ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, JOHN STUART MILL AND THOMAS CARLYLE ON DEMOCRACY GEORGE HENRY WILLIAM CURRIE SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 1 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I, George Henry William Currie, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Date: 2 ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to examine and compare the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle on modern democracy. Throughout their works, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle showed a profound engagement with the phenomenon of democracy in their era. It was the crux around which their wider reflections on the period revolved. Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle located democracy’s causes deep in history. They defined its contours broadly and contextualized it within ancient and modern notions of democracy. Each approached democracy with a significant degree of scepticism and outlined its negative consequences for their contemporaries. But, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle also offered solutions to the problems they saw in the modern democratic world, many of which were novel. The present thesis suggests that in these areas there exists a profound similarity between the ideas of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. It has become commonplace to compare the thought of Tocqueville and Mill. Equally, it has become just as commonplace to draw a sharp division between the ideas of Tocqueville and Mill, on the one hand, and Carlyle, on the other. However, the similarities between their respective conceptions of democracy, its causes, problems and the solutions these men offered suggest that such a division could be arbitrary and, consequently, allow us to reassess the intellectual relationship of these three men. 3 CONTENTS Acknowledgments 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 8 Chapter One Revolution Past, Present and 41 Future Chapter Two The Coming of Democracy 75 Chapter Three The Contours of Democracy 106 Chapter Four On the Problems of a Democratic 137 Political State Chapter Five Democracy and Society: The 165 Decline of the Individual Chapter Six Reconfiguring State and Society 208 Chapter Seven Securing Society: The Utility of 252 Religion Chapter Eight Reforming the Individual: The 286 Politics of Education Conclusion 318 Bibliography 329 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary College, University of London for the generous support it provided. Without the funding the Department gave me, it would not have been possible to write this thesis. I would also like to thank Professors Jeremy Jennings and Michael Kenny for supervising my research. The comments and criticism they provided were precise and enlightening. 5 ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations have been used in the footnotes of this thesis in order to make the source of citations clearer than it would otherwise be. CW followed by the volume number in roman numerals refers to The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Those that have been cited are listed below. Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays. Volume II - The Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (Books I-II). Volume III - Principles of Political Economy Part II. Volume IV - Essays on Economics and Society Part I. Volume VIII - A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive Part II. Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society. Volume XI - Essays on Philosophy and the Classics. Volume XII - The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848 Part I. Volume XIII - The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848 Part II. Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I. Volume XV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part II. Volume XVIII - Essays on Politics and Society Part I. Volume XIX - Essays on Politics and Society Part 2. Volume XX - Essays on French History and Historians. 6 Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I. Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV. CE followed by the volume number in roman numerals refers to The Works of Thomas Carlyle in Thirty Volumes Centenary Edition. Those that have been cited are listed below. Volume VI Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches I. Volume XX Latter-Day Pamphlets. Volume XXVII Critical and Miscellaneous Essays II. Volume XXVIII Critical and Miscellaneous Essays III. Volume XXIX Critical and Miscellaneous Essays IV. Carlyle Letters Online followed by a web address refers to letters from The Carlyle Letters Online, an online collection of the collected letters on Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane Welsh Carlyle. The links cited were correct as of the 5th May 2015. 7 INTRODUCTION Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Thomas Carlyle (1795- 1881) lie at the root of modern British attempts to demarcate the contours of modern democracy. Numerous contemporary thinkers were grappling with the emergence of democracy in Western Europe and the United States. However, influential thinkers in the sphere of British political thought reflected far less deeply on the historical significance and ethical foundations of democracy prior to the intervention of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. Formerly, the idea of democracy had been little more than a rallying cry – a banner behind which radicals of all shapes and sizes stood arrayed against a range of reactionary and conservative forces. Democracy was a little more than a rhetorical device that was poorly defined. Traditionally, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle have been separated and understood through the prism of different political traditions. To a large extent, this division is just. On many political and social issues, they held opposing views. Even Tocqueville and Mill, two figures that it has become commonplace to compare and, almost, unite intellectually, disagreed on many areas of political and social practice. However, when considered in the light of the ideas each held about democracy this division seems, to a large extent, to be arbitrary. These men shared a singular and highly similar understanding of democracy, its meaning, history and problems. Moreover, although they did not suggest similar measures about how to solve the difficulties presented by the onset of democracy, their ideas on this subject were often grounded on similar principles. Fundamentally, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle were united in their analysis of democracy and this marks them out and connects them together. 8 The novelty of these men was to place the idea of democracy in a richer ethical context. In its broadest terms, the present thesis is an account of the efforts these men made to comprehend the birth of the modern democracy, its meaning and its consequences. It is, therefore, an attempt to understand how they re-imagined democracy and gave it a fuller ethical identity, which incorporated diverse historical and contemporary strands of thought. This was particularly significant in the British context, where ideas about democracy were much less sophisticated than those that were circulating in continental European spheres. This thesis demonstrates the extent to which British thinkers benefitted from engagement with continental European ideas about democracy. The impact of these ideas, as the choice of Mill and Carlyle shows, diffused throughout different British political traditions. This has not been sufficiently recognized in the existing literature. In comparing Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, we can start to see ideas about democracy emerge that are characteristically modern and, more significantly for the purposes of the present thesis, we can also understand how continental European notions of democracy exerted an influence over the development of British conceptions of this idea. Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle each believed that the modern era was signally democratic. The choice between democracy and some alternative system of politics and society was denied to Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, not to mention their contemporaries. The modern age into which their generation had been born was not isolated from the stream of history. It was squarely placed, according to Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, in the midst of a protean historical sequence at the end of which lay democracy. In fact, these three men saw their era as the dénouement of this process. The French Revolution had announced the triumph of democracy, but it was merely the final blow to an antiquated system of politics and society. 9 The emphasis that their works place on democracy’s advent is equalled only by their analysis of it as a phenomenon. Democracy connoted a number of distinct institutions, ideas and means of interaction in the eyes of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. Principally, they divided it into two forms – the social and the political. It is through this division that the analysis of democracy in their works proceeds. Unsurprisingly, the separation of the political and social spheres of democracy that Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle engineered was also reflected in the criticisms they levelled at it. For, democracy appeared to these men to be neither benign nor entirely desirable.