Table Of ContentEMINENT VICTORIANS
ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
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EMINENT
VICTORIANS
ON AMERICAN
DEMOCRACY
THE VIEW FROM ALBION
FRANK PROCHASKA
1
3
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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
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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
