Eminent Victorians on American democracy : the view from Albion PDF
Preview Eminent Victorians on American democracy : the view from Albion
EMINENT VICTORIANS ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY This page intentionally left blank EMINENT VICTORIANS ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY THE VIEW FROM ALBION FRANK PROCHASKA 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Frank Prochaska 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Crown copyright material is reproduced under Class Licence Number C01P0000148 with the permission of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland First published 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942648 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN978–0–19–964061–4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Preface Distance lends perspective. In a period undergoing another impasse in American politics, when rival priesthoods see the Constitution in the light kindled at their particular altars, it is perhaps worth revisiting what leading Victorian thinkers had to say about the most advanced democracy of their day. A great many Britons observed America in the nineteenth century, some on their travels, others from their studies; and a fair number of them play a part in this survey, from Harriet Mar- tineau and Mrs Trollope to A. V. Dicey and William Lecky. But John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, Sir Henry Maine, and James Bryce take precedence here. They have been chosen rather than other protago- nists not simply because they were ‘Eminent Victorians’, to borrow Lytton Strachey’s phrase, but because they engaged more seriously in constitutional issues than writers such as Charles Dickens, wrote more extensively on America than scholars such as Lord Acton, and left a critique of the United States government that illuminates its political malaise. Much opinion of the United States from Europe in the nineteenth century may now come as a shock to Americans, whose pride in their uniqueness rarely warms to analysis from abroad. There have been exceptions, of course, the most notable being Alexis de Toc- queville, who may have been a more acceptable critic because he was French and who shrewdly leavened his reproaches with lashings of praise in Democracy in America. Tocqueville’s masterwork, which appeared at the dawn of the Victorian age, framed much of the Brit- ish discussion about American democracy. Mill, Bagehot, Maine, and Bryce all came under its infl uence, though at different periods from different perspectives and with different responses. Though generally less fl attering and speculative than the Frenchman, they were no less incisive. Moreover, they dealt with a host of issues, most importantly the Civil War and its aftermath, which Tocqueville did not live to experience. vi preface While their political opinions varied, the Victorians highlighted in this study agreed about important aspects of American government, among them the failings of its electoral politics and the poor calibre of its leaders. All of them rejected the idea of American ‘exceptionalism’, which has never appealed to the British, who had a proprietary inter- est in seeing continuity from the government of the former colonies. To Victorian commentators, the bonds of kinship, law, and language were of great signifi cance; and while they did not see the United States as having a providential destiny, they rallied to an ‘Anglo-American exceptionalism’, which refl ected their sense of a shared history. Con- stitutional affi nities between the two nations, often ignored by Ameri- cans, were crucial to their analyses. What distinguishes them from contemporary American commentators was a willingness to examine the US Constitution dispassionately, at a time when it had become a sacred document in America and consequently little subject to critical observation. The Victorians were part of a new era in the study of British and European politics, in which a fundamental issue was the shifting bal- ance of power from aristocratic to popular government. While all the writers surveyed here engaged in the debate over democracy, they were not all on the side of reform. America was signifi cant to them because it raised universal questions about political behaviour and was seen to anticipate the future of Europe. Apart from their perceptive examination of issues ranging from the US Constitution to its practical application, from the Supreme Court and party enmity, the Victorians made a memorable contribution to what may be seen as the ongoing Anglo-American debate over the origins of democracy. America has changed dramatically since they wrote, yet much of their criticism remains remarkably prescient today, if only because the US govern- ment retains so much of its original, eighteenth-century character. This book will have served its purpose if it encourages readers to return to the writings of these exceptional thinkers, whose trenchant commentary on America punctures several modern-day myths. * * * This project began life in New Haven and ended in Oxford. I am thus indebted to friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic for this most transatlantic of subjects. As ever, librarians have made my researches congenial, most notably at the Sterling Memorial Library at preface vii Yale, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the Library of Somerville College Oxford, which houses a unique collection of the books of John Stuart Mill. My warmest thanks go to John Sainty for his careful reading of the manuscript, and to Geoffrey Shaw, my former student at Yale and now a Rhodes Scholar, who provided a perceptive commen- tary at a timely moment in the revision process. This is my fi fth book with the Oxford University Press, and its expert readers provided valuable observations and criticisms for which I am most grateful. Particular thanks go to Sophie Goldsworthy, Christopher Wheeler, Emma Barber, Jane Robson, and Stephanie Ireland of the OUP, whose good offi ces brought the book to fruition. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Alice and our children Elizabeth and William for their advice and encouragement. They support me in dedicating the book to a treasured friend, with whom I hope to raise many a glass in the years ahead. F.P. Oxford, 2011 This page intentionally left blank Contents 1. Introduction: Transatlantic Attitudes 1 2. John Stuart Mill: The Tyranny of Conformity 23 3. Walter Bagehot: The Tyranny of the Constitution 47 4. Sir Henry Maine: Democracy Denied 72 5. James Bryce: Anglo-Saxon Democracy 96 6. Conclusion: Anglo-American Exceptionalism 122 Notes 143 Index 165
The list of books you might like
