BUT WILL America preserve its form of government? Will the States not sunder? Has a representative from Virginia not already argued for the ancient theory of liberty which accepted slavery, and which was the result of paganism, against a representative from Massachusetts who defended the cause of modern liberty without slavery, which Christianity has wrought? Aren’t the Northern and the Southern states opposed in their opinions and interests? Wouldn’t the Western States, so far from the Atlantic, prefer their own regime? One wonders whether the federal bond is strong enough to preserve the union and compel each state to stand ranked around it. On the other hand, if the power of the presidency were increased, would despotism not be close behind, bringing with it all the obligations and privileges of a dictator?
The isolation of the United States has given them birth and space to grow. It is doubtful whether such a state could have lived, let alone thrived, in Europe. The Swiss Federation subsists among us, it’s true. But why? Because it is small, poor, and walled in by mountains, a nursery for royal soldiers and a destination for travelers.
Separated from the Old World, the population of the United States still inhabits a sort of wilderness: its solitude has made it free, but already the conditions of its existence are being altered.
The presence of democracies in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chile, and Buenos Aires, constantly troubled as these democracies are, is a danger. When the United States had nothing near them except the colonies of a transatlantic kingdom, serious warfare was unlikely. But today, isn’t a rivalry to be feared? If there were a rush to arms on all sides, if the military spirit seized the children of Washington, a great captain might emerge to take the throne. Glory loves a crown.
I said that the Northern, Southern, and Western states are divided in their interests, which is common knowledge. But if these states broke from the union, would they be reduced to bearing arms? If so, what enmities will ferment and spread through the body politic! If the dissident states were to claim their independence, every kind of discord would erupt across the emancipated states! These overseas republics, come undone, would form debilitated units of no weight on the social scale or be successively subjugated by some single state among them. (I pass over the serious subject of alliances and foreign intervention.) Kentucky—peopled by a bolder, more rustic, more militant race—would seem destined to be the conquering State. In this State that would devour the others, the power of one would soon rise above the ruins of the power of all.
I have spoken of the danger of war, but I must also recall the dangers of prolonged peace. Since their emancipation, the United States have enjoyed, apart from a few short months, a period of the most profound tranquility: while hundreds of battles shook Europe to its roots, they went on securely cultivating their fields. The consequence has been an increase of population and wealth, with all the inconveniences that follow from a superabundance of people and money.
If hostilities descend on an unwarlike people, would they be able to resist? How could they bring themselves to renounce their indolent ways, their comforts, and the gentler habits of life? China and India, asleep in their muslins, have been constantly subject to foreign domination. What best suits the complexion of a free society is a state of peace tempered by war or a state of war tempered by peace. The Americans have already worn the olive-crown for too long a time: the tree that provides it is not native their shores.
The mercantile spirit is beginning to take hold of them; self- interest is becoming a national vice. Already the gambling spirit of the banks of the different States has hindered them, and bankruptcies are threatening the common weal. So long as liberty produces gold, an industrial republic performs wonders; but when the gold is spent or exhausted, the republic loses this love of liberty that is founded not on moral sentiment but originates in a thirst for profit and a passion for industry.
What’s more, it is difficult to create a homeland from States which have no community rooted in religion or material interests, which have arisen from different sources at different times, and which survive on different soils and under different suns. What connection is there between a Frenchman from Louisiana, a Spaniard from the Floridas, a German from New York, and an Englishman from New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, or Georgia—all of whom are reputed to be Americans? One is a frivolous duelist; one a proud and lazy Catholic; one a Lutheran farmer who owns no slaves; one a Puritan merchant. How many centuries will it take to render these elements homogeneous!
A chrysogeneous aristocracy, with a passionate love of distinctions and titles, is ready to emerge. It is supposed that there is one common level in the United States, but this is completely untrue. There are groups in American society that disdain one another and remain wholly exclusive; there are parlors where the host’s haughtiness surpasses that of a German Prince with his Sixteen Quarterings. These plebeian nobles aspire to be a caste despite the progress of enlightenment that has made them equal and free. Some of them are forever talking about their ancestors, proud barons, apparently bastards, and companions of William the Bastard; on their walls, they display the emblazoned chivalry of the Old World decorated with New World serpents, lizards, and parakeets. A cadet from Gascony, landing with no more than a cloak and an umbrella on these republican shores, as long as he remembers to refer to himself by the title of “marquis,” is guaranteed to be well received on every steamboat.
The enormous imbalance of wealth is a more serious threat to the spirit of equality than any other. A few Americans possess one or two million in income. The Yankees of high society no longer live like Benjamin Franklin: the true “gentleman,” disgusted by his new country, goes to Europe looking for the old. He can be found in every hotel, making a “tour” of Italy, and vying with the English in extravagance and spleen. These vagrants from Carolina and Virginia buy up ruined abbeys in France and plant English gardens with American trees in Melun. Naples may send New York her singers and performers, Paris her fashions and dancers, London her grooms and boxers; but these exotic delights don’t give the Union any great pleasure. In America, men amuse themselves by leaping into Niagara Falls to the cheering of fifty thousand planters: half-savages who laugh only at the sight of pain and death.
And what is still more extraordinary is that, even as the imbalance of wealth increases and an aristocracy is beginning to form, the great egalitarian impetus of the culture at large obliges the owners of factories and lands to hide their luxuries and lie about their wealth for fear of being bludgeoned by their neighbors. No one pays the executive powers any mind; local authorities, only recently elected, are removed from office and replaced by others. This does not disturb the social order. In fact, practical democracy is observed at the same time that people laugh at the laws decreed by this same democracy, in theory. Family feeling scarcely exists: as soon as a child is in a condition to work, he must fly on his own two wings like a fledgling bird. From these generations, emancipated into premature orphan-hood, and from the emigrants constantly arriving from Europe, come bands of nomads who clear the lands, dig canals, and exercise their industry everywhere, but without ever attaching themselves to the soil; they begin building houses in the wilderness where the transient proprietor will not stay for more than a few brief days.
A cold hard egotism rules the towns. Piastres and dollars, banknotes and silver, the rise and fall of stocks: this is all anyone discusses. A man might believe he was at the Bourse or the counting-house of a large boutique. The newspapers, of huge dimensions, are rife with business articles and crass gossip. Could the Americans be suffering, without knowing it, from the law of a climate where vegetable nature seems to have thrived at the expense of sentient beings? This law has been dismissed by distinguished minds, but perhaps its implications are not entirely swept away by its refutation. One might wonder whether the American has not become too quickly accustomed to philosophical liberty, as the Russian has become accustomed to civilized despotism.
In sum, the United States give the impression of being a colony, not a mother country: they have no past, and their mores are not a result of their laws. The citizens of the New World took their place among the nations at a moment when political ideas were in the ascendant, and this explains how they transformed themselves with such unusual rapidity. Anything resembling a permanent society appears to be impracticable among them. On one hand, this is due to the extreme ennui of its individual citizens; on the other, to the impossibility of remaining in place and the need for motion that dominates their lives: for man is never truly settled when the household gods are wanderers. Placed upon the ocean roads, at the forefront of progressive opinions as new as his country, the American seems to have inherited from Columbus the mission to discover new worlds rather than create them.