Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  Further conjectures are possible. News out of the United States was scarce, but there was some in the French press. For instance, the election of General Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 occasioned many worried comments about America’s alleged lapse into demagoguery and barbarism. And as René Rémond has shown in an admirable treatise, under the Restoration there was always, in France, a lively concern with the United States, both as a new political experiment and as a new sort of society.13 Unfortunately Rémond also shows that it was on the whole a minority concern, a matter for discrete groups, and it cannot be shown that Tocqueville belonged to any of them. And with a single exception, none of Tocqueville’s family and friends can be shown to have had any particular interest in America or any reason for developing one.

  The exception was mighty: Chateaubriand. ‘It would be interesting to know what Tocqueville and Beaumont had read about the United States before their departure,’ sighs André Jardin; but at least he is sure about Chateaubriand (Tocqueville himself adds the name of Fenimore Cooper).14 In the archives at the château de Tocqueville Antoine Rédier once found the draft of an article, written by Tocqueville in his law-student days but never published, quarrelling with views of America expressed by Chateaubriand in the Journal des débats of October 1825. Chateaubriand had celebrated American democracy and commended its example to France. Lamentably, this draft – the earliest writing by Alexis de Tocqueville on the United States – has been lost, like too many of the papers which passed through Rédier’s hands. Rédier thought of publishing it but decided not to, respecting the opinion of the author who at a later date had characteristically written ‘très médiocre’ on the manuscript, but this detail is less interesting than the grounds on which Tocqueville attacked his illustrious relation.15

  He wrote, apparently, as a convinced monarchist and French nationalist. He denounced Chateaubriand’s opinions as those of a genius who had lost his way and was devoting his heaven-sent talent to the ruin of his fellow citizens and his country. Chateaubriand, he said, was wholly wrong in arguing that France had anything to learn from what he called ‘the American republics’: ‘I only see one Republic in America, that of the United States. The only task worthy of such genius would have been that of demonstrating to us the difference between us and the Americans, and not to cozen us by illusory parallels.’ Coming from the future author of De la démocratie en Amérique, this opinion is sufficiently striking, and it must be added that it was long before Tocqueville swerved from it: during his first weeks in the United States he was to insist repeatedly that conditions in America were so different from those in France as to make its political example worthless.

  Tocqueville’s attitude to Chateaubriand, at least during his youth, always had a sour streak in it; perhaps he was repelled by François-René’s theatrical personality, or resented his treatment of Comte Hervé; but he was much too sensitive to language and ideas to resist the enchanter’s spell. And as René Rémond affirms, Chateaubriand, although the least scientific, was by far the most influential of pre-1835 French interpreters of the United States.16 Tocqueville’s minor writings about America, such as ‘Quinze jours dans le désert’, are so many exercises in the chateaubrianesque, of which traces can be found even in the Démocratie itself. During the last years of the Restoration, Chateaubriand, in the intervals of his assault on his enemy Villèle, published Les Natchez (1826) and Voyage en Amérique (1827). If, as is almost certain, Tocqueville read the Voyage, he found there a few pages on the present and future prospects of the United States which might well make him think:

  The establishment of a representative republic in the United States was one of the greatest political events in the history of the world: an event which proved, as I have said elsewhere, that there are two kinds of practicable liberty: one, belonging to the childhood of nations, is the daughter of manners* and virtue; the ancient Greeks and Romans possessed it, so did the savages of America; the other is born in the old age of a people, the daughter of enlightenment and reason; it is the liberty which, in the United States, has replaced that of the Indians. That happy land has passed in less than three centuries from the one liberty to the other, almost without effort, and by a struggle which did not last for more than eight years!17

  Here was a phenomenon which might well seem worth investigating to a young man already committed to an ideal of enlightened freedom; and this ‘Conclusion’ to the Voyage – only eight pages long in a modern edition – was full of other suggestive thoughts. Chateaubriand throws off remarks about American roads, railways and postal services which seem to anticipate not only Michel Chevalier but George R. Taylor; and at one point he definitely anticipates the celebrated frontier theory of F. J. Turner: ‘The United States have one more safeguard [of their freedom]: their population only occupies one eighteenth of their territory. America still lives in a solitude; for a long time yet her wilderness will be her way of life, and its wisdom her liberty.’18 Chateaubriand had not been to America for thirty-five years, but he had done his best to update his information, and the result was a sketch of a dynamic society, thrusting westwards, its population rapidly growing, wedded to republicanism (‘useless to discuss the constitutions of the various States: it is enough to know that they are all free’) and to complete religious liberty, which seemed to encourage Christianity: every citizen belonged to some sect or other, and the Catholic faith was making considerable progress in the western states. There, in America, was the last domain of freedom; but would it survive? Could the Union endure? The states were already quarrelling over the issue of slavery.19

  Readers of the Démocratie today may well see in Chateaubriand’s brief musings the germ of Tocqueville’s masterpiece; here, the younger man may have thought, was just the topic he needed for the application of the techniques and theories which he had learned from Guizot. Assuming that Tocqueville read the Voyage, we may be struck by what may nevertheless have been a coincidence. Perhaps Chateaubriand was simply moving with the times. Earlier, in Atala and his other famous works on America, he, like Fenimore Cooper (whose novels enjoyed an enormous vogue in Restoration France), had promulgated what René Rémond calls ‘the primitivist mirage’20 – a vision of America rather than of the United States, in which noble savages and dauntless backwoodsmen lived in harmony with the Nature of river, forest and dusky maidens. Tocqueville was not immune to the charms of this vision, but his intellect inclined in a quite different direction, which helped to make him the man for his time.

  But even if Chateaubriand’s writings were to some extent a cause of Tocqueville’s burgeoning interest in the United States, it is likely that it was Chateaubriand the man whose influence and example struck the spark, igniting the sudden decision, not only to make the journey, but to make it as soon as possible. The ‘noble peer’ was much in the public eye in 1830. At one point during the July crisis he had been recognized by the crowd and carried in triumph, as an opposition leader and a supporter of press freedom, to the Palais du Luxembourg, where the Chamber of Peers sat. Had he chosen he could have become a leading figure in the new régime. He did not so choose. On 7 August he opposed the transfer of the crown in the speech already mentioned. He argued with logic, passion and good sense against both a republic and what he called an ‘elective monarchy’; but although the speech was one of the best that he ever gave, and created a stir, his cause was lost, and he knew it. The peers voted for Louis-Philippe, 89–10 (fourteen fainthearts abstained).

  The speech marked the end of Chateaubriand’s political career. It could not fail to please his relations, yet it was not based on romantic loyalty. ‘I do not believe in the divine right of royalty, and I do believe in the power of revolution and of facts.’ It was on severely practical grounds that Chateaubriand advocated the Bourbon cause and predicted the failure of the Orleanist experiment. His speech was a genuine prophecy. ‘The representative republic is undoubtedly the future state of the world, but its time has not yet arrived.’ He disliked the
elective monarchy partly on the grounds which induced La Fayette to support it: it would be a republic in all but name, a monarchy overwhelmed by democratic laws, or by the struggle of factions. Even the liberties claimed by the July insurgents, for instance freedom of the press, would be no safer under Orleans than they had been under Bourbon: new challenges would arise, and seem to necessitate the old oppression. Initial self-confidence and enthusiasm would soon be disproved by events.21

  A new vision of French history was emerging, one which was at the very least a corrective to Guizot’s ideas; Tocqueville, who would reflect on these questions almost to his dying day, must have been impressed. And as he contemplated Chateaubriand resigning his peerage and membership of the Conseil d’État, and renouncing all his official emoluments (except that his friends persuaded him to remain in the Académie Française) he might well be moved, as by an intuition, to identify himself with his quasi-uncle. If he did, he could easily have remembered the story of Chateaubriand’s youth: how, caught between his liberalism and his loyalty in the early days of the great Revolution, uncertain of his career, he had sought to solve his dilemma by a journey to North America, with the encouragement of Malesherbes. The experiment had succeeded: it had eventually brought great fame to Chateaubriand. Why should not Alexis de Tocqueville, facing the same dilemma a generation later, try the same solution?

  Much of this is guesswork, though not without value. At least we know that almost as soon as Tocqueville conceived his notion he took it to Beaumont, whom he wanted as his travelling-companion. Beaumont jumped at the idea.22 His own position was even more uncomfortable than Tocqueville’s since not only were his parents legitimists, but La Fayette was a cousin – and La Fayette was as suspect as any Ultra to the new government, which jockeyed him out of the command of the National Guard as soon as it could. Personally, Beaumont was much approved by the Orleanists, but he knew that it could not last. The American scheme was attractive in itself: it was another project, the boldest so far, in their enterprise of joint education, and Beaumont shared Tocqueville’s belief, originating in the events of July, that France was becoming a democracy. It made sense to study the system in the only great nation which had adopted equality while apparently preserving liberty, even if the lessons could not be wholly, or even partially, applied elsewhere. The journey might further their longstanding but so far ineffective dreams of collaboration. The die was cast: America it was to be, as soon as possible.

  Their families made no difficulty, agreeing to pay for the trip. Nor did Marie Mottley. She may simply have accepted that she was in no position to stop the adventure, but more likely she recognized its importance to Tocqueville. He showered her with love that summer (and it was about now that Blaize drew their portraits). On 20 August he wrote to her:

  Do you know what my first thought was this morning, Marie? I thought that today was a happy day for me since it was the anniversary of your birth. Oh, I will never forget the 20 August! ... I will always remember, Marie, that on this day of days she was born who would show herself so tender a friend, so sweet a consolation for all the sorrows and all the annoyances which arise to torment a man’s life. Oh, I will always thank God for at least one thing, I am sure, that he caused you to be born.23

  During the judicial vacation that autumn he paid a visit to Le Ménil, his uncle Rosanbo’s estate in the Cotentin, and wrote to her in such a way as to show how close they had grown, and how much closer he wanted her to be:

  I am very glad that I came on this trip. My great scheme is approved by the members of my family that I care most about, and my mother, who I was afraid I would find somewhat upset by my long silence, received me on the contrary with an affection which really moved me ... I work in the morning and go hunting in the afternoon. Above all I enjoy that good which, as you know, I put above all others, liberty. I am at leisure to be as stupid as I please, speaking whenever I like, being silent when I want, snoozing in the salon without anyone saying a word. Short of doing without trousers and living in a forest, I couldn’t be more my own master. Marie, I wish you could see the master of this château, if only for an hour. I am sure you would venerate him. He is virtue incarnate, virtue without show or haughtiness ... If you could see him, relieving the poor of the neighbourhood, or playing with his grandchildren, always surrounded by the almost religious devotion of his family and servants, I am sure you would be touched. As for me, my uncle has always been the most conclusive argument in favour of religion.24

  This was surely a love Marie could trust. She resigned herself to doing without him for a year. Ernest de Chabrol agreed to act as their go-between, and to give her moral support during Tocqueville’s absence. (Like Tocqueville and Beaumont he had taken the oath, and continued to live and work at Versailles.)25

  But since neither Tocqueville nor Beaumont wished to resign his post, even though, as Beaumont says, Tocqueville’s judicial career no longer meant anything to him,26 they would have to persuade their superiors to give them leave of absence, which would not be possible unless they could show that their proposed journey was a mission of public utility. Fortunately or unfortunately, the perfect rationale lay ready at hand.

  As magistrates, they had necessarily become somewhat acquainted with the French prison system, and in 1828 or 1829 Tocqueville had read an English work on penal reform.27 He and Beaumont knew of Du système pénitentiaire en Europe et aux États-Unis, by Charles Lucas, which had created a stir in 1827 and been awarded the Monthyon prize by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Prison reform had been an important issue since before the fall of that model establishment, the Bastille, and in 1791 Tocqueville’s black sheep cousin, Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, had brought in a bill which, when passed by the Constituent Assembly, became the foundation for all subsequent penal legislation. The duc d’Angoulême patronized a prison reform society during the Restoration. In 1830, under pressure of the faltering economy, crime rates – the number of offences, of convicts, of recidivists – were all rising, and Montalivet, the minister of the interior appointed to succeed Guizot in November,* was well aware of the problem. (The last revision of the penal code had been undertaken in 1810 by his father, then minister.) The July Revolution had given a slight but perceptible impulse to all reform politics, which did not immediately fade. Tocqueville and Beaumont rightly felt that if they proposed a fact-finding mission to study at first hand the new prisons of the United States, which were supposed to be the best in the world, they would have an excellent chance of official approval. And such a mission would open many doors to them in the United States. They went seriously to work on preparing a memoir for the minister.

  Their modus operandi was thoroughness itself, and one which Tocqueville was to employ on his writing projects ever after. Their legal work had taught them the importance of well-prepared briefs. There were several categories of French jails: in August Tocqueville seized a chance to visit a maison d’arrêt, or remand prison, at Versailles, and on 26 September he and Beaumont together inspected the centre nationale nearby, at Poissy, one of the prisons where convicts sentenced to more than a year served their time.† They devoured all available statistics on crime and punishment, which enabled them to make a convincing case that there was a crisis in French jails. They read everything that they could find on American prisons, including the newly published reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston, and together they composed a ‘Note on the Penitentiary System’ which consisted of a vigorous denunciation of the current state of French prisons and a justification of the proposed mission to see how things were done in the United States, ‘the classical land of penitentiaries’.28 It was ready by the end of October and at once sent to Montalivet; it was so effective, especially when endorsed by Félix Le Peletier d’Aunay, still the deputy from the Seine-et-Oise (the resources of cousinhood were not quite exhausted), that on 6 February 1831 they were given formal permission to make the journey, and eighteen months’ leave of absence: but they would have
to pay all expenses themselves.

  It is tempting to linger on the ‘Note on the Penitentiary System’. It contains a clear exposition of the penological principles which Tocqueville had adopted and of which he was always to be an adherent.29 But these will be more conveniently examined in later chapters; only one point needs to be made clear at this stage.

  Tocqueville was not the first of his family to visit Poissy: his father had done so in the course of his duty as prefect of the Seine-et-Oise, and, as his report makes plain, had been shocked by what he found. The reek of neglected latrines could be smelt everywhere; the windows in the workshops were never opened; the prison doctor was notoriously incapable; the prisoners’ summer clothing was made of shoddy and harboured both vermin and ‘deleterious miasmas’; the food was frightful: ‘I tasted the bread and found it soggy, heavy, half-baked and containing more rye than the rules permit.’ Above all, the convicts were grossly over-worked by the businessman to whom their labour had been contracted. The prefect said nothing about the purposes of imprisonment: he was only concerned that the state should not, by its neglect, degrade and even kill its prisoners (the mortality rate at Poissy in 1827 was unnecessarily high). Hervé de Tocqueville had not forgotten what it was like to be a captive.30