History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0098/00982.txt

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$Unique_ID{how00982}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Democracy In America
Chapter XII: Political Associations In The United States}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{De Tocqueville, Alexis}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{association
associations
right
power
liberty
majority
political
states
united
upon}
$Date{1899}
$Log{}
Title:       Democracy In America
Book:        Volume I
Author:      De Tocqueville, Alexis
Date:        1899
Translation: Reeve, Henry

Chapter XII: Political Associations In The United States

Chapter Summary

Daily use which the Anglo-Americans make of the right of association - Three
kinds of political associations - In what manner the Americans apply the
representative system to associations - Dangers resulting to the State - Great
Convention of 1831 relative to the Tariff - Legislative character of this
Convention - Why the unlimited exercise of the right of association is less
dangerous in the United States than elsewhere - Why it may be looked upon as
necessary - Utility of associations in a democratic people.

Political Associations In The United States

     In no country in the world has the principle of association been more
successfully used, or more unsparingly applied to a multitude of different
objects, than in America.  Besides the permanent associations which are
established by law under the names of townships, cities, and counties, a vast
number of others are formed and maintained by the agency of private
individuals.

     The citizen of the United States is taught from his earliest infancy to
rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties
of life; he looks upon social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety,
and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it.
This habit may even be traced in the schools of the rising generation, where
the children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have
themselves established, and to punish misdemeanors which they have themselves
defined.  The same spirit pervades every act of social life.  If a stoppage
occurs in a thoroughfare, and the circulation of the public is hindered, the
neighbors immediately constitute a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous
assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience
before anybody has thought of recurring to an authority superior to that of
the persons immediately concerned.  If the public pleasures are concerned, an
association is formed to provide for the splendor and the regularity of the
entertainment.  Societies are formed to resist enemies which are exclusively
of a moral nature, and to diminish the vice of intemperance: in the United
States associations are established to promote public order, commerce,
industry, morality, and religion; for there is no end which the human will,
seconded by the collective exertions of individuals, despairs of attaining.

     I shall hereafter have occasion to show the effects of association upon
the course of society, and I must confine myself for the present to the
political world.  When once the right of association is recognized, the
citizens may employ it in several different ways.

     An association consists simply in the public assent which a number of
individuals give to certain doctrines, and in the engagement which they
contract to promote the spread of those doctrines by their exertions.  The
right of association with these views is very analogous to the liberty of
unlicensed writing; but societies thus formed possess more authority than the
press.  When an opinion is represented by a society, it necessarily assumes a
more exact and explicit form.  It numbers its partisans, and compromises their
welfare in its cause: they, on the other hand, become acquainted with each
other, and their zeal is increased by their number.  An association unites the
efforts of minds which have a tendency to diverge in one single channel, and
urges them vigorously towards one single end which it points out.

     The second degree in the right of association is the power of meeting.
When an association is allowed to establish centres of action at certain
important points in the country, its activity is increased and its influence
extended.  Men have the opportunity of seeing each other; means of execution
are more readily combined, and opinions are maintained with a degree of warmth
and energy which written language cannot approach.

     Lastly, in the exercise of the right of political association, there is a
third degree: the partisans of an opinion may unite in electoral bodies, and
choose delegates to represent them in a central assembly.  This is, properly
speaking, the application of the representative system to a party.

     Thus, in the first instance, a society is formed between individuals
professing the same opinion, and the tie which keeps it together is of a
purely intellectual nature; in the second case, small assemblies are formed
which only represent a fraction of the party.  Lastly, in the third case, they
constitute a separate nation in the midst of the nation, a government within
the Government.  Their delegates, like the real delegates of the majority,
represent the entire collective force of their party; and they enjoy a certain
degree of that national dignity and great influence which belong to the chosen
representatives of the people.  It is true that they have not the right of
making the laws, but they have the power of attacking those which are in
being, and of drawing up beforehand those which they may afterwards cause to
be adopted.

     If, in a people which is imperfectly accustomed to the exercise of
freedom, or which is exposed to violent political passions, a deliberating
minority, which confines itself to the contemplation of future laws, be placed
in juxtaposition to the legislative majority, I cannot but believe that public
tranquillity incurs very great risks in that nation.  There is doubtless a
very wide difference between proving that one law is in itself better than
another and proving that the former ought to be substituted for the latter.
But the imagination of the populace is very apt to overlook this difference,
which is so apparent to the minds of thinking men.  It sometimes happens that
a nation is divided into two nearly equal parties, each of which affects to
represent the majority.  If, in immediate contiguity to the directing power,
another power be established, which exercises almost as much moral authority
as the former, it is not to be believed that it will long be content to speak
without acting; or that it will always be restrained by the abstract
consideration of the nature of associations which are meant to direct but not
to enforce opinions, to suggest but not to make the laws.

     The more we consider the independence of the press in its principal
consequences, the more are we convinced that it is the chief and, so to speak,
the constitutive element of freedom in the modern world.  A nation which is
determined to remain free is therefore right in demanding the unrestrained
exercise of this independence.  But the unrestrained liberty of political
association cannot be entirely assimilated to the liberty of the press.  The
one is at the same time less necessary and more dangerous than the other.  A
nation may confine it within certain limits without forfeiting any part of its
self-control; and it may sometimes be obliged to do so in order to maintain
its own authority.

     In America the liberty of association for political purposes is
unbounded.  An example will show in the clearest light to what an extent this
privilege is tolerated.

     The question of the tariff, or of free trade, produced a great
manifestation of party feeling in America; the tariff was not only a subject
of debate as a matter of opinion, but it exercised a favorable or a
prejudicial influence upon several very powerful interests of the States. The
North attributed a great portion of its prosperity, and the South all its
sufferings, to this system; insomuch that for a long time the tariff was the
sole source of the political animosities which agitated the Union.

     In 1831, when the dispute was raging with the utmost virulence, a private
citizen of Massachusetts proposed to all the enemies of the tariff, by means
of the public prints, to send delegates to Philadelphia in order to consult
together upon the means which were most fitted to promote freedom of trade.
This proposal circulated in a few days from Maine to New Orleans by the power
of the printing-press: the opponents of the tariff adopted it with enthusiasm;
meetings were formed on all sides, and delegates were named.  The majority of
these individuals were well known, and some of them had earned a considerable
degree of celebrity.  South Carolina alone, which afterwards took up arms in
the same cause, sent sixty-three delegates.  On October 1, 1831, this
assembly, which according to the American custom had taken the name of a
Convention, met at Philadelphia; it consisted of more than two hundred
members.  Its debates were public, and they at once assumed a legislative
character; the extent of the powers of Congress, the theories of free trade,
and the different clauses of the tariff, were discussed in turn. At the end of
ten days' deliberation the Convention broke up, after having published an
address to the American people, in which it declared:

     I. That Congress had not the right of making a tariff, and that the
existing tariff was unconstitutional;

     II. That the prohibition of free trade was prejudicial to the interests
of all nations, and to that of the American people in particular.

     It must be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of political
association has not hitherto produced, in the United States, those fatal
consequences which might perhaps be expected from it elsewhere.  The right of
association was imported from England, and it has always existed in America;
so that the exercise of this privilege is now amalgamated with the manners and
customs of the people.  At the present time the liberty of association is
become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority.  In the
United States, as soon as a party is become preponderant, all public authority
passes under its control; its private supporters occupy all the places, and
have all the force of the administration at their disposal.  As the most
distinguished partisans of the other side of the question are unable to
surmount the obstacles which exclude them from power, they require some means
of establishing themselves upon their own basis, and of opposing the moral
authority of the minority to the physical power which domineers over it.  Thus
a dangerous expedient is used to obviate a still more formidable danger.

     The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to present such extreme
perils to the American Republics that the dangerous measure which is used to
repress it seems to be more advantageous than prejudicial.  And here I am
about to advance a proposition which may remind the reader of what I said
before in speaking of municipal freedom: There are no countries in which
associations are more needed, to prevent the despotism of faction or the
arbitrary power of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.
In aristocratic nations the body of the nobles and the more opulent part of
the community are in themselves natural associations, which act as checks upon
the abuses of power.  In countries in which these associations do not exist,
if private individuals are unable to create an artificial and a temporary
substitute for them, I can imagine no permanent protection against the most
galling tyranny; and a great people may be oppressed by a small faction, or by
a single individual, with impunity.

     The meeting of a great political Convention (for there are Conventions of
all kinds), which may frequently become a necessary measure, is always a
serious occurrence, even in America, and one which is never looked forward to,
by the judicious friends of the country, without alarm.  This was very
perceptible in the Convention of 1831, at which the exertions of all the most
distinguished members of the Assembly tended to moderate its language, and to
restrain the subjects which it treated within certain limits.  It is probable,
in fact, that the Convention of 1831 exercised a very great influence upon the
minds of the malcontents, and prepared them for the open revolt against the
commercial laws of the Union which took place in 1832.

     It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of association for
political purposes is the privilege which a people is longest in learning how
to exercise.  If it does not throw the nation into anarchy, it perpetually
augments the chances of that calamity.  On one point, however, this perilous
liberty offers a security against dangers of another kind; in countries where
associations are free, secret societies are unknown.  In America there are
numerous factions, but no conspiracies.

     Different ways in which the right of association is understood in Europe
     and in the United States - Different use which is made of it.

     The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for
himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his
fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them.  I am therefore led to
conclude that the right of association is almost as inalienable as the right
of personal liberty.  No legislator can attack it without impairing the very
foundations of society.  Nevertheless, if the liberty of association is a
fruitful source of advantages and prosperity to some nations, it may be
perverted or carried to excess by others, and the element of life may be
changed into an element of destruction.  A comparison of the different methods
which associations pursue in those countries in which they are managed with
discretion, as well as in those where liberty degenerates into license, may
perhaps be thought useful both to governments and to parties.

     The greater part of Europeans look upon an association as a weapon which
is to be hastily fashioned, and immediately tried in the conflict.  A society
is formed for discussion, but the idea of impending action prevails in the
minds of those who constitute it: it is, in fact, an army; and the time given
to parley serves to reckon up the strength and to animate the courage of the
host, after which they direct their march against the enemy.  Resources which
lie within the bounds of the law may suggest themselves to the persons who
compose it as means, but never as the only means, of success.

     Such, however, is not the manner in which the right of association is
understood in the United States.  In America the citizens who form the
minority associate, in order, in the first place, to show their numerical
strength, and so to diminish the moral authority of the majority; and, in the
second place, to stimulate competition, and to discover those arguments which
are most fitted to act upon the majority; for they always entertain hopes of
drawing over their opponents to their own side, and of afterwards disposing of
the supreme power in their name.  Political associations in the United States
are therefore peaceable in their intentions, and strictly legal in the means
which they employ; and they assert with perfect truth that they only aim at
success by lawful expedients.

     The difference which exists between the Americans and ourselves depends
on several causes.  In Europe there are numerous parties so diametrically
opposed to the majority that they can never hope to acquire its support, and
at the same time they think that they are sufficiently strong in themselves to
struggle and to defend their cause.  When a party of this kind forms an
association, its object is, not to conquer, but to fight.  In America the
individuals who hold opinions very much opposed to those of the majority are
no sort of impediment to its power, and all other parties hope to win it over
to their own principles in the end.  The exercise of the right of association
becomes dangerous in proportion to the impossibility which excludes great
parties from acquiring the majority.  In a country like the United States, in
which the differences of opinion are mere differences of hue, the right of
association may remain unrestrained without evil consequences.  The
inexperience of many of the European nations in the enjoyment of liberty leads
them only to look upon the liberty of association as a right of attacking the
Government.  The first notion which presents itself to a party, as well as to
an individual, when it has acquired a consciousness of its own strength, is
that of violence: the notion of persuasion arises at a later period and is
only derived from experience.  The English, who are divided into parties which
differ most essentially from each other, rarely abuse the right of
association, because they have long been accustomed to exercise it. In France
the passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so
injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself
honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.

     But perhaps the most powerful of the causes which tend to mitigate the
excesses of political association in the United States is Universal Suffrage.
In countries in which universal suffrage exists the majority is never
doubtful, because neither party can pretend to represent that portion of the
community which has not voted.  The associations which are formed are aware,
as well as the nation at large, that they do not represent the majority: this
is, indeed, a condition inseparable from their existence; for if they did
represent the preponderating power, they would change the law instead of
soliciting its reform.  The consequence of this is that the moral influence of
the Government which they attack is very much increased, and their own power
is very much enfeebled.

     In Europe there are few associations which do not affect to represent the
majority, or which do not believe that they represent it.  This conviction or
this pretension tends to augment their force amazingly, and contributes no
less to legalize their measures.  Violence may seem to be excusable in defence
of the cause of oppressed right.  Thus it is, in the vast labyrinth of human
laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects the abuses of license, and that
extreme democracy obviates the dangers of democratic government.  In Europe,
associations consider themselves, in some degree, as the legislative and
executive councils of the people, which is unable to speak for itself.  In
America, where they only represent a minority of the nation, they argue and
they petition.

     The means which the associations of Europe employ are in accordance with
the end which they propose to obtain.  As the principal aim of these bodies is
to act, and not to debate, to fight rather than to persuade, they are
naturally led to adopt a form of organization which differs from the ordinary
customs of civil bodies, and which assumes the habits and the maxims of
military life.  They centralize the direction of their resources as much as
possible, and they intrust the power of the whole party to a very small number
of leaders.

     The members of these associations respond to a watchword, like soldiers
on duty; they profess the doctrine of passive obedience; say rather, that in
uniting together they at once abjure the exercise of their own judgment and
free will; and the tyrannical control which these societies exercise is often
far more insupportable than the authority possessed over society by the
Government which they attack.  Their moral force is much diminished by these
excesses, and they lose the powerful interest which is always excited by a
struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.  The man who in given cases
consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his activity and
even his opinions to their control, can have no claim to rank as a free
citizen.

     The Americans have also established certain forms of government which are
applied to their associations, but these are invariably borrowed from the
forms of the civil administration.  The independence of each individual is
formally recognized; the tendency of the members of the association points, as
it does in the body of the community, towards the same end, but they are not
obliged to follow the same track.  No one abjures the exercise of his reason
and his free will; but every one exerts that reason and that will for the
benefit of a common undertaking.