278
HOW THE UNLIMITED POWER OF THE MAJORITY INCREASES, IN AMERICA, THE INSTABILITY OF LEGISLATION AND THE ADMINISTRATION INHERENT IN DEMOCRACY.
The Americans increase the mutability of the Laws which is inherent in Democracy by changing the Legislature every Year, and by vesting it with unbounded Authority.—The same Effect is produced upon the Administration.—In America social Melioration is conducted more energetically, but less perseveriiigly than in Europe.
I have already spoken of the natural defects of democratic institutions, and they all of them increase in the exact ratio of the power of the majority. To begin with the most evident of them all; the mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in democratic government, because it is natural to democracies to raise men to power in very rapid succession. But this evil is more or less sensible in proportion to the authority and the means of action which the legislature possesses.
In America the authority exercised by the legislative bodies is supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes with celerity, and with irresistible power, while they are supplied by new representatives every year. That is to say, the circumstances which contribute most powerfully to democratic instability, and which admit of the free application of caprice to every object in the state, are here in full operation. In conformity with this principle, America is, at the present day, the country in the world where laws last the shortest time. Almost all the American constitutions have been amended within the course of thirty years: there is, therefore, not a single American state which has not modified the principles of its legislation in that lapse of time. As for the laws themselves, a single glance upon the archives of the different states of the Union suffices to convince one, that in America the activity of the legislator never slackens. Not that the American democracy is naturally less stable than any other, but that it is allowed to follow its capricious propensities in the formation of the laws.[1]
- ↑ The legislative acts promulgated by the state of Massachusetts alone, from the year 1780 to the present time, already fill three stout volumes: and it must not be forgotten that the collection to which I allude was published in 1823, when many old laws which had fallen into disuse were omitted. The state of Massachusetts, which is not more populous than a department of France, may be considered as the most stable, the most consistent, and the most sagacious in its undertakings of the whole Union.
