“The first and most intense passion which is engendered by the equality of conditions is, I need hardly say, the love of that same equality. My readers will therefore not be surprised that I speak of its before all others. Everybody has remarked that in our time, and especially in France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries are far more ardently and tenaciously attached to equality than to freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been sufficiently analyzed, I shall endeavor to point them out.
It is possible to imagine an extreme point
at which freedom and equality would meet and be confounded together.
Let us suppose that all the members of the community take a part in the
government, and that each of them has an equal right to take a part in
it. As none is different from his fellows, none can exercise a tyrannical
power: men will be perfectly free, because
they will all be entirely equal; and they will all be perfectly equal,
because they will be entirely free. To this ideal state democratic
nations tend. Such is the completest form that equality can assume
upon earth; but there are a thousand others which, without being equally
perfect, are not less cherished by those nations.
The principle of equality may be established in civil society, without prevailing in the political world. Equal rights may exist of indulging in the same pleasures, of entering the same professions, of frequenting the same places - in a word, of living in the same manner and seeking wealth by the same means, although all men do not take an equal share in the government. A kind of equality may even be established in the political world, though there should be no political freedom there. A man may be the equal of all his countrymen save one, who is the master of all without distinction, and who selects equally from among them all the agents of his power. Several other combinations might be easily imagined, by which very great equality would be united to institutions more or less free, or even to institutions wholly without freedom. Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty, and that which they feel for equality, are, in fact, two different things; and I am not afraid to add that, amongst democratic nations, they are two unequal things
Upon close inspection, it will be seen that
there is in every age some peculiar and preponderating fact with which
all others are connected; this fact almost always gives birth to some pregnant
idea or some ruling passion, which attracts to itself, and bears away in
its course, all the feelings and opinions of the time: it is like a great
stream, towards which each of the
surrounding rivulets seems to flow. Freedom has appeared in the
world at different times and under various forms; it has not been exclusively
bound to any social condition, and it is not confined to democracies.
Freedom cannot, therefore, form the distinguishing characteristic of democratic
ages. The peculiar and preponderating fact which marks those ages as its
own is the
equality of conditions; the ruling passion of men in those periods
is the love of this equality. Ask not what singular charm the men
of democratic ages find in being equal, or what special reasons they may
have for clinging so tenaciously to equality rather than to the other advantages
which society holds out to them: equality is the distinguishing characteristic
of the age they live in; that, of itself, is enough to explain that they
prefer it to all the rest.
But independently of this reason there are several
others, which will at all times habitually lead men to prefer equality
to freedom. If a people could ever succeed in destroying, or even
in diminishing, the equality which prevails in its own body, this could
only be accomplished by long and laborious efforts. Its social condition
must be modified, its laws abolished, its
opinions superseded, its habits changed, its manners corrupted. But
political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to hold it fast is to
allow it to escape. Men therefore not only cling to equality because
it is dear to them; they also adhere to it because they think it will last
forever.
That political freedom may compromise in its excesses
the tranquillity, the property, the lives of individuals, is obvious to
the narrowest and most unthinking minds. But, on the contrary, none
but attentive and clear-sighted men perceive the perils with which equality
threatens us, and they commonly avoid pointing them out. They know
that the calamities they apprehend
are remote, and flatter themselves that they will only fall upon future
generations, for which the present generation takes but little thought.
The evils which freedom sometimes brings with it are immediate; they are
apparent to all, and all are more or less affected by them. The evils
which extreme equality may produce are slowly disclosed; they creep gradually
into the social frame; they are only seen at intervals, and at the moment
at which they become most violent habit already causes them to be no longer
felt.
The advantages which freedom brings are only shown by length of time; and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. The advantages of equality are instantaneous, and they may constantly be traced from their source. Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures, from time to time, upon a certain number of citizens. Equality every day confers a number of small enjoyments on every man. The charms of equality are every instant felt, and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them. The passion which equality engenders must therefore be at once strong and general. Men cannot enjoy political liberty un-purchased by some sacrifices, and they never obtain it without great exertions. But the pleasures of equality are self-proffered: each of the petty incidents of life seems to occasion them, and in order to taste them nothing is required but to live.
Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality,
but there are certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it
swells to the height of fury. This occurs at the moment when
the old social system, long menaced, completes its own destruction
after a last intestine struggle, and when the barriers of rank are
at length thrown down. At such times men pounce upon equality as
their booty, and they cling to it as to some precious treasure which they
fear to lose. The passion for equality penetrates on every side into
men's hearts, expands there, and fills them entirely. Tell them not
that by this blind surrender of themselves to an exclusive passion they
risk their dearest interests: they are deaf. Show them not freedom
escaping from their grasp, whilst they are looking another way: they are
blind - or rather, they can discern but one sole object to be desired in
the universe.
What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations: what I am about to say concerns the French alone. Amongst most modern nations, and especially amongst all those of the Continent of Europe, the taste and the idea of freedom only began to exist and to extend themselves at the time when social conditions were tending to equality, and as a consequence of that very equality. Absolute kings were the most efficient levellers of ranks amongst their subjects. Amongst these nations equality preceded freedom: equality was therefore a fact of some standing when freedom was still a novelty: the one had already created customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it, when the other, alone and for the first time, came into actual existence. Thus the latter was still only an affair of opinion and of taste, whilst the former had already crept into the habits of the people, possessed itself of their manners, and given a particular turn to the smallest actions of their lives. Can it be wondered that the men of our own time prefer the one to the other?
I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism - but they will not endure aristocracy. This is true at all times, and especially true in our own. All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion, will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its support”.
*Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America, volume 2, part II, chapter 1