Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 149 (starting at On the Advantages of the Federal system Generally and its special Utility for America) – 154 (stopping at heading What Keeps The Federal System From Being Within Reach of All Peoples) of this edition of Democracy in America.

In order to construct modern, centralized states on the model advocated by Machiavelli, European monarchs weakened the aristocratic class, which had ruled the feudal states, characterized by weak monarchs and powerful landlords. Weak aristocracies meant increasingly egalitarian civil societies beneath the modern states, whether their regimes were monarchic or republican. For De Tocqueville, ‘democracy’ is not itself a regime, and equality is neither a natural or legal right; democracy is a social condition, one that must be understood clearly if it does not descend into despotism. As the most thoroughly democratized society in the world in the 1830s (this, despite slavery), America fascinated the young French aristocrat, living in the aftermath of the debacle of the French republicanism in the 1790s and of French monarchy in the 1780s and again in the Napoleonic Wars.

Differing from feudal states in their degree of centralization, modern states also differed from ancient city-states in size, being far larger in both territory and population. In small states, De Tocqueville remarks, “the eye of society penetrates everywhere” (as the song advises, “don’t try that in a small town”), ambitions modest (no Napoleon has arisen from Slovenia). In small states, “internal well-being” is prized more than “the vain smoke of glory.” Manners and morals are “simple and peaceful,” inequality of wealth less pronounced. Political freedom is the “natural condition” of small states; in all times, antiquity (Athens) and modernity (Switzerland), “small nations have been cradles of political freedom.”

They lose that freedom on those rare occasions when they do muster the power to expand. “The history of the world does not furnish an example of a great nation that has long remained a republic,” whether the nation is ancient Rome or modern France. That is because “all the passions fatal to republics grow with the extent of territory, whereas the virtues that serve as their support do not increase in the same measure.” The gulf between rich and poor widens; great cities arise, with their “depravity of morals”; individuals become less patriotic, more selfish. This is worse for republican regimes than for monarchies, as republics depend upon popular virtue while monarchy “makes use of the people and does not depend on them.” In sum, “nothing is so contrary to the well-being and freedom of men as great empires.”

This notwithstanding, “great states” enjoy some substantial advantages. Their cities are “like vast intellectual centers,” where “ideas circulate more freely” than in the more censorious atmosphere of small communities. The people are safer from invasion, since the borders are remote from much of the population. Above all, great states wield greater force than small states, which is “one of the first conditions of happiness and even existence for nations.” De Tocqueville “[does] not know of a condition more deplorable than that of a people that cannot defend itself or be self-sufficient.”

What, then, shall republican legislators do? The American Founders took the recommendation of Montesquieu: federalism, which (as Publius argues in the tenth Federalist), permits Americans to live in an “extended” republic, one that can preserve the virtues needed for republicanism while enjoying the advantages of a large modern state. While the Congress “regulates the principal actions of social existence,” it leaves administrative details to the “provincial legislatures.” [1] In a democratic republic, the people are sovereign; in the United States, the people have divided their sovereignty between the federal government and the “provinces” or states. The federal government attends to the general welfare of the nation, but can only act through specific, enumerated powers set down in the Constitution. It can reach into the states and rule their citizens directly, but not in all, and indeed not in most, things.

This is what allows democracy or civil-social equality to ‘work’ in the United States. Because the federal government organizes American foreign policy, the states need not take on the expense or the effort to defend themselves and so can concentrate their energies on internal improvements, just as small political communities are inclined to do. This spirit of economic enterprise is enhanced by the Constitutional prohibition of tariffs among the states, which makes America into a vast free-trade zone. The spirit of economic enterprise itself redirects ambitions toward peaceful commerce and away from military glory, the passion of aristocrats. Americans thereby unite “the zeal of citizens” with their self-interest. With no arms to purchase and no wars to sustain, among state politicians “ambition for power makes way for love of well-being, a more vulgar but less dangerous passion” than the love of glory, the passion of aristocrats. “Vulgar” means not-noble, not aristocratic but democratic. Federalism thus reinforces the democratic republican regime, unlike in the South American republics of the time, where republicanism extended over large territories but under centralized governments. In the federal republic of the United States, “the public spirit of the Union itself is in a way only a summation of provincial patriotism.” Combining civic participation with the spirit of commercial enterprise, Americans unite “the zeal of citizens” with economic self-interest, each passion moderating the other.

Thanks to the wisdom of the Framers of the United States Constitution, “the Union is a great republic in extent; but one could in a way liken it to a small republic because the objects with which its government is occupied are few.” The federal government exercises substantial power but in a manner “not dangerous to freedom” because, unlike a fully centralized government, it does not “excite those immoderate desires for power and attention that are so fatal to great republics,” whether in ancient Rome, modern France, or modern Brazil. Such desires that do arise “break against the individual interests and passions of the states,” jealous defenders of their own share of the popular sovereignty.

In the civil society of American democracy within a federal system, “the Union is free and happy like a small nation, glorious and strong like a great one.”

Note:
De Tocqueville uses the term “provincial” rather than “state” because his European readers associate statehood with sovereignty, which American states have only in part.

Will Morrisey holds the William and Patricia LaMothe Chair in the United States Constitution at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, where he has taught since 2000.

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