Tocqueville and Beaumont: Aristocratic Liberalism in Democratic Times

157 Pages·2018·1.26 MB·English

by  Andreas Hess (auth.)

TOCQUEVILLE
AND BEAUMONT
Aristocratic
Liberalism in
Democratic Times
Andreas Hess
Tocqueville and Beaumont
Andreas Hess
Tocqueville and
Beaumont
Aristocratic Liberalism in Democratic Times
Andreas Hess
School of Sociology
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-319-69666-9 ISBN 978-3-319-69667-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69667-6
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C
ontents
1 Introduction: A Two-Man Research Machine 1
2 The Birth Pangs of American Democracy 19
3 In Search of New Liberal Politics: Reconciling Equality
with Liberty 49
4 Republican by Necessity: The Revolution of 1848
and Beyond 89
5 What Remains? 131
References 143
Index 147
v
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: A Two-Man Research Machine
Abstract Having become acquainted during legal internships in Versailles,
during their nine months travel in America (1830/31) the friendship of
Tocqueville and Beaumont metamorphosed effectively into a two-man
‘research machine’ concerned with the question of what the emergence of
modern democracy in America entailed for France, Europe and beyond.
Their joint trip to America was only the beginning; other travels would
follow, to England and Ireland, and later to Algeria. Tocqueville’s and
Beaumont’s lives became entwined, not just by travelling but also by writ-
ing together, by discussing each other’s work and by ‘politicking’ jointly
in the French National Assembly – and after 1848 in the Constituent
Assembly. There was an agreed division of labour and joint undertakings,
both showing consistent overlapping interests and concerns but also dif-
ferent emphases in their work despite the many commonalities. Tocqueville
looked at the whole and aimed at grand-scale comparisons. Beaumont was
impressed with his friend’s ability to look at the wider context but appeared
to be more focused and able to concentrate on specific themes; he was also
in many ways the darker shadow of Tocqueville, concerned with those
who had been left behind by the emergence of modern democracy.
Keywords American and French democracies • Democratic revolution •
Aristocratic liberalism • Tocqueville • Beaumont
© The Author(s) 2018 1
A. Hess, Tocqueville and Beaumont,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69667-6_1
2 A. HESS
The main aim of this book is to understand the birth pangs of modern
democracy after the ‘Democratic Revolutions’ (R. R. Palmer) – in essence
the American and the French Revolutions – whose reverberations, knock-
on effects and unresolved problems could be felt for much of the nine-
teenth century and beyond, in many countries. I maintain that the work
and political careers of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont
are a fascinating lens through which those democratic revolutions and
their consequences, contradictions, problems and unfulfilled promises can
be studied.1
There exist numerous studies dealing with Tocqueville (1805–59) and
his work: two long biographies (De Jardin 1988; Brogan 2006), many
monographs and even more articles that discuss Tocqueville’s Democracy
in America or his Ancien Régime in great detail, not to speak of the many
titles that address other aspects of Tocqueville’s work or that relate to
themes and topics addressed in Tocqueville’s pioneering studies (see, for
example, the various contributions gathered in The Cambridge Companion
to Tocqueville (2006) or The Tocqueville Review (1979–)).
Considerably less has been published about the contributions of
Tocqueville’s friend, co-traveller, co-writer and life-long friend, Gustave
de Beaumont (1802–66), and even less about their collaboration.
A recent collection of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s writings on America
(Tocqueville and Beaumont 2010) attempts to examine their joint efforts
in studying the emerging American democracy. It gathers some of the
central texts of the two friends in one volume. However, while the publi-
cation makes their joint output more easily available, it is rather disap-
pointing in terms of the interpretation of the nature of the collaboration
between the two men. Once again, the focus is, if at all, on their differ-
ences, despite the overwhelming evidence of shared preoccupations and
work almost through their entire lives. Such insistence on the differences
instead of the similarities and overlaps neglects the arguments made in the
pioneering work of Drescher (1964, 1968), and more recently reasserted
in Drolet (2003), Garvin and Hess (2006, 2009) and Hess (2009), all of
whom have pointed out that the commonalities and collaboration between
the two friends need to be taken more seriously and studied in greater
detail. Such emphasis does of course not neglect the real differences
between the two writers; it just serves as a reminder to give credit to joint
efforts where credit is due.
INTRODUCTION: A TWO-MAN RESEARCH MACHINE 3
The Case for a JoinT sTudy
If this description has any validity – and I maintain throughout this book
that it does – it makes little sense to celebrate Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America (1835/1840) without considering Beaumont’s darker and more
sceptical pendant Marie, Or, Slavery in the United States (1835) or giving
his Ireland study (1839) its due. As shown in the three-volume correspon-
dence of Tocqueville and Beaumont in the former’s Oeuvres Complètes
(1967, in translation partly available in Tocqueville 1985 and 2006 and
Tocqueville and Beaumont 2010), every sentence, every paragraph of any
of the books Tocqueville and Beaumont ever wrote, be it as sole author or
together (as was the case in the Penitentiary study), was read by the other
and discussed between the two friends. The same applies to their coopera-
tion as members of the French National Assembly where they worked
together on several issues, ranging from the abolition of slavery, through
debates relating to colonial and imperial policies to matters of social
reform. Similar synergies are detectable when Tocqueville and Beaumont
worked in the Constitutional Commission after the 1848 Revolution and
later when Tocqueville became foreign minister and Beaumont French
ambassador to London and Vienna. After their enforced retirement fol-
lowing Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1851 they remained in close con-
tact. When Tocqueville was struggling with tuberculosis Beaumont joined
him in Cannes and took care of him. And even after Tocqueville’s death
Beaumont remained deeply committed to their friendship: he wrote the
first memoir of Tocqueville and also edited the collected works of his
deceased friend (Tocqueville 1862).
This text is the first concise attempt to see Tocqueville and Beaumont
as partners in their attempt to study the birth pangs of modern democracy
and to point out each other’s qualities and strengths while also addressing
some of their different emphases. Albeit relatively short and in conformity
with the format of the Pivot Series in which it appears, this is, at least as far
as I am aware, the first study that attempts to give full credit to the
collaborative nature of the extraordinary two-man ‘research machine’
(Tocqueville 2010: 29). It tries to de-mystify and debunk the role of
Tocqueville as the ‘sole genius’ by paying due respect to Beaumont’s con-
tribution or to Beaumont as a listener, correspondent, or sometimes just
simply as a sounding board for ideas. It is, to put it differently, about get-
ting the balance right rather than prolonging the myth of the solitary
‘democratic sphynx’.
4 A. HESS
This book intends, first, to argue in favour of the potential interpretative
benefits when Tocqueville and Beaumont are seen in context and in their
interaction. Second, it tries to reap the advantages from such a vantage
point, particularly when discussing the problems, contradictions and hopes
associated with the development of modern democracy. What will hopefully
become clear in the context is that Beaumont’s efforts and writings func-
tion as a kind of corrective mechanism, able to throw light onto Tocqueville’s
occasional blind spots and silences. This latter point is no arbitrary post-
factum construction or a reprojection; it simply takes seriously the division
of labour on which Tocqueville and Beaumont agreed from an early stage.
The two friends knew about their similarities and differences; that’s why
they agreed on both collaboration and their division of labour.
However, before delving into the past one concern or objection should
perhaps be dealt with and answered right from the start. Tocqueville knew
not only Beaumont but had other friends and acquaintances with whom
he was in regular contact, for example Louis de Kergorlay, John Stuart
Mill and William Nassau Senior. So why focus just on the relationship
between Tocqueville and Beaumont? The answer is that it was Beaumont,
and only Beaumont, with whom Tocqueville not only shared some crucial
experiences such as their joint travels to America, England and Ireland,
and later Algeria but also the experiences of a legal apprenticeship at
Versailles, an important joint publication (the Penitentiary book about
American prisons), a simultaneous rise to fame (both were awarded the
Montyon Prize for their publications, and both were later appointed to
the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques); furthermore, both had
political careers in the French Assembly and later in the Constituent
Assembly, both entered the diplomatic service (Tocqueville as Foreign
Minister and Beaumont as ambassador, first to London and later to
Vienna), and both withdrew simultaneously from politics and public life in
1851. After Tocqueville’s death Beaumont would become the first editor
of Tocqueville’s collected writings, an indicator of their intellectual prox-
imity, their joint work and their shared interests. Finally, there is the life-
long exchange of ideas and letters as testified by the already mentioned
three volumes of correspondence between Beaumont and Tocqueville
(now part of the Gallimard edition of Tocqueville’s collected writings and
also partly available in translation in various editions).
In their letters, each showed admiration for the other. On board the
vessel that took the two friends to America Beaumont wrote to his father
about his travel companion: “There is great loftiness in his ideas and great
INTRODUCTION: A TWO-MAN RESEARCH MACHINE 5
nobility in his soul. The better I know him, the more I like him. Our lives
are now joined together. It is clear that our destinies are and will always be
linked. This tie enlivens our friendship and brings us closer together.” And
in anticipation of what was to come he notes “we are meditating ambitious
projects” (both quotes in Tocqueville 2010: 6). Reflecting about their
common experiences and their differences in terms of passions and inter-
ests and how, related to that, their minds worked, Tocqueville commented
in a letter to Beaumont written many years later, in 1839, at a time when
Tocqueville had put the finishing touches on the second volume of
Democracy and Beaumont had just finished his Ireland book: “Your mind
is indivisible. You must not pity yourself too much for this, because it is a
sign of strength. You are always ablaze, but you catch fire for only one
thing at a time, and you do not have any curiosity or interest in anything
else. It is for that reason that within the greatest intimacy, we have always
had points at which we did not touch and never reached each other. I have
an insatiable, ardent curiosity, which is always carrying me to the right and
to the left of my way. Yours leads you just as impetuously, but always toward
a single object.” A few lines further down Tocqueville asks, clearly puzzled
by the conundrum of their joint efforts but also their different approaches:
“Which of us is right in the way he conducts his mind? In truth, I have no
idea.” He concludes: “I believe that the result will always be that you will
know better than I, and I more than you” (in Tocqueville 1985: 130f).
The friendship seemed to have been clouded over only once, and then
only for a few weeks, in 1844. The disagreement developed over an educa-
tion bill, which Tocqueville had opposed in the French Assembly, a stance
which he expected Beaumont to follow publicly. Beaumont did in fact
support Tocqueville’s position but also tried to remain faithful to the edi-
torial line of his paper Le Siècle, which took a different line than Le
Commerce, the paper Tocqueville had used as an outlet. Through the
intervention of various friends and acquaintances the two were soon rec-
onciled. Each acknowledged afterwards that the dispute had taken them
too far in their passions; the disagreement ended with both asking each
other for understanding and forgiveness.
There was simply nobody else in Tocqueville’s life who would have had
the same kind of influence and sense of friendship or would have had that
kind of sustained joined experience and exchange, and perhaps most
importantly, mutual trust. This, to repeat, does not mean that there
weren’t also some differences on occasion, as for example acknowledged
in the letters mentioned above. However, the point is that hinting at such