 The National Broadcasting Company in conjunction with the Fund for Adult Education presents Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. A glance is enough to detect the faults of democracy, but the good qualities can be seen only by long observation. The laws of American democracy are frequently defective. How comes it then that the American republics prosper and continue? The Happy Republic. A study in American values. Item 13 in the series Democracy in America, prepared by the Division of General Education of New York University, under the direction of George Prost, American historian. A series designed to bring to life the America of the 1830s, as recorded by Alexis de Tocqueville, and so to illuminate the image of democracy itself. A study in American values. The Happy Republic. I might have a little silence. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, two of our guests this evening, Mr. Tocqueville and Mr. Beaumont, are sailing tomorrow for France. Fancy picking the middle of February to cross the Atlantic. Fancy picking any day to leave the United States in favor of yours. And us, Madame, we too are patriots. I know you are, Mr. Tocqueville, and the sentiment does you credit. Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast to our guests, and to the United States, the home of liberty, and to France, the home of Lafayette. United States and France. Come on, gentlemen, reply, reply. No, no, no, don't reply to the toast. Instead, just tell us what you think of America. Miss Fulton, that was the first question we heard when we arrived ten months ago. Then let it also be the last as you leave. Surely you've learned something, Mr. Beaumont. I have learned, Miss Fulton, to admire and to respect American womanhood. And to leave the lady is the last word. Now, just a moment. You came here when? May 1831, Mr. Sparks. You've traveled to many places? Everywhere. You've talked to many people? Everybody. You've seen many things? Everything. Then I support Miss Fulton's question. What do you think of America? What comes into your mind now when I say the word America, Mr. Tocqueville? America? Equality. Mr. Beaumont. America? A picture is seen on the frontier. We were approaching Detroit, on the one side, Canada, on the other, the United States. In the distance we could see Fort Mulden. Fort Mulden, founded by the French. Yes, with the Catholic steeples, some mounted by a rooster. Just like Corn or some other town in Normandy. I remember very well. We were two weeks in the wilderness of the territory of Michigan. The forest was like a majestic order, raining above our heads. Their branches intertwined. The forest trees seemed to form a single immense and indestructible edifice under whose vaults rains an eternal obscurity. There was a silence so profound, the stillness so complete that the soul was filled with a sort of religious terror. Not only a man was missing, but even the voices of animals and birds were not heard in the heat of the July day. This wilderness everywhere stretches before you, even to the Arctic Pole, to the Pacific Ocean. But on the morrow of our visit, these mighty forests will be gone. Civilization consumes the wilderness like a forest fire. I remember the cabin that had a big black bear chained up outside it as a watchdog. And the Indian we met near Saginaw. Just as we were going to cross the stream, this man came towards us in his backskins with the sun gleaming on his copper face. He put two fingers on my shoulder and said in good, strong French with a Norman accent, watch out, people sometimes get drowned here. I shouldn't have been more surprised if my horse had spoken to me in French. Oh, the west is so romantic, Mr. Tomfield. But I hear Niagara Falls is splendid. Dear Madame, it is as enchanting as yourself. And so unspoiled. What strikes you most in this country? That would take a volume to tell everything, Mrs. Brooks. And perhaps even I would no longer believe it tomorrow. There are, however, two or three impressions which strike me about this country. Tell us. The first is that these people is the happiest in the world. I agree, sir. It seems to me, Mr. Perret, that this country owes its immense prosperity much less to its peculiar virtues, less to a form of government of itself superior to other forms than to the particular circumstances in which it finds itself. Never before has a people found for itself such a happy and fruitful basis of life. Here, freedom is unrestrained and subsists by being useful to everyone without injuring anybody. But there is undeniably something feverish in the activity this imparts to industry and the human spirit. Mr. Tuckville, nothing is easier than to enrich oneself in America. Everybody works. And the country is still so rich that all who work rapidly succeed in acquiring that which renders existence happy. Political agitation only occupies a small corner of the picture here. There is not an American newspaper in which the price of cotton does not take up more room than politics. Don't you believe in business, in our American progress? I believe in American progress. I'm planning to invest some of my money in western railroad bonds. Surely that is a sign of confidence. What do you mean, Mr. Sparks? I've been on quite a few vessels where the strength of the boiler has not quite been equal to the zeal and the enthusiasm of the captain. Oh! Steamboat racing, you know, is quite a pastime here. What do I mean, Ms. Fulton? I mean racing. I think that steamboats have not been operated in a way that could inspire confidence. Oh, what do you mean, Mr. Sparks? I've been on quite a few vessels where the strength of the boiler has not been equal to the zeal and the enthusiasm of the captain. What do you mean, Mr. Fulton? I mean racing. I mean blowing up. I mean shipwrecks. As a matter of fact, Ms. Fulton, we have been in three steamboat wrecks with all respect to your famous father. Oh, dear. But everyone must recognize the discovery of steam as added unbelievably to the strength and prosperity of the Union because it has made communication easier. It's very true that in the south there is no way to buy comparison. Mr. King, I really think it's time for the ladies to withdraw for a moment to collect their finery while you gentlemen enjoy another cigar. Very well, Mrs. Brooks. Ms. Fulton. Are you ready, Ms. Fulton? Yes. Light up, gentlemen. Let's have a little more brandy. Yes, Mr. Brooks. There is hardly a pioneer hut that does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I mean, that I read Henry V for the first time. You said, Mr. Tocqueville, that America caused your mind equality. It does, Mr. Brooks. I see gradually the distinctions of rank being done away with, the barriers that one's several mankind are falling, properties being divided, power is shared by many, education is spreading, the capacities of all classes tend toward equality. Each man has a consciousness of a dependent position and his individual dignity, which doesn't always make him very agreeable to approach, but leads him to respect himself. On the steamboat, we at first wanted to give a tip to the steward. They prevented us claiming that this would humiliate him. The general equality of condition of the people is a fundamental fact. There is a great deal of equality, but a great many of us in Boston are trying to keep up higher standards. Tell you what, Mr. Tocqueville, there's not a lot about equality in Europe. Well, there's no greater punishment for a European demagogue than to pass a year or two in the United States. Am I right, Mr. Perry? Our fashionable society in Boston is certainly capable of curing the maddest Republican of his Republican distemper. Yes, sir. Just send him over here for two months with plenty of letters to our first people, but he'll return home as quiet and as loyal a subject as anyone born in the glaring sunshine of royal favor. I'm serious, Mr. Perry. Democracy, equality is not all present by any means. Democracy is like a raft, Mr. Brooks. It doesn't sink, but your feet are always wet. Yes, Mr. Sparks. Democracy, like any other human institution, must have disadvantages as well as advantages. That's certainly true. And one of the disadvantages is that democracy turns into mobocracy. And it is the European immigrants that are responsible. The present company accepted I don't mean the French. I mean those blaggards, principally the Germans and the Irish. They come here with the most ridiculous notions of liberty and equality. Having been slaves all their lives, they set an exaggerated value on freedom without knowing the value of property. What can a man know about our institutions if he's not raised among us? Our institutions, after all, are only the English ones improved and mutilated, just as you please. But be this as it may, I prefer the English to our own. I cannot bear equality. I've made 22 trips to Europe, Mr. Brooks. And I observe that frequently the higher classes in America seem to be determined upon making everyone that is poorer than themselves feel his inferiority in order to make him as uncomfortable as possible. And all this is done with an affection of republican simplicity, which makes every arrogance only the more offensive as coming from an equal. In order to make any kind of aristocracy tolerable, Mr. Point said, it is necessary that it should, in some shape or other, either protect the lower classes or never come in contact with them. The aristocracy of the Atlantic cities is unfortunately neither a protector of the lower orders, with whom it's continually wrestling for power, nor is it capable of avoiding incessant contact with them. Hence arises a continual jarring. The rich claiming a rank which the poor are unwilling to grant, and the poor, provoked by the unprofitable arrogance of the rich, opposing to them insolence which a laboring man in Europe would hardly dare to offer to his equals. I wonder, Mr. Iker, who would you say does have the power in America? Mr. King? By and large, I'd say the elected officers, the men who fill public office. What kind of men are they? What kind of men fill public office? Usually, I should say, men whose capacity and character placed them in the second rank. Even Governor Throop of your own state here in New York? Throop's a good enough fellow, but no family, no background, no roots. I do not run for office myself. Public positions, you see, do not yield enough money or enough consideration or enough power to attract the energies of really distinguished men. It was, of course, quite otherwise when our republic was founded. Say, unfortunately, we no longer see great statesmen. The great men employ their energy in other careers. Isn't that true in Boston, Mr. Perry? The fact is, instead of great men, our own Massachusetts House of Representatives is now composed of members who are interested in mackerel inspection, cider presses, proper fencing, and who make their livelihoods raised in potatoes or brew in small beer. And these representatives come for no other purpose than to oppose the more elevated measures proposed by the more enlightened members from Boston. That is a fact that even our city representatives in Boston have so far degraded their station that it is now a disgrace, not an honor, to be delegated by the people. But, Mr. Brooks, what have they done to disgrace themselves? That is soon told, Mr. Beaumont. Every country member comes with a determined purpose to oppose us and above all things to let the Bostonians pay most of the expenses of the state. The positive fact is that few of our representatives are gentlemen. The fact is, Mr. King, that very few gentlemen will nowadays consent to become representatives except it be for the Congress. Even that won't last long if things go on much longer the way they have for the last seven or eight years. Is this Jacksonian democracy? General Jackson, the president, is partly a scoundrel, partly a fool, and partly a mountain bank. But he was elected by the will of the people, Mr. King. The voice of the people is the voice of God? Not, I think, when they called him General Jackson. No, our democracy is of the worst kind. It does not strive for equality, but for supremacy. All we lack was universal suffrage to complete our misery as if the mob had not enough power without it. May I say, the United States is perhaps of all nations the one where ruling gives least glory to the rulers. No single person is responsible for its leadership. Management of government affairs does not depend on a few men. It is the work of all. You must admit, Mr. Kerry, that you gentlemen from Boston are used to certain standards. You are born to riches. No, Mr. Vermont, you mustn't take my attitude arises from my being born to riches, as you put it. Although I do feel I was intended to be a substantial sort of man. I was born in the country, and my father, who was a poor farmer with a large family, used to come to Boston to market. One day, when I was 12 years old, I came with him, hoping to find some work to do to earn my living. We got in early in the morning by driving nearly all night. And while we were in the street waiting for somebody to buy our load, I took a newspaper off a doorstep and began to read it. Almost the first thing I saw was an advertisement of boy wanted. When father had sold his load, we went to look for the place. It was a large house, and I had some street belonging to a merchant. And the boy was wanted to work in the kitchen, help to cook, clean knives, black boots, and wait on tables. The work seemed easy enough in the pay good, so I stayed. The merchant was pleased with me, and after a while took me into the store to do errands and such like work. Then I became a clerk, then a partner. The merchant's daughter was as partial to me as her father always had been, and I got married. And here I am. And all from looking into a newspaper one frosty morning in the streets of Boston. It is one of the great advantages of democracy that a man can change his station. Perhaps, Mr. Perret, you were born one of nature's men of property, just as they say there are nature's noblemen. Do you seriously believe there are? As a matter of fact, I do. Your own George Washington was certainly one. I heard the other day a remarkable story of the war of 1812. British soldiers were sailing up the Potomac in 1814 to set fire to the capital. But as they passed Mount Vernon, the British officers assembled on deck and revelantly uncovered their heads in honor of the great George Washington. Even an enemy respected that man's nobility. Well, gentlemen, I think it's time we joined the ladies. Drink up smartly, douse your cigars. Mrs. King can't abide a brother's smoke getting into a curtain. There time was I used to have to smoke with my head up the chimney even in here. And still, Mr. Tocqueville, you leave tomorrow and you haven't really told us what you think of America. My dear Miss Fulton, I am trying. But the subject is so vast, when we need to write a book. Then do so. I will. And what will you say? Well, that there is nothing absolute in the theoretical value of political institutions. Their efficiency depends almost always on the original circumstances and the social condition of the people to whom they are applied. I see institutions succeed here, which would infallibly turn France upside down. Yet I believe this people is one of the happiest in the world. Your society is a hundred times happier than ours. Yes. The quarrels which are carried out in the newspapers or in society only concern persons. For example, the friends of General Jackson versus the friends of Henry Clay. The more I consider this American society, the more I realize it to be composed of peculiar elements which render imitation very dangerous, if not impossible. Indeed, I wonder if it is otherwise for one people to imitate another or whether one people should ever urge another to imitate them. Don't mention our newspapers, Mr. Tocqueville. They're so bad, they're quite unimportant. Ms. Fulton, I was quite struck by the toast to the press, given at the 42nd anniversary celebration of Tammany several days after I landed in New York. The toast was the press, the channel of public opinion. Who would not submit to its occasional abuse rather than forego the blessing of its freedom? I'm quite sure they are very important. What are very important, Mr. Tocqueville? Newspapers, Mr. Poinsett. There's no doubt of that. Many causes, many crusades, many zealous men look to the press for support and if no newspaper is ready to support them, they start a new one. Really, there is nothing but a newspaper which can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. I think of a newspaper, Mr. Poinsett, as an advisor that does not have to be sought but which comes to you of its own accord and talks to you briefly every day of the common affairs without distracting you from your own private affairs. Yes, and the press enables the people to carry out together the schemes they thought up separately. I think at once of the valuable and widespread temperance associations, America is full of these voluntary associations that speak through American newspapers. Are you speaking of temperance associations? And depress, Mr. Brooks. So newspapers always represent some kind of association? I think so. A newspaper can survive only on the condition of publishing sentiments or principles common to a large number of men. A newspaper therefore always represents an association that is composed of its habitual readers. The newspaper brought them together and the newspaper is still necessary to keep them united. In this way, voluntary associations supported by the press help to diminish the tyranny of the majority, which seems to me one of the most serious disadvantages of democracy. But we have noticed in America that political ideas seem to be invested with what you might almost call a religious aura. Very true, very true, Mr. Beaumont, a religious aura, but not a sectarian one. You're quite right if you feel that to the vast majority of Americans, the Union itself has an almost sacred feeling connected with it. It's been idealized into an object of love and veneration. After all, it's the principle guardian of our liberties. Not the press. Or the vote. Or the jury. All these are the children of the Constitution and of the Union. Why do you mention the jury, Mr. Sparks? It is only made up of ignorant men, it makes mistakes. The men are ignorant only in learning, Mr. Beaumont. As far as the case before them is concerned, they've given the matter sustained attention. They certainly have. Last month when Mr. Tocqueville, Mr. Beaumont and I were traveling by stagecoach across Alabama, we were told by an Alabama lawyer journeying with us that there's no one who isn't carrying arms under his coat. If a man gets into the smallest kind of argument, he's apt to pull out a knife or pistol. Mr. Poyn said, I remember asking, when a man is killed in this fashion, isn't his assassin punished? And the answer this Alabama lawyer gave was, he's always judged and acquitted by the jury, providing there are no very aggravating circumstances. Not a single man of the least note pays for that sort of killing with his life, because every man on the jury feels he may one day find himself in the same situation as the prisoner, and when he remembers that, why he acquits. We were astonished at what the people are doing, the people are judging themselves. Instead of common sense, you get perhaps their prejudices in the matter. They do act from passion, from prejudice sometimes. And then the judge overrules them. No, no, he's not allowed to do that. He can't alter the verdict of the jury. The court of appeal does have the right to question the verdict of a jury, or any motive, whatever, and to send the case back for retrial. But that right is used only in the last extremity, and when the error or the prejudice is glaringly obvious. You see, the people set great store by the judgment of the jury. Even in civil matters? Yes. The people watches with great jealousy, lest any blow be struck at the moral power of the jury. The jury, in fact, is the most direct application of the principle of the sovereignty of the people. I should say that the practical intelligence and political good sense of Americans are mainly attributable to the long use they have made of the jury in civil causes. The jury makes every man think like a judge. It teaches every man to judge his neighbor as he himself would be judged. The jury teaches every man not to recoil before the responsibility of his own actions. By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness, which is the rust of society, and teaches people how to rule well. I agree entirely, Mr. Sparks, the jury, your courtroom system, the federal system are great advantages for American democracy. In France, our courts of justice are called upon to try only the controversies of private individuals. But your Supreme Court summons sovereign powers to its bar. When the clerk in that court calls the docket and announces the state of New York versus the state of Ohio, each party representing millions of men. Gentlemen, the Supreme Court is no ordinary body. Americans have great respect for law. Rightly. In America you obey the law, not only because it is self-imposed, but because it may be changed if it is harmful. Do you think this is the greatest advantage of democracy? No, Ms. Fulton. I think the greatest advantage is that democracy simply tries to contribute to the well-being of the greatest number. But it is difficult. Nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free. Nothing is more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty. Do you think American democracy will flourish? Is it an argument against democratic institutions that they cannot last forever? Might you not just as well despise youth and vigor, because they are doomed to old age and decrepitude? Mr. Riker, I'm not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty you find in America in the 1830s, as in the inadequate securities against tyranny. Then do you think men of property have anything to fear? Those complaints against property, Mr. Pokes, which are so common in Europe, are not heard in America. No. Because every American has property of his own to defend, everyone recognizes the principle upon which he holds it. Say what you like, Mr. Tocqueville. Democracy gives you government by the mob, government by ignorant demagogues. Yet, Mr. Perry, the most remarkable thing is this in the United States. Where public officers have no class interest to promote, the general and constant influence of the government is beneficial, although the individuals who conduct it are frequently unskilled and sometimes contemptible. There is indeed a secret tendency in democratic institutions that makes the exertions of the citizens subservient to the prosperity of the community, in spite of their vices and their mistakes. At last, Mr. Tocqueville, is that what you think of America? I still can't reply in a single word, Ms. Fulton. America is not simple, you know. Nowhere does America exhibit that systematic uniformity so dear to the superficial minds of the day. But we are leaving tomorrow, and I'm going to think about that question for a long time. So, let me leave you with a question for you to think about for a long time. Then what's that? It's simply this, and I address it to every one of you. What do you think of America? You have just heard The Happy Republic, a study in American values, item 13 in the series based on Alexis Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This series, presented by the National Broadcasting Company, was prepared by the Division of General Education of New York University under the direction of George Probe's American historian, produced in the studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation by Andrew Allen, scripted by Lister Sinclair and Georgie Probst, music by Lucio Agostini. Teachers of American history and American civilization and adult education leaders may be interested in using these dramatizations and other materials which are available for study and discussion at a reasonable charge for information right to American Foundation for Continuing Education, Post Office Box 749, Chicago 90, Illinois. Now this has been Grower inviting you to listen next week to These Precious Premises, item 14 on Democracy in America. This program was prerecorded and is an NBC radio network presentation. Be Brand Name Conscious by the Brand Names featured on NBC Radio.