Apéndice 9. Diario de A. V. Dicey de los estados unidos (1870) (fragmento)

• Pages: 837-840
• Author: Javier Carlos Díaz Rico

DICEY Y LA ESCUELA DE DERECHO DE OXFORD (1835-1922)

837

APÉNDICE 9

DIARIO DE A. V. DICEY DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS (1870) [FRAGMENTO]

[Contenido en Robert S. Rait (ed.), Memorials of Albert Venn Dicey, Londres,

Macmillan, 1925, pp. 69−74].

THE DEFECT OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

The main defect of American Democracy is the want of appreciation for spe-

cial training or talents. There is, as far as I can see, no ground to attribute to it

any envy or jealousy. Whether such a feeling ever marked democracies is I should

think very doubtful −it certainly does not seem to me to be found in America. The

feeling is rather that one man is as good as another in every respect, i.e. that there

is no dierence between the qualications of people for performing any duty or

lling any oce. The source of this is two-fold.

1. That there really is among men generally a greater equality of talent than

many persons or modes of thought will admit, and that this equality is as a matter

of fact more nearly reached in America, where everybody has some education and

no one has very much, than in other countries.

2. It is a natural confusion to confuse equal rights with equal capacities. Hence

several curious results −e.g. the election to judicial oces − the choice of unt

public servants − the want of all feeling for what, for want of a better name, one

may call special knowledge.

We particularly noted, even among able lawyers, the very slight interest in or

appreciation of Law as any kind of science. Hence I suspect, though on this point

I have not knowledge enough to speak with any certainty, the want of ‘specialists’

of all kinds, e.g. Doctors or Surgeons of special experience. This defect certainly

appears in their foreign politics. They have no class who are specially trained to

them. There is, for instance, no American of respectable position whom Grant

might not make a Minister in England, and probably without any great popular

disapproval. Grant himself is an example of the same tendency. His only special

knowledge is that of a soldier, yet he was almost forced into the Presidency, and

would be almost certainly re-elected. It is curious to notice that the one excep-

tion to this seems to be that of the army. The United States has a special training

school, and it is said a very good one, at Westpoint. It has been remarked that

though there was a great tendency during the war to appoint civilians, yet on

neither side did a single person come to eminence as a general who had not had

special military training. This throws light on the nature of modern warfare − for

probably there never was a war which seemed to give so fair a chance to a civi-

lian as did the war of the Rebellion. It is quite possible to overrate the claims of