popular will.”
And this he follows up with that most delicate species of flattery, that of praising them for the very virtue which they are most deficient in; telling them that they are “a people to whom the truth, however unpromising, can always be told with safety.”
At the very time when they were defying all law and all government, he says, “It was reserved for the American Union to test the advantage of a government entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popular will, and our experience has shewn, that it is as beneficent in practice, as well as it is just in theory.”
At the very time that nearly the whole Union were assisting the insurrection in Canada with men and money, he tells them “that temptations to interfere in the intestine commotions of neighbouring countries have been thus far successfully resisted.”
This is quite enough; Mr Van Buren’s motives are to be re-elected as president. That is very natural on his part; but how can you expect a people to improve who never hear the truth?
Mr Cooper observes, “Monarchs have incurred more hazards from follies of their own that have grown up under the adulation of parasites, than from the machinations of their enemies; and in a democracy, the delusion that still would elsewhere be poured into the ears of the prince, is poured into those of the people.”
The same system is pursued by all those who would arrive at, or remain in place and power: and what must be the consequence? that the straight-forward, honourable, upright man is rejected by the people, while the parasite, the adulator, the demagogue, who flatters their opinions, asserts their supremacy, and yields to their arbitrary demands, is the one selected by them for place and power. Thus do they demoralise each other; and it is not until a man has, by his abject submission to their will, in contradiction to his own judgment and knowledge, proved that he is unworthy of the selection which he courts, that he is permitted to obtain it. Thus it is that the most able and conscientious men in the States are almost unanimously rejected.
M. Tocqueville says, “It is a well-authenticated fact, that at the present day the most talented men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs; and it must be acknowledged that such has been the result in proportion as democracy has outstepped all its former limits: the race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the course of the last fifty years.”
Indeed, no high-minded consistent man will now offer himself, and this is one cause among many why Englishmen and foreigners have not done real justice to the people of the United States. The scum is uppermost, and they do not see below it. The prudent, the enlightened, the wise, and the good, have all retired into the shade, preferring to pass a life of quiet retirement, rather than submit to the insolence and dictation of a mob.
M. Tocqueville says, “Whilst the natural propensities of democracy induce the people to reject the most distinguished citizens as its rulers, these individuals are no less apt to retire from a political career, in which it is almost impossible to retain their independence, or to advance without degrading themselves.”
Again, “At the present day the most affluent classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow-citizens. They concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public, and they constitute a private society in the State which has its own tastes and its own pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful not to shew that they are galled by its continuance. It is even not uncommon to hear them laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions, when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them. But beneath this artificial enthusiasm, and these obsequious attentions to the preponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears. If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchial constitutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious.”
It appears, then, that the more respectable portion of its citizens have retired, leaving the arena open to those who are least worthy: that the majority dictate, and scarcely any one ventures to oppose them; if any one does, he is immediately sacrificed; the press, obdient to its masters, pours out its virulence, and it is incredible how rapidly a man, unless he be of a superior mind, falls into nothingness in the United States, when once he has dared to oppose the popular will. He is morally bemired, bespattered, and trod under foot, until he remains a lifeless carcase. He falls, never to rise again, unhonoured and unremembered.
Captain Hamilton, speaking to one of the federalist, or aristocratical party, received the following reply. I have received similar ones in more than fifty instances. “My opinions, and I believe those of the party to which I belonged, are unchanged; and the course of events in this country has been such as to impress only a deeper and more thorough conviction of their wisdom; but, in the present state of public feeling, we dare not express them. An individual professing such opinions would not only find himself excluded from every office of public trust within the scope of his reasonable ambition, but he would be regarded by his neighbours and fellow-citizens with an evil eye. His words and actions would become the objects of jealous and malignant scrutiny, and he would have to sustain the unceasing attacks of a host of unscrupulous and ferocious assailants.”
Mr Cooper says, “The besetting, the degrading vice of America is the moral cowardice by which men are led to truckle to what is called public opinion, though nine times in ten these are mere engines set in motion by opinions the most corrupt and least respectable portion of the community, for the most unworthy purposes. The English are a more respectable and constant (unconstant?) nation than the Americans, as relates to this peculiarity.”
To be popular with the majority in America, to be a favourite with the people, you must first divest yourself of all freedom of opinion; you must throw off all dignity; you must shake hands and drink with every man you meet; you must be, in fact, slovenly and dirty in your appearance, or you will be put down as an aristocrat. I recollect once an American candidate asked me if I would walk out with him? I agreed; but he requested leave to change his coat, which was a decent one, for one very shabby; “for,” says he, “I intend to look in upon some of my constituents, and if they ever saw me in that other coat, I should lose my election.” This cannot but remind the reader of the custom of candidates in former democracies—standing up in the market-place as suppliants in tattered garments, to solicit the “voices” of the people.
That the morals of the nation have retrograded from the total destruction of the aristocracy, both in the government and in society, which has taken place within the last ten years, is most certain.
The power has fallen into the hands of the lower orders, the offices under government have been chiefly filled up by their favourites, either being poor and needy men from their own class, or base and dishonest men, who have sacrificed their principles and consciences for place. I shall enter more fully into this subject hereafter; it is quite sufficient at present to say, that during Mr Adams’ presidency, a Mr Benjamin Walker was a defaulter to the amount of 18,000 dollars, and was in consequence incarcerated for two years. Since the democratic party have come into power, the quantity of defaulters, and the sums which have been embezzled of government money, are enormous, and no punishment of any kind has been attempted. They say it is only a breach of trust, and that a breach of trust is not punishable, except by a civil action; which certainly in the United States is of little avail, as the payment of the money can always be evaded. The consequence is that you meet with defaulters in, I will not say the very best society generally, but in the very best society of some portions of the United States. I have myself sat down to a dinner party to which I had been invited, with a defaulter to government on each side of me. I knew one that was setting up for Congress, and, strange to say, his delinquency was not considered by the people as an objection. An American author (Voice from America) states, “On the 17th June, 1838, the United States treasurer reported to Congress sixty-three defaulters; the total sums embezzled amounting to one million, twenty thousand and odd dollars.”
The tyranny of the majority has completely destroyed the moral courage of the American people, and without moral courage what chance is there of any fixed standard of morality?
M. Tocqueville observes, “Democratic republics extend the practice of currying favour with the many, and they introduce it into a greater number of classes at once: this is one of the most serious reproaches that can be addressed to them. In democratic States organised on the principles of the American republics this is more especially the case, where the authority of the majority is so absolute and irresistible, that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he intends to stray from the track which it lays down.
“In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very few men who displayed any of that manly candour, and that masculine independence of opinion, which frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitutes the leading feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found. It seems, at first sight, as if all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so accurately do they correspond in their manner of judging. A stranger does, indeed, sometimes meet with Americans who dissent from these rigorous formularies; with men who deplore the defects of the laws; the mutability and the ignorance of democracy; who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a different language in public.”22
There are a few exceptions—Clay and Webster are men of such power as to be able, to a certain degree, to hold their independence. Dr Channing has proved himself an honour to his country and to the world. Mr Cooper has also great merit in this point and no man has certainly shewn more moral courage, let his case be good or not, than Garrison, the leader of the abolition party.
But with these few and remarkable exceptions, moral courage is almost prostrate in the United States. The most decided specimen I met with to the contrary was at Cincinnati, when a large portion of the principal inhabitants ventured to express their opinion, contrary to the will of the majority, in my defence, and boldly proclaimed their opinions by inviting me to a public dinner. I told them my opinion of their behaviour, and I gave them my thanks. I repeat my opinion and my thanks now; they had much to contend with, but they resisted boldly; and not only from that remarkable instance of daring to oppose public opinion when all others quailed, but from many other circumstances, I have an idea that Cincinnati will one day take an important lead, as much from the spirit and courage of her citizens, as from her peculiarly fortunate position. I had a striking instance to the contrary at St. Louis, when they paraded me in effigy through the streets. Certain young Bostonians, who would have been glad enough to have seized my hand when in the Eastern States, before I had happened to affront the majority, kept aloof, or shuffled away, so as not to be obliged to recognise me. Such have been the demoralising effects of the tyranny of public opinion in the short space of fifty years, and I will now wind up this chapter by submitting to the reader extracts from the two French authors, one of whom describes America in 1782, and the other in 1835.
America in 1782
“Je vais, disais-je, mettre à la voile aujour-d’hui; je m’éloigne avec un regret infini d’un pays où l’on est, sans obstacle et sans inconvénient, ce qu’on devrait être partout, sincère et libre.”—“On y pense, on y dit, on y fait ce qu’on veut. Rien ne vous oblige d’y être ni faux, ni bas, ni flatteur. Personne ne se choque de la singularité de vos manières ni de vos goûts.”—Mémoires ou Souvenirs de Monsieur de Ségur, volume I, page 409.
America in 1835
“L’Amérique est donc un pays de liberté, où pour ne blesser personne, on ne doit parler librement, ni des gouvernans, ni des gouvernés, ni des eutreprises publiques, ni des entreprises privées; de rien, enfin, de ce qu’on y rencontre si non peut-être du climat et du sol; encore trouve-t-on des Américains prêts à défendre l’un et l’autre, comme s’ils avaient concouru à les former.”—Monsieur de Tocqueville sur la Démocratie aux Etats Unis de l’Amerique, volume II, page 118.
