[19] Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 328.
Paine did not, personally, bring the key, but forwarded it from London.
[20] Burke in the House of Commons; _Works_: Burke, i, 451-53.
[21] _Ib._
[22] _Reflections on the Revolution in France_; _ib._, i, 489. Jefferson well stated the American radical opinion of Burke: "The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the Revolution of Mr. Burke....
How mortifying that this evidence of the rottenness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which were the mark of virtue & patriotism." (Jefferson to Vaughan, May 11, 1791; _Works_: Ford, vi, 260.)
[23] Paine had not yet lost his immense popularity in the United States.
While, later, he came to be looked upon with horror by great numbers of people, he enjoyed the regard and admiration of nearly everybody in America at the time his _Rights of Man_ appeared.
[24] _Writings_: Conway, ii, 272.
[25] _Writings_: Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.
[26] _Writings_: Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910.
[27] Compare with Jefferson"s celebrated letter to Mazzei (_infra_, chap. VII). Jefferson was now, however, in Washington"s Cabinet.
[28] Jefferson to Paine, June 19, 1792; _Works_: Ford, vii, 121-22; and see Hazen, 157-60. Jefferson had, two years before, expressed precisely the views set forth in Paine"s _Rights of Man_. Indeed, he stated them in even more startling terms. (See Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789; _ib._, vi, 1-11.)
[29] _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 65-110. John Quincy Adams wrote these admirable essays when he was twenty-four years old. Their logic, wit, and style suggest the writer"s incomparable mother. Madison, who remarked their quality, wrote to Jefferson: "There is more of method ...
in the arguments, and much less of clumsiness & heaviness in the style, than characterizes his [John Adams"s] writings." (Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; _Writings_: Hunt, vi, 56.)
The sagacious industry of Mr. Worthington C. Ford has made these and all the other invaluable papers of the younger Adams accessible, in his _Writings of John Quincy Adams_ now issuing.
[30] Jefferson to Adams, July 17, 1791; _Works_: Ford, vi, 283, and footnote; also see Jefferson to Washington, May 8, 1791; _ib._, 255-56.
Jefferson wrote Washington and the elder Adams, trying to evade his patronage of Paine"s pamphlet; but, as Mr. Ford moderately remarks, "the explanation was somewhat lame." (_Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 65; and see Hazen, 156-57.) Later Jefferson avowed that "Mr. Paine"s principles ... were the principles of the citizens of the U. S."
(Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; _Works_: Ford, vi, 314.) To his intimate friend, Monroe, Jefferson wrote that "Publicola, in attacking all Paine"s principles, is very desirous of involving me in the same censure with the author. I certainly merit the same, for I profess the same principles." (Jefferson to Monroe, July 10, 1791; _ib._, 280.)
Jefferson at this time was just on the threshold of his discovery of and campaign against the "deep-laid plans" of Hamilton and the Nationalists to transform the newborn Republic into a monarchy and to deliver the hard-won "liberties" of the people into the rapacious hands of "monocrats," "stockjobbers," and other "plunderers" of the public. (See next chapter.)
[31] _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 65-66.
[32] Although John Quincy Adams had just been admitted to the bar, he was still a student in the law office of Theophilus Parsons at the time he wrote the Publicola papers.
[33] _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 65-110.
[34] _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, footnote to 107.
"As soon as Publicola attacked Paine, swarms appeared in his defense....
Instantly a host of writers attacked Publicola in support of those [Paine"s] principles." (Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; _Works_: Ford, vi, 314; and see Jefferson to Madison, July 10, 1791; _ib._, 279.)
[35] _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 110.
[36] Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; _Writings_; Hunt, vi, 56; and see Monroe to Jefferson, July 25, 1791; Monroe"s _Writings_: Hamilton, i, 225-26.
[37] A verse of a song by French Revolutionary enthusiasts at a Boston "CIVIC FESTIVAL in commemoration of the SUCCESSES of their French brethren in their glorious enterprise for the ESTABLISHMENT of EQUAL LIBERTY," as a newspaper describes the meeting, expresses in reserved and moderate fashion the popular feeling:--
"See the bright flame arise, In yonder Eastern skies Spreading in veins; "T is pure Democracy Setting all Nations free Melting their chains."
At this celebration an ox with gilded horns, one bearing the French flag and the other the American; carts of bread and two or three hogsheads of rum; and other devices of fancy and provisions for good cheer were the material evidence of the radical spirit. (See _Columbian Centinel_, Jan.
26, 1793.)
[38] It is certain that Madison could not possibly have continued in public life if he had remained a conservative and a Nationalist. (See next chapter.)
[39] Marshall, ii, 239.
[40] Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793; _Works_: Ford, vii, 345.
[41] Marshall, ii, 249-51.
[42] Marshall, ii, 251-52.
[43] Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jan. 7, 1793; _Works_: Ford, vii, 207.
[44] Ma.s.s. Hist. Collections (7th Series), i, 138.
[45] Typical excerpts from Short"s reports to Jefferson are: July 20, 1792: "Those mad & corrupted people in France who under the name of liberty have destroyed their own government [French Const.i.tution of 1791] & disgusted all ... men of honesty & property.... All the rights of humanity ... are daily violated with impunity ... universal anarchy prevails.... There is no succour ... against mobs & factions which have a.s.sumed despotic power."
July 31: "The factions which have lately determined the system ... for violating all the bonds of civil society ... have disgusted all, except the _sans culottes_ ... with the present order of things ... the most perfect & universal disorder that ever reigned in any country. Those who from the beginning took part in the revolution ... have been disgusted, by the follies, injustice, & atrocities of the Jacobins.... All power [is] in the hands of the most mad, wicked & atrocious a.s.sembly that ever was collected in any country."
August 15: "The Swiss guards have been ma.s.sacred by the people & ...
streets literally are red with blood."
October 12: "Their [French] successes abroad are unquestionably evils for humanity. The spirit which they will propagate is so destructive of all order ... so subversive of all ideas of justice--the system they aim at so absolutely visionary & impracticable--that their efforts can end in nothing but despotism after having bewildered the unfortunate people, whom they render free in their way, in violence & crimes, & wearied them with sacrifices of blood, which alone they consider worthy of the furies whom they worship under the names of _Liberte_ & _Egalite_!"
August 24: "I sh^d. not be at all surprized to hear of the present leaders being hung by the people. Such has been the moral of this revolution from the beginning. The people have gone farther than their leaders.... We may expect ... to hear of such proceedings, under the cloak of liberty, _egalite_ & patriotism as would disgrace any _chambre ardente_ that has ever created in humanity shudders at the idea." (Short MSS., Lib. Cong.)
These are examples of the statements to which Jefferson"s letter, quoted in the text following, was the reply. Short"s most valuable letters are from The Hague, to which he had been transferred. They are all the more important, as coming from a young radical whom events in France had changed into a conservative. And Jefferson"s letter is conclusive of American popular sentiment, which he seldom opposed.
[46] Almost at the same time Thomas Paine was writing to Jefferson from Paris of "the Jacobins who act without either prudence or morality."
(Paine to Jefferson, April 20, 1793; _Writings_: Conway, iii, 132.)
[47] Jefferson to Short, Jan. 3, 1793; _Works_: Ford, vii, 202-05. Short had written Jefferson that Morris, then in Paris, would inform him of French conditions. Morris had done so. For instance, he wrote officially to Jefferson, nearly four months before the latter"s letter to Short quoted in the text, that: "We have had one week of unchecked murders, in which some thousands have perished in this city [Paris]. It began with between two and three hundred of the clergy, who would not take the oath prescribed by law. Thence these _executors of speedy justice_ went to the Abbaye, where the prisoners were confined who were at Court on the 10th. Madame de Lamballe ... was beheaded and disembowelled; the head and entrails paraded on pikes through the street, and the body dragged after them," etc., etc. (Morris to Jefferson, Sept. 10, 1792; Morris, i, 583-84.)
[48] Madison to Jefferson, June 17, 1793; _Writings_: Hunt, vi, 133.
[49] Paine to Danton, May 6, 1793; _Writings_: Conway, iii, 135-38.
[50] "Truth," in the _General Advertiser_ (Philadelphia), May 8, 1793.
"Truth" denied that Louis XVI had aided us in our Revolution and insisted that it was the French Nation that had come to our a.s.sistance.
Such was the disregard of the times for even the greatest of historic facts, and facts within the personal knowledge of nine tenths of the people then living.
[51] See _Writings, J. Q. A._: Ford, i, 151.