Alexis de Tocqueville

In 1831, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) came to the United States to report on its innovative penal system. Instead, he produced a brilliant analysis of the new republican society and politics, Democracy in America (1835, 1840). This letter to a French friend reveals his thinking and insights.

Do you know what, in this country’s political realm, makes the most vivid impression on me? The effect of laws governing inheritance. … The English had exported their laws of primogeniture, according to which the eldest acquired three-quarters of the father’s fortune. This resulted in a host of vast territorial domains passing from father to son and wealth remaining in families. My American informants tell me that there was no aristocracy but, instead, a class of great landowners leading a simple, rather intellectual life characterized by its air of good breeding, its manners, and a strong sense of family pride. … Since then, inheritance laws have been revised.

Primogeniture gave way to equal division, with almost magical results. Domains split up, passing into other hands. Family spirit disappeared. The aristocratic bias that marked the republic’s early years was replaced by a democratic thrust of irresistible force. … I’ve seen several members of these old families. … They regret the loss of everything aristocratic: patronage, family pride, high tone. …

There can be no doubt that the inheritance law is responsible in some considerable measure for this complete triumph of democratic principles. The Americans … agree that “it has made us what we are, it is the foundation of our republic.” …

When I apply these ideas to France, I cannot resist the thought that Louis XVIII’s charter [of 1814 sought to restore the pre-Revolutionary regime by creating] … aristocratic institutions in political law, but [by mandating equality before the law and retaining the Revolutionary-era inheritance laws giving all children, irrespective of sex, an equal share of the parental estate] within the domain of civil law gave shelter to a democratic principle so vigorous that it was bound before long to destroy the foundations of the edifice it raised. … We are moving toward an unrestricted democracy … that … would not suit France at all. … [However,] there is no human power capable of changing the law of inheritance, and with this change our families will disappear, possessions will pass into other hands, wealth will be increasingly equalized, the upper class will melt into the middle, the latter will become immense and shape everything to its level. …

What I see in America leaves me doubting that government by the multitude, even under the most favorable circumstances — and they exist here — is a good thing. There is general agreement that in the early days of the republic, statesmen and members of the two legislative houses were much more distinguished than they are today. They almost all belonged to that class of landowners I mentioned above. The populace no longer chooses with such a sure hand. It generally favors those who flatter its passions and descend to its level.

Source: From Letters from America: Alexis de Tocqueville, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Frederick Brown, Yale University Press, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Frederick Brown. Used by permission of Yale University Press.