Democracy in America (Reeve)/Part 2/Book 3/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
WHY THE NATIONAL VANITY OF THE AMERICANS IS MORE RESTLESS
AND CAPTIOUS THAN THAT OF THE ENGLISH.
All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not
displayed by all in the same manner. The Americans in their
intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and
insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to
them, the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly
harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties they
fall to praising themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their
own merit, they wished to have it constantly exhibited before their
eyes. Their vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous;
it will grant nothing, while it demands everything, but is ready to
beg and to quarrel at the same time.
If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one, “Ay,” he replies, “there is not its fellow in the world.” If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, “Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.” If I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes the United States, “I can imagine,” says he, “that a stranger who has been struck by the corruption of all other nations, is astonished at the difference.” At length I leave him to the contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does not desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying. It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it.[1]
Such is not the case with the English. An Englishman calmly enjoys the real or imaginary advantages which in his opinion his country possesses. If he grants nothing to other nations, neither does he solicit anything for his own. The censure of foreigners does not affect him, and their praise hardly flatters him; his position with regard to the rest of the world is one of disdainful and ignorant reserve: his pride requires no sustenance, it nourishes itself. It is remarkable that two nations, so recently sprung from the same stock, should be so opposite to one another in their manner of feeling and conversing.
In aristocratic countries the great possess immense privileges, upon which their pride rests, without seeking to rely upon the lesser advantages which accrue to them. As these privileges came to them by inheritance, they regard them in some sort as a portion of themselves, or at least as a natural right inherent in their own persons. They therefore entertain a calm sense of their superiority; they do not dream of vaunting privileges which every one perceives and no one contests, and these things are not sufficiently new to them to be made topics of conversation. They stand unmoved in their solitary greatness, well assured that they are seen of all the world without any effort to show themselves off, and that no one will attempt to drive them from that position. When an aristocracy carries on the public affairs, its national pride naturally assumes this reserved, indifferent, and haughty form, which is imitated by all the other classes of the nation.
When on the contrary social conditions differ but little, the slightest privileges are of some importance; as every man sees around himself a million of people enjoying precisely similar or analogous advantages, his pride becomes craving and jealous, he clings to mere trifles, and doggedly defends them. In democracies, as the conditions of life are very fluctuating, men have almost always recently acquired the advantages which they possess; the consequence is that they feel extreme pleasure in exhibiting them, to show others and convince themselves that they really enjoy them. As at any instant these same advantages may be lost, their possessors are constantly on the alert, and make a point of showing that they still retain them. Men living in democracies love their country just as they love themselves, and they transfer the habits of their private vanity to their vanity as a nation.
The restless and insatiable vanity of a democratic people originates so entirely in the equality and precariousness of social conditions, that the members of the haughtiest nobility display the very same passion in those lesser portions of their existence in which there is anything fluctuating or contested. An aristocratic class always differs greatly from the other classes of the nation, by the extent and perpetuity of its privileges; but it often happens that the only differences between the members who belong to it consist in small transient advantages, which may any day be lost or acquired.
The members of a powerful aristocracy, collected in a capital or a court, have been known to contest with virulence those frivolous privileges which depend on the caprice of fashion or the will of their master. These persons then displayed toward each other precisely the same puerile jealousies which animate the men of democracies, the same eagerness to snatch the smallest advantages which their equals contested, and the same desire to parade ostentatiously those of which they were in possession.
If national pride ever entered into the minds of courtiers, I do not question that they would display it in the same manner as the members of a democratic community.
- ↑
Setting aside all those who do not think at all, and those who dare not
say what they think, the immense majority of the Americans will still be
found to appear satisfied with the political institutions by which they are
governed; and, I believe, really to be so. I look upon this state of public
opinion as an indication, but not as a demonstration, of the absolute
excellence of American laws. The pride of a nation, the gratification of certain
ruling passions by the law, a concourse of circumstances, defects which
escape notice, and more than all the rest, the influence of a majority which
shuts the mouth of all cavillers, may long perpetuate the delusions of a
people as well as those of a man.
Look at England throughout the eighteenth century. No nation was ever more prodigal of self-applause, no people was ever more self-satisfied; then every part of its constitution was right—everything, even to its most obvious defects, was irreproachable: at the present day a vast number of Englishmen seem to have nothing better to do than to prove that this constitution was faulty in many respects. Which was right?—the English people of the last century, or the English people of the present day?
The same thing has occurred in France. It is certain that during the reign of Louis XIV. the great bulk of the nation was devotedly attached to the form of government which, at that time, governed the community. But it is a vast error to suppose that there was anything degraded in the character of the French of that age. There might be some sort of servitude in France at that time, but assuredly there was no servile spirit among the people. The writers of that age felt a species of genuine enthusiasm in extolling the power of their king; and there was no peasant so obscure in his hovel as not to take a pride in the glory of his sovereign, and to die cheerfully with the cry “Vive le Roi” upon his lips. These very same forms of loyalty are now odious to the French people. Which are wrong?—the French of the age of Louis XIV., or their descendants of the present day?
Our judgement of the laws of a people must not then be founded exclusively upon its inclinations, since those inclinations change from age to age; but upon more elevated principles and a more general experience. The love which a people may show for its laws, proves only this:—that we should not be in too great a hurry to change them.