Calhoun, Tocqueville, and Lincoln on the tyranny of the majority

Résumé du document

As the virtues and advantages of democracy were rediscovered at the end of the eighteenth century, so were its defects and drawbacks. Most authors, including Tocqueville, were faced with an empirical and theoretical vacuum in describing this new regime which began to rise in America and in France after the revolutions of 1776 and 1789. Indeed, neither the Old Regime's monarchies nor Antiquity's precedent of self-government accurately compared with the unforeseen situation which emerged from those democratic uprisings on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was part of the task of the American Constitution's framers to analyze the possible consequences of the people's rule on the future of society and civilization, and so they predicted and planned for numerous political trends which revealed themselves to be true as the years and centuries went by. One particularly important calculation was that of the possibly deleterious effects of democracy on its own rulers. Although it brightly compared with despotism, self-government was no panacea.

James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, was one of the first to warn the American people of the fact that “it is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”1 In fact, this simple but brilliant phrase probably best encompasses all the different conceptions of the tyranny of the majority which appeared in the early nineteenth century.

Indeed, numerous views of the tyranny of the majority existed at the time, and many others have since developed. Some authors refer to the opposition of one numerical mass to another, others talk about the conflicting relations between federal and local governments, while still others are more concerned with freedom of thought. But all truly deal with one and only question: how to create a fair coexistence between those who rule and those who don't in a regime based on the rule of all?

A prominent politician, John C. Calhoun, considered himself a servant of both the General Government – as he called it – and his state, South Carolina. As such, he was involved in the country's politics through several vice-presidential mandates. But his true allegiance was to the local government, which he valued more than the Union itself, for he considered it to represent the American people's fundamental right to liberty. This was evidenced by his decision to retire from his position as vice-president in 1832 and join the Senate where, he believed, his actions would have greater effect.

It is no mystery, therefore, why Calhoun dedicated his time to the expression of his views on the dangers of what he perceived as being the tyranny of the General Government over the American states. Both in his Disquisition on Government and in his Fort Hill Address, the author and politician described his fears for the future of the South, a region which he could see was losing influence in the face of the growing and industrious Northern states.

Extraits

[...] One must also bear in mind the fact that Tocqueville's view of the minority is strongly biased by his aristocratic descent. While Calhoun fears for the South against the North, Tocqueville in transposing his ideas to the French system is anxious for his caste, which has already been brutally exterminated under the fanatic revolutionary Robespierre's Regime of Terror, between 1793 and 1795. It is for this reason that Tocqueville praises what he sees as the two main guardians against an abusive tyranny of the majority: namely, the absence of a centralized administration and the existence of a conservative class, that of lawyers. [...]

[...] Horwitz, “Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority,” The Review of Politics, Vol.28, No.3 (July 1966), pp. [...]

[...] If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”[1] In fact, this simple but brilliant phrase probably best encompasses all the different conceptions of the tyranny of the majority which appeared in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, numerous views of the tyranny of the majority existed at the time, and many others have since developed. Some authors refer to the opposition of one numerical mass to another, others talk about the conflicting relations between federal and local governments, while still others are more concerned with freedom of thought. [...]

[...] In addressing the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, in 1838, he expresses the need for strengthening the rule of law and its institutions in the face of a growing tendency to condone mob rule. Here, we see no trace of an overwhelming homogeneity within society. In fact, Lincoln's description of recent excesses by the majority is completely different from that of Tocqueville: not only does his majority actively oppress the country's minority, but it does so without going through institutional channels. [...]

[...] In particular, Calhoun praises the states of Virginia and, his own, South Carolina, for their courage in standing against the General Government. He is one of the numerous advocates of a restrictive distribution of powers between local and federal governments. As he states: preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of our Union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends.”[9] In order to protect this essential freedom inscribed in the Constitution, Calhoun declares that the country shall go as far as to reach a full deadlock, if necessary. [...]