American Institutions and Their Influence - Alexis de Tocqueville (i am reading a book .TXT) 📗

which its population bore to that of the whole Union; in 1833, the number of representatives of Virginia was likewise proportionate to the total number of the representatives of the Union, and to the relation which its population, augmented in the course of ten years, bore to the augmented population of the Union in the same space of time. The new number of Virginian representatives will then be to the old number, on the one hand, as the new number of all the representatives is to the old number; and, on the other hand, as the augmentation of the population of Virginia is to that of the whole population of the country. Thus, if the increase of the population of the lesser country be to that of the greater in an exact inverse ratio of the proportion between the new and the old numbers of all the representatives, the number of representatives of Virginia will remain stationary; and if the increase of the Virginian population be to that of the whole Union in a feebler ratio than the new number of representatives of the Union to the old number, the number of the representatives of Virginia must decrease.

] During the same period the state of New York advanced in the contrary direction; in 1790, it had ten representatives in congress; in 1813, twenty-seven; in 1823, thirty-four; and in 1833, forty. The state of Ohio had only one representative in 1803, and in 1833, it had already nineteen.

It is difficult to imagine a durable union of a people which is rich and strong, with one which is poor and weak, and if it were proved that the strength and wealth of the one are not the causes of the weakness and poverty of the other. But union is still move difficult to maintain at a time at which one party is losing strength, and the other is gaining it. This rapid and disproportionate increase of certain states threatens the independence of the others. New York might, perhaps, succeed with its two millions of inhabitants and its forty representatives, in dictating to the other states in congress.

But even if the more powerful states make no attempt to bear down the lesser ones, the danger still exists; for there is almost as much in the possibility of the act as in the act itself. The weak generally mistrusts the justice and the reason of the strong. The states which increase less rapidly than the others, look upon those which are more favored by fortune, with envy and suspicion. Hence arise the deep-seated uneasiness and ill-defined agitation which are observable in the south, and which form so striking a contrast to the confidence and prosperity which are common to other parts of the Union. I am inclined to think that the hostile measures taken by the southern provinces upon a recent occasion, are attributable to no other cause. The inhabitants of the southern states are, of all the Americans, those who are most interested in the maintenance of the Union; they would assuredly suffer most from being left to themselves; and yet they are the only citizens who threaten to break the tie of confederation. But it is easy to perceive that the south, which has given four presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, to the Union; which perceives that it is losing its federal influence, and that the number of its representatives in congress is diminishing from year to year while those of the northern and western states are increasing; the south, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more and more irritated and alarmed. The citizens reflect upon their present position and remember their past influence, with the melancholy uneasiness of men who suspect oppression: if they discover a law of the Union which is not unequivocally favorable to their interests, they protest against it as an abuse of force; and if their ardent remonstrances are not listened to, they threaten to quit an association which loads them with burdens while it deprives them of their due profits.

“The tariff,” said the inhabitants of Carolina in 1832, “enriches the north, and ruins the south; for if this were not the case, to what can we attribute the continually increasing power and wealth of the north, with its inclement skies and arid soil; while the south, which may be styled the garden of America, is rapidly declining.”[Footnote:

See the report of its committees to the convention, which proclaimed the nullification of the tariff in South Carolina.

]

If the changes which I have described were gradual, so that each generation at least might have time to disappear with the order of things under which it had lived, the danger would be less: but the progress of society in America is precipitate, and almost revolutionary. The same citizen may have lived to see his state take the lead in the Union, and afterward become powerless in the federal assemblies; and an Anglo-American republic has been known to grow as rapidly as a man, passing from birth and infancy to maturity in the course of thirty years. It must not be imagined, however, that the states which lose their preponderance, also lose their population or their riches; no stop is put to their prosperity, and they even go on to increase more rapidly than any kingdom in Europe.[Footnote:

The population of a country assuredly constitutes the first element of its wealth. In the ten years (1820-‘30) during which Virginia lost two of its representatives in congress, its population increased in the proportion of 13-7 per cent.; that of Carolina in the proportion of 15 per cent.; and that of Georgia 51-5 per cent. (See the American Almanac, 1832, p. 162.) But the population of Russia, which increases more rapidly than that of any other European country, only augments in ten years at the rate of 9-5 per cent.; of France at the rate of 7 per cent.; and of Europe in general at the rate of 4-7 per cent. (See Maltebrun, vol. vi., p. 95.)

] But they believe themselves to be impoverished because their wealth does not augment as rapidly as that of their neighbors; and they think that their power is lost, because they suddenly come into collision with a power greater than their own.[Footnote:

It must be admitted, however, that the depreciation which has taken place in the value of tobacco, during the last fifty years, has notably diminished the opulence of the southern planters; but this circumstance is as independent of the will of their northern brethren, as it is of their own.

] Thus they are more hurt in their feelings and their passions, than in their interests. But this is amply sufficient to endanger the maintenance of the Union. If kings and peoples had only had their true interests in view, ever since the beginning of the world, the name of war would scarcely be known among mankind.

Thus the prosperity of the United States is the source of the most serious dangers that threaten them, since it tends to create in some of the confederate states that over-excitement which accompanies a rapid increase of fortune; and to awaken in others those feelings of envy, mistrust, and regret, which usually attend upon the loss of it. The Americans contemplate this extraordinary and hasty progress with exultation; but they would be wiser to consider it with sorrow and alarm. The Americans of the United States must inevitably become one of the greatest nations in the world; their offset will cover almost the whole of North America; the continent which they inhabit is their dominion, and it cannot escape them. What urges them to take possession of it so soon? Riches, power, and renown, cannot fail to be theirs at some future time; but they rush upon their fortune as if but a moment remained for them to make it their own.

I think I have demonstrated, that the existence of the present confederation depends entirely on the continued assent of all the confederates; and, starting from this principle, I have inquired into the causes which may induce any of the states to separate from the others. The Union may, however, perish in two different ways: one of the confederate states may choose to retire from the compact, and so forcibly sever the federal tie; and it is to this supposition that most of the remarks which I have made apply: or the authority of the federal government may be progressively intrenched on by the simultaneous tendency of the united republics to resume their independence. The central power, successively stripped of all its prerogatives, and reduced to impotence by tacit consent, would become incompetent to fulfil its purpose; and the second Union would perish, like the first, by a sort of senile inaptitude. The gradual weakening of the federal tie, which may finally lead to the dissolution of the Union, is a distinct circumstance, that may produce a variety of minor consequences before it operates so violent a change. The confederation might still subsist, although its government were reduced to such a degree of inanition as to paralyze the nation, to cause internal anarchy, and to check the general prosperity of the country.

After having investigated the causes which may induce the Anglo-Americans to disunite, it is important to inquire whether, if the Union continues to subsist, their government will extend or contract its sphere of action, and whether it will become more energetic or more weak.

The Americans are evidently disposed to look upon their future condition with alarm. They perceive that in most of the nations of the world, the exercise of the rights of sovereignty tends to fall under the control of a few individuals, and they are dismayed by the idea that such will also be the case in their own country. Even the statesmen feel, or affect to feel, these fears; for, in America, centralization is by no means popular, and there is no surer means of courting the majority, than by inveighing against the encroachments of the central power. The Americans do not perceive that the countries in which this alarming tendency to centralization exists, are inhabited by a single people; while the fact of the Union being composed of different confederate communities, is sufficient to baffle all the inferences which might be drawn from analogous circumstances.

I confess that I am inclined to consider the fears of a great number of Americans as purely imaginary; and far from participating in their dread of the consolidation of power in the hands of the Union, I think that the federal government is visibly losing strength.

To prove this assertion I shall not have recourse to any remote occurrences, but to circumstances which I have myself observed, and which belong to our own time.

An attentive examination of what is going on in the United States, will easily convince us that two opposite tendencies exist in that country, like two distinct currents flowing in contrary directions in the same channel. The Union has now existed for forty-five years, and in the course of that time a vast number of provincial prejudices, which were at first hostile to its power, have died away. The patriotic feeling which attached each of the Americans to his own native state is become less exclusive; and the different parts of the Union have become more intimately connected the better they have become acquainted with each other. The post,[Footnote:

In 1832, the district of Michigan, which only contains 31,639

inhabitants, and is still an almost unexplored wilderness, possessed 940 miles of mail-roads. The territory of Arkansas, which is still more uncultivated, was already intersected by 1,938 miles of mail-roads (See report of the general post-office, 30th November, 1833.) The postage of newspapers alone in the whole Union amounted to $254,796.

] that great instrument of intellectual intercourse, now reaches into the backwoods; and