124

INFLUENCE OF PARIS ON JEFFERSON.

manifesting themselves in the ancient régime, is a spectacle interesting in itself, and which deserves to be carefully studied if we desire thoroughly to appreciate the part which Jefferson afterwards played in his country, at the head of the democratic party. It was in Paris he learned to abhor the whole social organisation of Europe, and everything appertaining to it then still existing in America; it was in Paris that he learned to hate the power both of the aristocracy and clergy, which till then he had opposed without any irritation; it was in Paris that, swept along by the philosophical torrent of the eighteenth century, this naturally adventurous intelligence became audacious to a degree bordering on madness. Everything he sees is called in question. The great problems of political science are before him, and he enters upon their consideration with a presumptuous intrepidity and a dogmatic assurance, arising as much from levity as strength of mind, and indicating more taste than aptitude for philosophical generalisation. He wishes to render an account to himself of his ideas, his passions, his instincts, and he exaggerates them by giving them expression through sharp and questionable maxims to which he has the good sense not to attach too much importance himself. He abandons himself to chimerical and anarchical theories, without, in the presence of facts, ever entirely losing sight, whether in council or in action, of that political intelligence and that clear comprehension of liberty, which he had received as a heritage from his forefathers, and of which all French radicals have been destitute.

He reached Paris on August 6, 1784, bringing with him his instructions. Franklin could not resist treating them with a little irony:

UNITED STATES IN BAD ODOUR.

125

You will see,' he wrote to John Adams, that a good deal of business is cut out for us - treaties to be made with, I think, twenty powers in two years so that we are not likely to eat the bread of idleness; and that we may not surfeit by eating too much, our masters have diminished our allowance. I commend their economy, and shall imitate it by diminishing my expense. Our too liberal entertainment of our countrymen here has been reported at home by our guests, to our disadvantage, and has given offence. They must be contented for the future, as I am, with plain beef and pudding. The readers of Connecticut newspapers ought not to be troubled with any more accounts of our extravagance. For my own part, if I could sit down to dinner on a piece of their excellent salt pork and pumpkin, I would not give a farthing for all the luxuries of Paris.'

But it was for the researches of French intelligence that Jefferson was most eager. He very soon saw that he must look to them for compensation for many mistaken hopes, and as substitutes for the pleasure of cutting a great figure, and accomplishing great things during his embassy. The United States were at that time justly decried everywhere. Congress was paying its creditors even less than its agents; the American merchants were imitating congress; the American courts of justice were protecting the merchants; the State legislatures were backing the courts, were censuring the federal government for not approving their sympathy with bankrupts, were refusing to obey its requisitions, and were usurping its powers without at all turning them to better account. It might be fairly believed, and it was believed in Europe, that there was no longer in America either government or justice. The moment was certainly not an opportune one for forming alliances. In spite of the respect which

John Adams's Works, vol. viii. P. 208.

126

DEFECTS IN AMERICAN CHARACTER.

Franklin everywhere commanded, and which he reflected to a certain degree upon his colleagues, the position of the American commissioners was often a false and disagreeable one. Assailed by the claims of French officers who were still waiting for their pay; challenged by England and France to explain the violation of the financial and diplomatic engagements which the Articles of Confederation* empowered congress to make but not to execute; taunted by the London newspapers, desiring to know if they were sufficiently numerous to represent thirteen small rival republics; exposed even in the drawing rooms of Paris to hear their government reproached for its incompetence and bad faith, and their country for its state of dissension and anarchy, they had scarcely anything else left them than ardently to wish that the excess of the evil might make their fellow citizens sensible of the necessity of a remedy and the urgency of reforming their constitution:

...

'Among many good qualities,' declared Jefferson, which my countrymen possess, some of a different character unhappily mix themselves. The most remarkable are indolence, extravagance, and infidelity to their engagements.†. . . . American reputation in Europe is not such as to be flattering to its citizens... . We do not find it easy to make commercial arrangements in Europe: there is a want of confidence in us.§... Two circumstances are particularly objected to us the non-payment of our debts, and the want of energy in our

*This was the name of the federal convention which preceded the actual constitution of the United States.

† Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. p. 193; Letter to A. Donald, July 28, 1787.

Ibid. vol. i. p. 518; Letter to A. Stuart, January 25, 1786. § Ibid. vol. i. p. 509; Letter to Major-General Green, January 12, 1786.

SUPERIORITY OF THE AMERICANS.

127

government.*. . . I can add with truth, that it was not till these symptoms appeared in America that I have been able to discover the smallest token of respect in Europe.'†

Language like this argues a great boldness of selfrebuke, but men of Anglo-Saxon race are not very prone to push their national humility too far, and, after making the most painful avowals, we may always expect to see an abrupt reaction of patriotic pride in them. In spite of Europe and his own dissatisfaction, Jefferson was still convinced of the superiority of his country over every other :

'If all the evils which can arise among us from the republican form of government, from this day to the day of judgement, could be put into a scale against what this country suffers from its monarchical form in a week, or England in a month, the latter would preponderate. Consider the contents of the Red Book' in England, or the 'Almanach Royale' of France, and say what a people gain by monarchy.... There is modesty often, which does itself injury: our countrymen possess this. They do not know their own superiority.'§

A rash exaggeration, indeed, which in any other mouth would have passed for irony! But Jefferson was quite serious in it, and so anxious was he to find arguments in support of his theory, that he appealed in proof of it to the reforms as well as to the abuses of the ancient régime, to the edict of 1787 restoring civil rights to Protestants as well as to the revocation of the

* Jefferson's Works, vol. i. p. 518; Letter to A. Stuart, January 25, 1786.

† Ibid. vol. i. p. 413; Letter to James Madison, September 1,

1785.

Ibid. vol. ii. p. 221; Letter to M. Hawkins, August 4, 1787. § Ibid. vol. ii. p. 350; Letter to William Rutlege, February 2,

十

128 JEFFERSON PREDICTS THE GREATNESS OF AMERICA.

edict of Nantes; and instead of thanking Louis XVI. for the first step he had made towards the principle of religious liberty, he took a haughty pleasure in showing how much France fell short of the point which America had reached:

'The long-expected edict of the Protestants at length appears here. Its analysis is this: It is an acknowledgement (hitherto withheld by the laws) that Protestants can beget children, and that they can die, and be offensive, unless buried. It does not give them permission to think, to speak, or to worship. It enumerates the humiliations to which they shall continue to be unjustly exposed. What are we to think of the condition of the human mind in a country where such a wretched thing as this has thrown the state into convulsions; and how must we bless our own situation in a country the most illiterate peasant of which is a Solomon compared with the authors of this law?"*

It was not only of the liberty of his country, and of the political spirit of his fellow citizens, that Jefferson was proud. At a moment when so many superficial observers were regarding the American revolution as an abortion, and were doubting whether the new republic could ever obtain admission into the family of nations, he had confidence in the future of the United States, and he spoke of their power of expansion with all the arrogance of an American annexionist of our own days:

Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from which all America, north and south, is to be peopled. We should take care, too, not to think it for the interest of that great

* Jefferson's Works.-[Surely Jefferson might naturally and pardonably exult that the religious tolerance of his own country was disfigured by no such narrowness.]