The French people were opposing voting by orders instead of by persons,
and on 27 December 1788 the Parliament declared that position.
Jefferson wrote about that in his Autobiography, and then he described
what was happening in the French Revolution until he left Paris on 8 October 1789.
Here is his account:
A Report of Mr. Necker to the King, of about the same date,
contained other very important concessions.
1. That the King could neither lay a new tax,
nor prolong an old one.
2. It expressed a readiness to agree on
the periodical meeting of the States.
3. To consult on the necessary restriction
on lettres de Cachet.
And 4. how far the Press might be made free.
5. It admits that the States are to appropriate
the public money; and
6. that Ministers shall be responsible for public expenditures.
And these concessions came from
the very heart of the King.
He had not a wish but for the good of the nation,
and for that object no personal sacrifice would
ever have cost him a moment’s regret.
But his mind was weakness itself, his constitution timid,
his judgment null, and without sufficient firmness
even to stand by the faith of his word.
His Queen too, haughty and bearing no contradiction,
had an absolute ascendency over him; and around her were
rallied the King’s brother d’Artois, the court generally, and
the aristocratic part of his ministers, particularly Breteuil,
Broglio, Vauguyon, Foulon, Luzerne, men whose principles
of government were those of the age of Louis XIV.
Against this host the good counsels of Necker, Montmorin,
St. Priest, although in unison with the wishes
of the King himself, were of little avail.
The resolutions of the morning formed under their advice,
would be reversed in the evening by
the influence of the Queen & court.
But the hand of heaven weighed heavily indeed on the
machinations of this junto; producing collateral incidents,
not arising out of the case, yet powerfully co-exciting
the nation to force a regeneration of its government,
and overwhelming with accumulated difficulties
this liberticide resistance.
For, while laboring under the want of money for even
ordinary purposes, in a government which required
a million of livres a day, and driven to the last ditch
by the universal call for liberty, there came on a winter
of such severe cold, as was without example in the
memory of man or in the written records of history.
The Mercury was at times 50dg below the freezing
point of Fahrenheit and 22dg below that of Reaumur.
All out-door labor was suspended, and the poor without
the wages of labor were of course without either bread or fuel.
The government found its necessities aggravated by that
of procuring immense quantities of fire-wood, and of
keeping great fires at all the cross-streets around which
the people gathered in crowds to avoid perishing with cold.
Bread too was to be bought and distributed daily gratis until
a relaxation of the season should enable the people to work:
and the slender stock of bread-stuff had for some time
threatened famine, and had raised that article
to an enormous price.
So great indeed was the scarcity of bread that from the
highest to the lowest citizen, the bakers were permitted to
deal but a scanty allowance per head, even to those who
paid for it; and in cards of invitation to dine in the richest
houses the guest was notified to bring his own bread.
To eke out the existence of the people every person who
had the means was called on for a weekly subscription,
which the Curés collected and employed in providing
messes for the nourishment of the poor, and vied with each
other in devising such economical compositions of food as
would subsist the greatest number with the smallest means.
This want of bread had been foreseen for some time past
and M. de Montmorin had desired me to notify it in America,
and that in addition to the market price a premium should
be given on what should be brought from the U S.
Notice was accordingly given and
produced considerable supplies.
Subsequent information made the importations from
America, during the months of March, April & May,
into the Atlantic ports of France, amount to about 21,000
barrels of flour, besides what went to other ports, and
in other months, while our supplies to their West-Indian
islands relieved them also from that drain.
This distress for bread continued till July.
Hitherto no acts of popular violence had been
produced by the struggle for political reformation.
Little riots on ordinary incidents had taken place, as at other
times in different parts of the kingdom in which some lives,
perhaps a dozen or twenty, had been lost;
but in the month of April a more serious one occurred in
Paris unconnected indeed with the revolutionary principle,
but making part of the history of the day.
The Fauxbourg St. Antoine is a quarter of the city
inhabited entirely by the class of day-laborers
and journeymen in every line.
A rumor was spread among them that a great paper
manufacturer of the name of Reveillon had proposed
on some occasion that their wages should be
lowered to 15 sous a day.
Inflamed at once into rage & without inquiring into its truth
they flew to his house in vast numbers, destroyed
everything in it, and in his magazines & workshops
without secreting however a pin’s worth to themselves,
and were continuing this work of devastation
when the regular troops were called in.
Admonitions being disregarded, they were of necessity
fired on, and a regular action ensued in which about
100 of them were killed before the rest would disperse.
There had rarely passed a year without such a riot
in some part or other of the Kingdom;
and this is distinguished only as cotemporary
with the revolution, although not produced by it.
The States General were opened on the 5th of May 89
by speeches from the King, the Garde
des Sceaux Lamoignon, and Mr. Necker.
The last was thought to trip too lightly over the
constitutional reformations which were expected.
His notices of them in this speech were not
as full as in his previous “Rapport au Roi.”
This was observed to his disadvantage.
But much allowance should have been made for the
situation in which he was placed between his own counsels,
and those of the ministers and party of the court.
Overruled in his own opinions, compelled to deliver, and to
gloss over those of his opponents and even to keep their
secrets, he could not come forward in his own attitude.
The composition of the assembly, although
equivalent on the whole to what had been expected,
was something different in its elements.
It has been supposed that a superior education
would carry into the scale of the Commons
a respectable portion of the Noblesse.
It did so as to those of Paris, of its vicinity and of the
other considerable cities, whose greater intercourse
with enlightened society had liberalized their minds, and
prepared them to advance up to the measure of the times.
But the Noblesse of the country, which constituted
two thirds of that body, were far in their rear.
Residing constantly on their patrimonial feuds,
and familiarized by daily habit with Seigneurial powers
and practices, they had not yet learned to suspect
their inconsistence with reason and right.
They were willing to submit to equality of taxation,
but not to descend from their rank and prerogatives
to be incorporated in session with the tiers etat.
Among the clergy, on the other hand, it had been
apprehended that the higher orders of the hierarchy,
by their wealth and connections, would have
carried the elections generally.
But it proved that in most cases the lower clergy
had obtained the popular majorities.
These consisted of the Curés, sons of the peasantry
who had been employed to do all the drudgery
of parochial services for 10, 20 or 30 Louis a year;
while their superiors were consuming their princely
revenues in palaces of luxury & indolence.
The objects for which this body was convened being
of the first order of importance, I felt it very interesting
to understand the views of the parties of which it was
composed, and especially the ideas prevalent as to
the organization contemplated for their government.
I went therefore daily from Paris to Versailles and attended
their debates, generally till the hour of adjournment.
Those of the Noblesse were impassioned and tempestuous.
They had some able men on both sides
and were actuated by equal zeal.
The debates of the Commons were temperate,
rational and inflexibly firm.
As preliminary to all other business,
the awful questions came on, Shall the States sit in one
or in distinct apartments?
And shall they vote by heads or houses?
The opposition was soon found to consist of the Episcopal
order among the clergy, and two thirds of the Noblesse;
while the tiers etat were to a man united and determined.
After various propositions of compromise had failed,
the Commons undertook to cut the Gordian knot.
The Abbe Sieyes, the most logical head of the nation,
(author of the pamphlet Qu’est ce que le tiers etat?
which had electrified that country, as Paine’s
Common Sense did us) after an impressive speech
on the 10th of June, moved that a last invitation
should be sent to the Nobles and Clergy, to attend
in the Hall of the States, collectively or individually for
the verification of powers to which the commons would
proceed immediately, either in their presence or absence.
This verification being finished, a motion was made,
on the 15th that they should constitute themselves
a National assembly which was decided on the 17th
by a majority of four fifths.
During the debates on this question about twenty
of the Curés had joined them, and a proposition
was made in the chamber of the clergy that
their whole body should join them.
This was rejected at first by a small majority only;
but being afterwards somewhat modified,
it was decided affirmatively by a majority of eleven.
While this was under debate and unknown
to the court, to wit, on the 19th a council was
held in the afternoon at Marly, wherein it was
proposed that the King should interpose by a
declaration of his sentiments in a seance royale.
A form of declaration was proposed by Necker which,
while it censured in general the proceedings both of the
Nobles and Commons, announced the King’s views,
such as substantially to coincide with the Commons.
It was agreed to in council; the seance was fixed for
the 22d; the meetings of the States were till then to be
suspended, and everything in the meantime kept secret.
The members the next morning (20th) repairing to their
house as usual, found the doors shut and guarded,
a proclamation posted up for a seance royale on the 22d
and a suspension of their meetings in the meantime.
Concluding that their dissolution was now to take place,
they repaired to a building called the “Jeu de paume”
(or Tennis court) and there bound themselves by oath
to each other, never to separate of their own accord till they
had settled a constitution for the nation on a solid basis,
and if separated by force, that they would
reassemble in some other place.
The next day they met in the church of St. Louis
and were joined by a majority of the clergy.
The heads of the Aristocracy saw that
all was lost without some bold exertion.
The King was still at Marly.
Nobody was permitted to approach him but their friends.
He was assailed by falsehoods in all shapes.
He was made to believe that the Commons were
about to absolve the army from their oath
of fidelity to him and to raise their pay.
The court party were now all rage and desperate.
They procured a committee to be held consisting of the King
and his ministers, to which Monsieur
& the Count d’Artois should be admitted.
At this committee the latter attacked Mr. Necker personally,
arraigned his declaration, and proposed one which
some of his prompters had put into his hands.
Mr. Necker was brow-beaten and intimidated,
and the King shaken.
He determined that the two plans should be deliberated on
the next day and the séance royale put off a day longer.
This encouraged a fiercer attack
on Mr. Necker the next day.
His draught of a declaration was entirely broken up,
& that of the Count d’Artois inserted into it.
Himself and Montmorin offered their resignation,
which was refused, the Count d’Artois saying to Mr. Necker
“No sir, you must be kept as the hostage; we hold
you responsible for all the ill which shall happen.”
This change of plan was immediately
whispered without doors.
The Noblesse were in triumph; the people in consternation.
I was quite alarmed at this state of things.
The soldiery had not yet indicated which
side they should take, and that which they
should support would be sure to prevail.
I considered a successful reformation of government in
France as ensuring a general reformation through Europe,
and the resurrection to a new life of their people,
now ground to dust by the abuses of the governing powers.
I was much acquainted with
the leading patriots of the assembly.
Being from a country which had successfully passed
through a similar reformation, they were disposed to
my acquaintance and had some confidence in me.
I urged most strenuously an immediate compromise;
to secure what the government was now ready to yield,
and trust to future occasions for what might still be wanting.
It was well understood that the King would grant at this time
1. Freedom of the person by Habeas corpus.
2. Freedom of conscience.
3. Freedom of the Press.
4. Trial by jury.
5. A representative legislature.
6. Annual meetings.
7. The origination of laws.
8. The exclusive right of taxation and appropriation.
And 9. The responsibility of ministers; and with the
exercise of these powers they would obtain
in future whatever might be further necessary
to improve and preserve their constitution.
They thought otherwise however,
and events have proved their lamentable error.
For after 30 years of war, foreign and domestic,
the loss of millions of lives,
the prostration of private happiness,
and foreign subjugation of their own country for a time,
they have obtained no more, nor even that securely.
They were unconscious of (for who could foresee?)
the melancholy sequel of their well-meant perseverance;
that their physical force would be usurped by a first tyrant
to trample on the independence and even the existence
of other nations: that this would afford fatal example
for the atrocious conspiracy of Kings against their people;
would generate their unholy and homicide alliance
to make common cause among themselves,
and to crush by the power of the whole the efforts
of any part to moderate their abuses and oppressions.
When the King passed the next day through the lane
formed from the Chateau to the Hotel des etats,
there was a dead silence.
He was about an hour in the House
delivering his speech & declaration.
On his coming out a feeble cry of “Vive le Roy” was raised
by some children, but the people remained silent & sullen.
In the close of his speech he had ordered that
the members should follow him & resume
their deliberations the next day.
The Noblesse followed him, and so did the clergy,
except about thirty who with the tiers remained in the room,
and entered into deliberation.
They protested against what the King had done,
adhered to all their former proceedings,
and resolved the inviolability of their own persons.
An officer came to order them out of the room
in the King’s name.
“Tell those who sent you,” said Mirabeau,
“that we shall not move hence but at our own will
or the point of the bayonet.”
In the afternoon the people, uneasy, began to assemble
in great numbers in the courts and vicinities of the palace.
This produced alarm.
The Queen sent for Mr. Necker.
He was conducted amidst the shouts and acclamations of
the multitude who filled all the apartments of the palace.
He was a few minutes only with the queen,
and what passed between them did not transpire.
The King went out to ride.
He passed through the crowd to his carriage and into it
without being in the least noticed.
As Mr. Neckar followed him universal acclamations
were raised of “vive Monsr. Neckar, vive le sauveur
de la France opprimee.”
He was conducted back to his house with the same
demonstrations of affection and anxiety.
About 200 deputies of the Tiers, catching the
enthusiasm of the moment, went to his house, and
extorted from him a promise that he would not resign.
On the 25th 48 of the Nobles joined the tiers,
& among them the Duke of Orleans.
There were then with them 164 members of the Clergy,
although the minority of that body still sat apart
& called themselves the chamber of the clergy.
On the 26th the Archbishop of Paris joined the tiers,
as did some others of the clergy and of the Noblesse.
These proceedings had thrown the people
into violent ferment.
It gained the soldiery, first of the French guards,
extended to those of every other denomination,
except the Swiss, and even to the body guards of the King.
They began to quit their barracks, to assemble in squads,
to declare they would defend the life of the King,
but would not be the murderers of their fellow-citizens.
They called themselves the soldiers of the nation
and left now no doubt on which side
they would be in case of rupture.
Similar accounts came in from the troops
in other parts of the kingdom, giving good reason
to believe they would side with their fathers
and brothers rather than with their officers.
The operation of this medicine at Versailles
was as sudden as it was powerful.
The alarm there was so complete that in the afternoon
of the 27th the King wrote with his own hand letters
to the Presidents of the clergy and Nobles,
engaging them immediately to join the Tiers.
These two bodies were debating & hesitating when
notes from the Count d’Artois decided their compliance.
They went in a body and took their seats with the tiers,
and thus rendered the union of the orders
in one chamber complete.
The Assembly now entered on the business
of their mission and first proceeded to arrange
the order in which they would take up the heads
of their constitution as follows:
First and as Preliminary to the whole
a general Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Then specifically the Principles of the Monarchy;
rights of the Nation; rights of the King; rights of the citizens;
organization & rights of the National assembly;
forms necessary for the enactment of laws;
organization & functions of the provincial & municipal
assemblies; duties and limits of the Judiciary power;
functions & duties of the military power.
A declaration of the rights of man, as the preliminary
of their work, was accordingly prepared
and proposed by the Marquis de la Fayette.
But the quiet of their march was soon disturbed by
information that troops, and particularly the foreign troops,
were advancing on Paris from various quarters.
The King had been probably advised to this
on the pretext of preserving peace in Paris.
But his advisers were believed to have
other things in contemplation.
The Marshal de Broglio was appointed to their command,
a high flying aristocrat, cool and capable of everything.
Some of the French guards were soon arrested
under other pretexts, but really on account of
their dispositions in favor of the National cause.
The people of Paris forced their prison, liberated them,
and sent a deputation to the Assembly to solicit a pardon.
The Assembly recommended peace and order
to the people of Paris, the prisoners to the king,
and asked from him the removal of the troops.
His answer was negative and dry, saying they might
remove themselves, if they pleased, to Noyons or Soissons.
In the meantime these troops, to the number of twenty
or thirty thousand, had arrived and were posted
in and between Paris and Versailles.
The bridges and passes were guarded.
At three o’clock in the afternoon of the 11th July
the Count de la Luzerne was sent to notify Mr. Neckar
of his dismission, and to enjoin him to retire instantly
without saying a word of it to anybody.
He went home, dined, and proposed to his wife
a visit to a friend, but went in fact to his country house
at St. Ouen, and at midnight set out for Brussels.
This was not known until the next day, 12th when
the whole ministry was changed except Villedeuil of the
Domestic department and Barenton, Garde des sceaux.
The changes were as follows:
The Baron de Breteuil, president of the council of finance;
de la Galaisiere, Comptroller general in the room of
Mr. Neckar; the Marshal de Broglio, minister of War,
& Foulon under him in the room of Puy-Segur;
the Duke de la Vauguyon, minister of foreign affairs
instead of the Count de Montmorin; de La Porte,
minister of Marine, in place of the Count de la Luzerne;
St. Priest was also removed from the council.
Luzerne and Puy-Segur had been strongly
of the Aristocratic party in the Council, but they were
not considered as equal to the work now to be done.
The King was now completely in the hands of men,
the principal among whom had been noted
through their lives for the Turkish despotism of their
characters, and who were associated around the King
as proper instruments for what was to be executed.
The news of this change began to be known
at Paris about 1 or 2 o’clock.
In the afternoon a body of about 100 German cavalry
were advanced and drawn up in the Place Louis XV and
about 200 Swiss posted at a little distance in their rear.
This drew people to the spot, who thus accidentally
found themselves in front of the troops, merely at first
as spectators; but as their numbers increased,
their indignation rose.
They retired a few steps and posted themselves on and
behind large piles of stones, large and small, collected in
that Place for a bridge which was to be built adjacent to it.
In this position, happening to be in my carriage on a visit,
I passed through the lane
they had formed without interruption.
But the moment after I had passed,
the people attacked the cavalry with stones.
They charged, but the advantageous position of the people,
and the showers of stones obliged the horse to retire
and quit the field altogether, leaving one of their number on
the ground & the Swiss in their rear not moving to their aid.
This was the signal for universal insurrection,
and this body of cavalry, to avoid being massacred,
retired towards Versailles.
The people now armed themselves with such weapons
as they could find in armorer’s shops and private houses,
and with bludgeons, and were roaming all night through
all parts of the city without any decided object.
The next day (13th) the assembly pressed on the king to
send away the troops, to permit the Bourgeoisie of Paris
to arm for the preservation of order in the city,
and offer to send a deputation from their body
to tranquillize them; but their propositions were refused.
A committee of magistrates and electors
of the city are appointed by those bodies
to take upon them its government.
The people, now openly joined by the French guards, force
the prison of St. Lazare, release all the prisoners, and take
a great store of corn, which they carry to the Corn-market.
Here they get some arms, and the French guards
begin to form & train them.
The City-committee determined to raise 48,000 Bourgeoise,
or rather to restrain their numbers to 48,000.
On the 14th they send one of their members
(Mons. de Corny) to the Hotel des Invalides,
to ask arms for their Garde-Bourgeoise.
He was followed by, and he found there
a great collection of people.
The Governor of the Invalids came out and represented
the impossibility of his delivering arms without
the orders of those from whom he received them.
De Corny advised the people then to retire, and retired
himself; but the people took possession of the arms.
It was remarkable that not only the Invalids themselves
made no opposition, but that a body of 5000 foreign troops
within 400 yards never stirred.
M. de Corny and five others were then sent to ask arms
of M. de Launay, governor of the Bastille.
They found a great collection of people already before the
place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce,
which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the Parapet.
The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little,
advanced themselves to make their demand of the
Governor, and in that instant a discharge from the Bastille
killed four persons, of those nearest to the deputies.
The deputies retired.
I happened to be at the house of M. de Corny
when he returned to it, and received from him
a narrative of these transactions.
On the retirement of the deputies, the people
rushed forward & almost in an instant were
in possession of a fortification defended by 100 men
of infinite strength, which in other times had stood
several regular sieges and had never been taken.
How they forced their entrance has never been explained.
They took all the arms, discharged the prisoners, and such
of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of
fury, carried the Governor and Lt. Governor to the Place de
Greve (the place of public execution) cut off their heads, and
sent them through the city in triumph to the Palais royal.
About the same instant a treacherous correspondence
having been discovered in M. de Flesselles, prevot des
marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville where
he was in the execution of his office, and cut off his head.
These events carried imperfectly to Versailles were the
subject of two successive deputations from the assembly
to the king, to both of which he gave dry and hard answers
for nobody had as yet been permitted to inform him
truly and fully of what had passed at Paris.
But at night the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into
the king’s bed chamber, and obliged him to hear a full
and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris.
He went to bed fearfully impressed.
The decapitation of de Launai worked powerfully through
the night on the whole aristocratic party, insomuch that,
in the morning, those of the greatest influence on the
Count d’Artois represented to him the absolute necessity
that the king should give up everything to the Assembly.
This according with the dispositions of the king,
he went about 11 o'clock, accompanied only by his brothers,
to the Assembly, & there read to them a speech in which
he asked their interposition to re-establish order.
Although couched in terms of some caution,
yet the manner in which it was delivered made it evident
that it was meant as a surrender at discretion.
He returned to the Chateau afoot,
accompanied by the assembly.
They sent off a deputation to quiet Paris, at the head of
which, was the Marquis de la Fayette who had the same
morning been named Commandant en chef of the Milice
Bourgeoise, and Mons Bailly, former President of the
States General, was called for as Prevot des marchands.
The demolition of the Bastille was now ordered and begun.
A body of the Swiss guards of the regiment of Ventimille,
and the city horse guards joined the people.
The alarm at Versailles increased.
The foreign troops were ordered off instantly.
Every minister resigned.
The king confirmed Bailly as Prevot des Marchands,
wrote to Mr. Neckar to recall him, sent his letter open
to the assembly, to be forwarded by them, and invited
them to go with him to Paris the next day to satisfy
the city of his dispositions; and that night and the
next morning the Count D’Artois and M. de Montesson,
a deputy connected with him, Madame de Polignac,
Madame de Guiche, and the Count de Vaudreuil,
favorites of the queen, the Abbe de Vermont her confessor,
the Prince of Conde and Duke of Bourbon fled.
The king came to Paris, leaving the queen
in consternation for his return.
Omitting the less important figures of the procession,
the king’s carriage was in the center, on each side of it
the assembly in two ranks afoot, at their head the
M. de la Fayette as Commander-in-chief on horseback,
and Bourgeois guards before and behind.
About 60,000 citizens of all forms and conditions,
armed with the muskets of the Bastille and Invalids,
as far as they would go, the rest with pistols, swords,
pikes, pruning hooks, scythes &c. lined all the streets
through which the procession passed, and with
the crowds of people in the streets, doors & windows,
saluted them everywhere with cries of “vive la nation,”
but not a single “vive le roy” was heard.
The King landed at the Hotel de Ville.
There M. Bailly presented and put into his hat
the popular cockade and addressed him.
The King being unprepared and unable to answer,
Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps
of sentences, and made out an answer, which
he delivered to the audience as from the king.
On their return the popular cries were
“vive le roy et la nation.”
He was conducted by a garde bourgeoise to his palace
at Versailles, & thus concluded an amende honorable
as no sovereign ever made, and no people ever received.
And here again was lost another precious occasion of
sparing to France the crimes and cruelties through which
she has since passed, and to Europe & finally America the
evils which flowed on them also from this mortal source.
The king was now become a passive machine in the hands
of the National assembly, and had he been left to himself,
he would have willingly acquiesced in whatever
they should devise as best for the nation.
A wise constitution would have been formed,
hereditary in his line, himself placed at its head, with
powers so large as to enable him to do all the good of his
station, and so limited as to restrain him from its abuse.
This he would have faithfully administered,
and more than this I do not believe he ever wished.
But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind,
and timid virtue; and of a character
the reverse of his in all points.
This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of the
Rhetor Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound
sense was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all
obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and
firm enough to hold to her desires or perish in their wreck.
Her inordinate gambling and dissipations with those of the
Count d’Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible
item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into
action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition
to it her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit,
led herself to the Guillotine, & drew the king on with her,
and plunged the world into crimes & calamities
which will forever stain the pages of modern history.
I have ever believed that had there been no queen,
there would have been no revolution.
No force would have been provoked nor exercised.
The king would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom
of his sounder counsellors, who, guided by the increased
lights of the age, wished only, with the same pace,
to advance the principles of their social institution.
The deed which closed the mortal course of these
sovereigns, I shall neither approve nor condemn.
I am not prepared to say that the first magistrate of a nation
cannot commit treason against his country, or is
unamenable to its punishment: nor yet that where there is
no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a law in
our hearts and a power in our hands given for righteous
employment in maintaining right and redressing wrong.
Of those who judged the king, many thought him
willfully criminal, many that his existence would
keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde
of kings who would war against a regeneration
which might come home to themselves,
and that it were better that one should die than all.
I should not have voted with this portion of the legislature.
I should have shut up the Queen in a Convent,
putting harm out of her power, and placed the king
in his station, investing him with limited powers,
which I verily believe he would have honestly exercised,
according to the measure of his understanding.
In this way no void would have been created,
courting the usurpation of a military adventurer,
nor occasion given for those enormities which
demoralized the nations of the world, and destroyed
and is yet to destroy millions and millions of its inhabitants.
There are three epochs in history signalized
by the total extinction of national morality.
The first was of the successors of Alexander,
not omitting himself.
The next the successors of the first Caesar,
the third our own age.
This was begun by the partition of Poland,
followed by that of the treaty of Pilnitz; next the
conflagration of Copenhagen; then the enormities of
Bonaparte partitioning the earth at his will and devastating
it with fire and sword; now the conspiracy of kings, the
successors of Bonaparte, blasphemously calling themselves
the Holy Alliance, and treading in the footsteps of their
incarcerated leader, not yet indeed usurping the
government of other nations avowedly and in detail,
but controlling by their armies the forms in which they will
permit them to be governed; and reserving in petto the
order and extent of the usurpations further meditated.
But I will return from a digression, anticipated too in time,
into which I have been led by reflection on the criminal
passions which refused to the world a favorable occasion
of saving it from the afflictions it has since suffered.
M. Necker had reached Basle before he was overtaken
by the letter of the king, inviting him back to resume
the office he had recently left.
He returned immediately, and all the other ministers
having resigned, a new administration was named,
to wit St. Priest & Montmorin were restored;
the Archbishop of Bordeaux was appointed
Garde des sceaux; La Tour du Pin Minister of War;
La Luzerne Minister of Marine.
This last was believed to have been effected by the
friendship of Montmorin; for although differing in politics,
they continued firm in friendship, & Luzerne,
although not an able man, was thought an honest one.
And the Prince of Bauvau was taken into the Council.
Seven princes of the blood royal, six ex-ministers,
and many of the high Noblesse having fled,
and the present ministers, except Luzerne,
being all of the popular party, all the functionaries of
government moved for the present in perfect harmony.
In the evening of August 4 and on the motion
of the Viscount de Noailles brother in law of La Fayette,
the assembly abolished all titles of rank,
all the abusive privileges of feudalism, the tithes
and casuals of the clergy, all provincial privileges,
and in fine the Feudal regimen generally.
To the suppression of tithes the Abbe Sieyes was
vehemently opposed; but his learned and logical
arguments were unheeded, and his estimation
lessened by a contrast of his egoism (for he was
beneficed on them) with the generous abandonment
of rights by the other members of the assembly.
Many days were employed in putting into the form
of laws the numerous demolitions of ancient abuses;
which done, they proceeded to the preliminary work
of a Declaration of rights.
There being much concord of sentiment on
the elements of this instrument, it was liberally framed
and passed with a very general approbation.
They then appointed a Committee for the reduction
of a project of a Constitution, at the head of which
was the Archbishop of Bordeaux.
I received from him, as Chairman of the Committee,
a letter of July 20 requesting me to attend and assist
at their deliberations; but I excused myself on the obvious
considerations that my mission was to the king as Chief
Magistrate of the nation, that my duties were limited
to the concerns of my own country and forbade me to
intermeddle with the internal transactions of that in which
I had been received under a specific character only.
Their plan of a constitution was discussed in sections,
and so reported from time to time,
as agreed to by the Committee.
The first respected the general frame of the government;
and that this should be formed into three departments,
Executive, Legislative and Judiciary was generally agreed.
But when they proceeded to subordinate developments,
many and various shades of opinion came into conflict,
and schism, strongly marked, broke the Patriots
into fragments of very discordant principles.
The first question Whether there should be a king, met
with no open opposition, and it was readily agreed that the
government of France should be monarchical & hereditary.
Shall the king have a negative on the laws?
shall that negative be absolute or suspensive only?
Shall there be two chambers of legislation? or one only?
If two, shall one of them be hereditary? or for life?
or for a fixed term? and named by the king?
or elected by the people?
These questions found strong differences of opinion
and produced repulsive combinations among the Patriots.
The Aristocracy was cemented by a common principle
of preserving the ancient regime,
or whatever should be nearest to it.
Making this their Polar star, they moved in phalanx,
gave preponderance on every question to the
minorities of the Patriots, and always
to those who advocated the least change.
The features of the new constitution were thus assuming a
fearful aspect, and great alarm was produced among the
honest patriots by these dissensions in their ranks.
In this uneasy state of things, I received one day
a note from the Marquis de la Fayette, informing me
that he should bring a party of six or eight friends
to ask a dinner of me the next day.
I assured him of their welcome.
When they arrived, they were La Fayette himself,
Duport, Barnave, Alexander La Meth, Blacon,
Mounier, Maubourg, and Dagout.
These were leading patriots of honest but differing opinions
sensible of the necessity of effecting a coalition by
mutual sacrifices, knowing each other, and not afraid
therefore to unbosom themselves mutually.
This last was a material principle in the selection.
With this view the Marquis had invited the conference
and had fixed the time & place inadvertently as to
the embarrassment under which it might place me.
The cloth being removed and wine set on the table
after the American manner, the Marquis introduced
the objects of the conference by summarily
reminding them of the state of things in the Assembly,
the course which the principles of the constitution
were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked
by more concord among the Patriots themselves.
He observed that although he also had his opinion,
he was ready to sacrifice it to that of his brethren
of the same cause: but that a common opinion must
now be formed, or the Aristocracy would carry everything,
and that whatever they should now agree on, he,
at the head of the National force, would maintain.
The discussions began at the hour of four and were
continued till ten o'clock in the evening; during which time
I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of argument
unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical
reasoning, and chaste eloquence, disfigured by no gaudy
tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly worthy of being
placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity,
as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato and Cicero.
The result was an agreement that the king
should have a suspensive veto on the laws,
that the legislature should be composed of a
single body only, & that to be chosen by the people.
This Concordate decided the fate of the constitution.
The Patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled,
carried every question agreeably to them, and
reduced the Aristocracy to insignificance and impotence.
But duties of exculpation were now incumbent on me.
I waited on Count Montmorin the next morning
and explained to him with truth and candor
how it had happened that my house had been made
the scene of conferences of such a character.
He told me he already knew everything which had passed,
that so far from taking umbrage at the use made of my
house on that occasion, he earnestly wished I would
habitually assist at such conferences, being sure
I should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and
promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only.
I told him I knew too well the duties I owed to the king,
to the nation, and to my own country to take any part
in councils concerning their internal government,
and that I should persevere with care in the character
of a neutral and passive spectator with wishes only
and very sincere ones, that those measures might prevail
which would be for the greatest good of the nation.
I have no doubt indeed that this conference was previously
known and approved by this honest minister,
who was in confidence and communication with the patriots
and wished for a reasonable reform of the Constitution.
Here I discontinue my relation of the French revolution.
The minuteness with which I have so far given its details
is disproportioned to the general scale of my narrative.
But I have thought it justified by the interest
which the whole world must take in this revolution.
As yet we are but in the first chapter of its history.
The appeal to the rights of man, which had been
made in the U S. was taken up by France,
first of the European nations.
From her the spirit has spread over those of the South.
The tyrants of the North have allied indeed against it,
but it is irresistible.
Their opposition will only multiply its millions
of human victims; their own satellites will catch it,
and the condition of man through the civilized world
will be finally and greatly ameliorated.
This is a wonderful instance of great events
from small causes.
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes &
consequences in this world that a two-penny duty on tea,
unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it,
changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
I have been more minute in relating the early transactions
of this regeneration because I was in circumstances
peculiarly favorable for a knowledge of the truth.
Possessing the confidence and intimacy of the leading
patriots, & more than all of the Marquis Fayette,
their head and Atlas, who had no secrets from me,
I learnt with correctness the views & proceedings
of that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic
missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the court,
and eager in prying into its councils and proceedings,
gave me a knowledge of these also.
My information was always and immediately
committed to writing in letters to Mr. Jay and often
to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters
now insures me against errors of memory.
These opportunities of information ceased at this period,
with my retirement from this interesting scene of action.
I had been more than a year soliciting leave
to go home with a view to place my daughters
in the society & care of their friends,
and to return for a short time to my station at Paris.
But the metamorphosis through which our government
was then passing from its Chrysalid to its Organic form
suspended its action in a great degree; and it was not till the
last of August that I received the permission I had asked.
And here I cannot leave this great and good country
without expressing my sense of its preeminence
of character among the nations of the earth.
A more benevolent people, I have never known, nor
greater warmth & devotedness in their select friendships.
Their kindness and accommodation to strangers is
unparalleled, and the hospitality of Paris is beyond
anything I had conceived to be practicable in a large city.
Their eminence too in science, the communicative
dispositions of their scientific men, the politeness
of the general manners, the ease and vivacity
of their conversation, give a charm to their society
to be found nowhere else.
In a comparison of this with other countries
we have the proof of primacy, which was given
to Themistocles after the battle of Salamis.
Every general voted to himself the first reward of valor
and the second to Themistocles.
So ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation,
In what country on earth would you rather live?
Certainly in my own, where are all my friends,
my relations, and the earliest & sweetest
affections and recollections of my life.
Which would be your second choice? France.
On the 26th of September I left Paris for Havre, where
I was detained by contrary winds until the 8th of October.
On that day and the 9th I crossed over to Cowes, where I
had engaged the Clermont, Captain Colley, to touch for me.
She did so, but here again we were detained by contrary
winds until the 22d when we embarked and landed
at Norfolk on the 23d of November.1
The States General opened at Versailles on 5 May 1789,
and Jefferson went there from Paris daily.
Jefferson advised Lafayette to leave the nobles and go over to the Third Estates.
In a letter to Comte de Moustier on May 20 Jefferson predicted,
The truth is that this revolution has gone on so happily till
now, and met with so few obstacles, that your countrymen
are frightened at seeing that the machine is stopped and
that no way yet presents itself of getting over the difficulty.
I see nothing to fear as yet.
The nation is in a movement which cannot be stopped.
Their representatives, if they cannot get on one way,
will try another.
The mind of man is full of expedients,
and this is the case where all will be tried.
I think that in the end the Nobles will be obliged to yield
to the vote by persons, because the Tiers are more
unanimous, more inflexible, and more formidable.
They have for them also a part of the Noblesse,
the majority of the clergy (to wit, le bas clergé)
the nation and the body of the army.
The officers of the army, the bishops, and about
four fifths of the Nobles which form the opposition,
cannot make head against such a mass.2
On June 2 Jefferson met with his secretary William Short,
Lafayette, and the Protestant Rabaut de St. Etienne who
would become a leader in the revolution.
They agreed to offer a Charter of Rights for France.
The next day Jefferson proposed A Charter of Rights,
solemnly established by the King and Nation.
1. The States general shall assemble, uncalled, on the 1st
day of November annually, and shall remain together
so long as they shall see cause.
They shall regulate their own elections and proceedings,
and until they shall ordain otherwise, their elections
shall be in the forms observed in the present year,
and shall be triennial.
2. The States-general alone shall levy money
on the nation and shall appropriate it.
3. Laws shall be made by the States-general only
with the consent of the king.
4. No person shall be restrained of his liberty
but by regular process from a court of justice,
authorized by a general law: (Except that a Noble may be
imprisoned by order of a court of justice on the prayer
of 12 of his nearest relations.)
On complaint of an unlawful imprisonment,
to any judge whatever, he shall have the prisoner
immediately brought before him, and shall
discharge him if his imprisonment be unlawful.
The officer in whose custody the prisoner is shall obey the
orders of the judge, and both judge and officer shall be
responsible civilly and criminally for a failure of duty herein.
5. The Military shall be subordinate to the Civil authority.
6. Printers shall be liable to legal prosecution for printing
and publishing false facts injurious to the party prosecuting:
but they shall be under no other restraint.
7. All pecuniary privileges and exemptions enjoyed
by any description of persons are abolished.
8. All debts already contracted by the king are hereby
made the debts of the nation: and the faith thereof
is pledged for their payment in due time.
9. 80 millions of livres are now granted to the king,
to be raised by loan and reimbursed by the nation:
and the taxes heretofore paid shall continue to be paid
to the end of the present year and no longer.
10. The States general shall now separate
and meet again on the 1st day of November next.3
This had little effect, though Lafayette would draw upon it as well as
the American Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence
for his Declaration of the Rights of Man.
On June 3 Jefferson sent copies of the Charter of Rights
to Lafayette and Rabaut with this message:
After you quitted us yesterday evening, we continued
our conversation (Monsieur de la Fayette, Mr. Short and
myself) on the subject of the difficulties which environ you.
The desirable object being to secure the good which
the King has offered and to avoid the ill which seems
to threaten, an idea was suggested, which appearing
to make an impression on Monsieur de la Fayette,
I was encouraged to pursue it on my return to Paris,
to put it into form, and now to send it to you and him.
It is this, that the king, in a séance royale, should come
forward with a Charter of Rights in his hand to be signed
by himself and by every member of the three orders.
This charter to contain the five great points which the
Résultat of December offered on the part of the king,
the abolition of pecuniary privileges offered by the
privileged orders, and the adoption of the National debt
and a grant of the sum of money asked from the nation.
This last will be a cheap price for the preceding articles,
and let the same act declare your immediate separation
till the next anniversary meeting.
You will carry back to your constituents more good
than ever was effected before without violence,
and you will stop exactly at the point where
violence would otherwise begin.
Time will be gained, the public mind will continue to ripen
and to be informed, a basis of support may be prepared
with the people themselves, and expedients occur for
gaining still something further at your next meeting,
and for stopping again at the point of force.
I have ventured to send to yourself and
Monsieur de la Fayette a sketch of my ideas of what
this act might contain without endangering any dispute.
But it is offered merely as a canvas for you to work on,
if it be fit to work on at all.
I know too little of the subject, and you know too much
of it to justify me in offering anything but a hint.
I have done it too in a hurry: insomuch that
since committing it to writing it occurs to me that
the 5th article may give alarm, that it is in a good
degree included in the 4th and is therefore useless.
But after all what excuse can I make,
Sir, for this presumption.
I have none but an unmeasurable love for your nation
and a painful anxiety lest Despotism,
after an unaccepted offer to bind its own hands,
should seize you again with tenfold fury.4
On June 17 the Third Estate broke with the old orders,
and with a 5 to 1 majority they voted themselves the
National Assembly to represent all of France.
On June 20 the deputies were locked out of the
Assembly by locked doors and soldiers.
The delegates went to an indoor tennis court nearby
and agreed to the Tennis Court Oath.
On June 23 King Louis XVI nullified proceedings and announced
that the States General must meet in separate Orders.
Nobles and Clergy applauded.
The Third Estate was silent.
The King ordered the deputies of the Third Estate to withdraw, and Mirabeau shouted,
“Go, tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the people
and that we shall not leave except at the point of the bayonet.”5
The Assembly remained and confirmed the nullified measures.
Jefferson’s house was broken into and robbed three times.
Many people were upset that the Finance Minister Neckar had been dismissed.
Mirabeau accused Necker of declining an offer from
the American minister Jefferson for corn and flour.
Jefferson wrote to Lafayette that he never made that offer.
On July 11 Lafayette presented to the Assembly a long
Declaration of Rights that he and Jefferson influenced.
The Assembly appointed a committee with the Archbishop of Bordeaux,
the Abbé Sieyés, Talleyrand and other notables to draft a constitution.
The Archbishop asked Jefferson to help, and he wrote back
that he would not abridge the power of the chief magistrate.
Lafayette became the most popular person in Paris, and on
July 15 he was acclaimed the commander of the National Guard.
At the altar in the Notre Dame Cathedral he swore to
“defend with his life the precious liberty entrusted to his care.”6
On 8 January 1789 Jefferson wrote to Richard Price
and summarized the current condition of France this way:
Upon the whole it has appeared to me that the basis
of the present struggle is an illumination of the public mind
as to the rights of the nation, aided by fortunate incidents;
that they can never retrograde, but from the natural
progress of things must press forward to the
establishment of a constitution which shall
assure to them a good degree of liberty.
They flatter themselves they shall form
a better constitution than the English.
I think it will be better in some points, worse in others.
It will be better in the article of representation
which will be more equal.
It will be worse, as their situation obliges them to
keep up the dangerous machine of a standing army.
I doubt too whether they will obtain the trial by jury,
because they are not sensible of its value.7
On 15 February 1789 Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to
John Trumbull that he considered Francis Bacon, John Locke,
and Isaac Newton “the three greatest men that have ever lived.”8
Jefferson wrote about whether he was an antifederalist
in a letter to Francis Hopkinson on March 13:
You say that I have been dished up to you
as an antifederalist, and ask me if it be just.
My opinion was never worthy enough of notice
to merit citing: but since you ask it,
I will tell you I am not a Federalist because I never
submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed
of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy,
in politics, or in anything else
where I was capable of thinking for myself.
Such an addiction is the last degradation
of a free and moral agent.
If I could not go to heaven but with a party,
I would not go there at all.
Therefore I protest to you
I am not of the party of federalists.
But I am much farther from that of the Antifederalists.
I approved from the first moment, of the great mass
of what is in the new constitution, the consolidation
of the government, the organization into Executive,
legislative and judiciary, the subdivision of the legislative,
the happy compromise of interests between the great
and little states by the different manner of voting in the
different houses, the voting by persons instead of states,
the qualified negative on laws given to the Executive which
however I should have liked better if associated with the
judiciary also as in New York, and the power of taxation.
I thought at first that the latter might have been limited.
A little reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be.
What I disapproved from the first moment also was
the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the
legislative as well as executive branches of the government,
that is to say to secure freedom in religion,
freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies,
freedom from unlawful imprisonment,
freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury
in all cases determinable by the laws of the land.
I disapproved also the perpetual
re-eligibility of the President.
To these points of disapprobation I adhere.
My first wish was that the 9 first conventions might accept
the constitution as the means of securing to us
the great mass of good it contained,
and that the 4 last might reject it,
as the means of obtaining amendments.
But I was corrected in this wish the moment I saw
the much better plan of Massachusetts
and which had never occurred to me.
With respect to the declaration of rights I suppose the
majority of the United States are of my opinion:
for I apprehend all the antifederalists,
and a very respectable proportion of the federalists
think that such a declaration should now be annexed.9
Jefferson wrote to Madison on 15 March 1789,
Your thoughts on the subject of the Declaration of rights in
the letter of Oct. 17 I have weighed with great satisfaction.
Some of them had not occurred to me before,
but were acknowledged just in the moment
they were presented to my mind.
In the arguments in favor of a declaration of rights,
you omit one which has great weight with me, the
legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary.
This is a body, which if rendered independent,
and kept strictly to their own department merits
great confidence for their learning and integrity.
In fact what degree of confidence would be
too much for a body composed of such men
as Wythe, Blair, and Pendleton?
On characters like these the “civium ardor prava jubentium”
would make no impression.
I am happy to find that on the whole
you are a friend to this amendment.
The Declaration of rights is like all other human blessings
alloyed with some inconveniences,
and not accomplishing fully its object.
But the good in this instance vastly overweighs the evil.
I cannot refrain from making short answers to the
objections which your letter states to have been raised.
1. That the rights in question are reserved by the manner
in which the federal powers are granted.
Answer.
A constitutive act may certainly be so formed
as to need no declaration of rights.
The act itself has the force of a declaration as far as it goes:
and if it goes to all material points nothing more is wanting.
In the draught of a constitution which I had once a thought
of proposing in Virginia, and printed afterwards,
I endeavored to reach all the great objects of public liberty
and did not mean to add a declaration of rights.
Probably the object was imperfectly executed:
but the deficiencies would have been supplied
by others in the course of discussion.
But in a constitutive act which leaves some
precious articles unnoticed, and raises implications
against others, a declaration of rights
becomes necessary by way of supplement.
This is the case of our new federal constitution.
This instrument forms us into one state
as to certain objects, and gives us a legislative
and executive body for these objects.
It should therefore guard us against their
abuses of power within the field submitted to them.
2. A positive declaration of some essential rights
could not be obtained in the requisite latitude.
Answer.
Half a loaf is better than no bread.
If we cannot secure all our rights,
let us secure what we can.
3. The limited powers of the federal government
and jealousy of the subordinate governments
afford a security which exists in no other instance.
Answer.
The first member of this seems resolvable
into the 1st objection before stated.
The jealousy of the subordinate governments
is a precious reliance.
But observe that those governments are only agents.
They must have principles furnished them
whereon to found their opposition.
The declaration of rights will be the text whereby
they will try all the acts of the federal government.
In this view it is necessary to the federal government also:
as by the same text they may try the opposition
of the subordinate governments.
4. Experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights.
True.
But though it is not absolutely efficacious
under all circumstances, it is of great potency always,
and rarely inefficacious.
A brace the more will often keep up the building
which would have fallen with that brace the less.
There is a remarkable difference between the characters
of the Inconveniencies which attend a Declaration of rights,
and those which attend the want of it.
The inconveniences of the Declaration are that
it may cramp government in its useful exertions.
But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate, and reparable.
The inconveniencies of the want of a Declaration
are permanent, afflicting and irreparable:
they are in constant progression from bad to worse.
The executive in our governments is not the sole,
it is scarcely the principal object of my jealousy.
The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable
dread at present and will be for long years.
That of the executive will come in its turn,
but it will be at a remote period.
I know there are some among us
who would now establish a monarchy.
But they are inconsiderable in number
and weight of character.
The rising race are all republicans.
We were educated in royalism:
no wonder if some of us retain that idolatry still.
Our young people are educated in republicanism.
An apostacy from that to royalism is
unprecedented and impossible.
I am much pleased with the prospect that a declaration
of rights will be added: and hope it will be done
in that way which will not endanger the whole frame
of the government or any essential part of it.
I have hitherto avoided public news in my letters to you,
because your situation ensured you a communication
of my letters to Mr. Jay.
This circumstance being changed, I shall in future
indulge myself in these details to you.
There had been some slight hopes that an accommodation
might be effected between the Turks and two empires.
But these hopes do not strengthen,
and the season is approaching which
will put an end to them for another campaign at least.
The accident to the King of England has had
great influence on the affairs of Europe.
His mediation joined with that of Prussia would certainly
have kept Denmark quiet, and so have left
the two empires in the hands of the Turks and Swedes.
But the inactivity to which England is reduced,
leaves Denmark more free,
and she will probably go on in opposition to Sweden.
The King of Prussia too had advanced so far
that he can scarcely retire.
This is rendered the more difficult
by the troubles he has excited in Poland.
He cannot well abandon the party
he had brought forward there.
So that it is very possible he may be engaged
in the ensuing campaign.
France will be quiet this year, because this year at least
is necessary for settling her future constitution.
The States will meet the 27th of April:
and the public mind will I think by that time be ripe
for a just decision of the Question whether
they shall vote by orders or persons.
I think there is a majority of the nobles
already for the latter.
If so, their affairs cannot but go on well.
Besides settling for themselves a tolerably free constitution,
perhaps as free a one as the nation is as yet
prepared to bear, they will fund their public debts.
This will give them such a credit as will enable them
to borrow any money they may want, & of course
to take the field again when they think proper.
And I believe they mean to take the field
as soon as they can.
The pride of every individual in the nation suffers
under the ignominies they have lately been exposed to,
and I think the states general will give money
for a war to wipe off the reproach.
There have arisen new bickering between
this court and that of the Hague, and the papers
which have passed show the most bitter acrimony
rankling at the heart of this ministry.
They have recalled their Ambassador
from the Hague without appointing a successor.
They have given a note to the Diet of Poland
which shows a disapprobation of their measures.
The insanity of the King of England has been fortunate
for them as it gives them time to put their house in order.
The English papers tell you the King is well:
and even the English ministry say so.
They will naturally set the best foot foremost:
and they guard his person so well that
it is difficult for the public to contradict them.
The King is probably better, but not well by a great deal.
1. He has been bled, and judicious physicians say that
in his exhausted state nothing could have induced
a recurrence to bleeding but symptoms of relapse.
2. The Prince of Wales tells the Irish deputation he will
give them a definitive answer in some days: but
if the King had been well, he could have given it at once.
3. They talk of passing a standing law
for providing a regency in similar cases.
They apprehend then they are not yet clear
of the danger of wanting a regency.
4. They have carried the king to church:
but it was his private chapel.
If he be well, why do not they show him publicly
to the nation and raise them from that consternation
into which they have been thrown by the prospect
of being delivered over to the profligate hands
of the prince of Wales.
In short, judging from little facts which escape in spite of
their teeth, we may say the King is better, but not well.
Possibly he is getting well; but still, time will be wanting
to satisfy even the ministry that
it is not merely a lucid interval.
Consequently they cannot interrupt France this year
in the settlement of her affairs,
and after this year it will be too late.10
On 6 May 1789 Jefferson wrote this letter to the Marquis de la Fayette:
My dear friend
As it becomes more and more possible that the
Noblesse will go wrong, I become uneasy for you.
Your principles are decidedly with the tiers etat,
and your instructions against them.
A complaisance to the latter on some occasions
and an adherence to the former on others,
may give an appearance of trimming between
the two parties which may lose you both.
You will in the end go over wholly to the tiers etat, because
it will be impossible for you to live in a constant sacrifice
of your own sentiments to the prejudices of the Noblesse.
But you would be received by the tiers etat at any future
day, coldly and without confidence.
It appears to me the moment to take at once
that honest and manly stand with them
which your own principles dictate.
This will win their hearts forever, be approved by the world
which marks and honors you as the man of the people,
and will be an eternal consolation to yourself.
The Noblesse, and especially the Noblesse of Auvergne
will always prefer men who will do
their dirty work for them.
You are not made for that.
They will therefore soon drop you, and the people
in that case will perhaps not take you up.
Suppose a scission should take place.
The priests and nobles will secede, the nation will
remain in place and with the king will do its own business.
If violence should be attempted, where will you be?
You cannot then take side with the people in opposition
to your own vote, that very vote which
will have helped to produce the scission.
Still less can you array yourself against the people.
That is impossible.
Your instructions are indeed a difficulty.
But to state this at its worst, it is only a single difficulty,
which a single effort surmounts.
Your instructions can never embarrass you a second time,
whereas an acquiescence under them will reproduce
greater difficulties every day and without end.
Besides, a thousand circumstances offer as many
justifications of your departure from your instructions.
Will it be impossible to persuade all parties that
(as for good legislation two houses are necessary)
the placing the privileged classes together
in one house and the unprivileged in another,
would be better for both than a scission.
I own I think it would.
People can never agree without some sacrifices;
and it appears but a moderate sacrifice
in each party to meet on this middle ground.
The attempt to bring this about might satisfy your
instructions, and a failure in it would justify your
siding with the people even to those who think
instructions are laws of conduct.
Forgive me, my dear friend, if my anxiety for you
makes me talk of things I know nothing about.
You must not consider this as advice.
I know you and myself too well to presume to offer advice.
Receive it merely as the expression of my uneasiness and
the effusion of that sincere friendship with which I am,
my dear sir, Your’s affectionately, Th: Jefferson.11
Jefferson on 9 May 1789 wrote in a letter
to John Jay a report from Versailles.
There are no symptoms of accommodation between the
Turks and two empires, nor between Russia and Sweden.
The Emperor was on the 16th
of the last month expected to die certainly.
He was however a little better when the last news
came away, so that hopes were entertained of him.
But it is agreed that he cannot get the better of his
complaints ultimately, so that his life is not at all counted on.
The Danes profess as yet to do no more against
Sweden than furnish their stipulated aid.
The agitation of Poland is still violent,
though somewhat moderated by the late change
in the demeanor of the king of Prussia.
He is much less Thrasonic than he was.
This is imputed to the turn which the English politics
may be rationally expected to take.
It is very difficult to get at the true state of the British king.
But from the best information we can get,
his madness has gone off; but he is left
in a state of imbecility and melancholy.
They are going to carry him to Hanover to see
whether such a journey may relieve him.
The queen accompanies him.
If England should by this accident be
reduced to inactivity, the Southern countries
of Europe may escape the present war.
Upon the whole the prospect for the present year,
if no unforeseen accident happens, is certain peace for
the powers not already engaged, a probability that
Denmark will not become a principal, and a mere
possibility that Sweden and Russia may be accommodated.
The interior disputes of Sweden are so
exactly detailed in the Leyden gazette that
I have nothing to add on that subject.
The revolution of this country has advanced
thus far without encountering anything which
deserves to be called a difficulty.
There have been riots in a few instances in
three or four different places in which there
may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost.
The exact truth is not to be got at.
A few days ago a much more serious riot took place
in this city, in which it became necessary for the
troops to engage in regular action with the mob,
and probably about 100 of the latter were killed.
Accounts vary from 20 to 200.
They were the most abandoned banditti of Paris,
and never was a riot more unprovoked and unpitied.
They began under a pretense that a paper
manufacturer had proposed in an assembly
to reduce their wages to 15 sous a day.
They rifled his house, destroyed everything in his
magazines and shops, and were only stopped in their
career of mischief by the carnage above mentioned.
Neither this nor any other of the riots have had a professed
connection with the great national reformation going on.
They are such as have happened every year
since I have been here, and as will continue
to be produced by common incidents.
The States general were opened on the 4th instant
by a speech from the throne, one by the Garde
des sceaux and one from Mr. Neckar.
I hope they will be printed in time to send you herewith.
Lest they should not, I will observe that that of Mr. Neckar
stated the real and ordinary deficit to be 56 millions, and
that he showed that this could be made up without a new
tax by economies and bonifications which he specified.
Several articles of the latter are liable to the objection
that they are proposed on branches of the revenue
of which the nation has demanded a suppression.
He tripped too slightly over the great articles of
constitutional reformation these being not as clearly
enounced in this Discourse as they were in his
Rapport au roy which I sent you some time ago.
On the whole his Discourse has not
satisfied the patriotic party.
It is now for the first time that their revolution
is likely to receive a serious check, and begins
to wear a fearful appearance.
The progress of light and liberality in the order
of the Noblesse has equaled expectation
in Paris only and its vicinities.
The great mass of deputies of that order which come
from the country show that the habits of tyranny
over the people are deeply rooted in them.
They will consent indeed to equal taxation.
But five sixths of that chamber are thought
to be decidedly for voting by orders.
So that had this great preliminary question rested
on this body which formed heretofore the sole hope,
that hope would have been completely disappointed.
Some aid however comes in from a quarter
whence none was expected.
It was imagined the ecclesiastical elections would
have been generally in favor of the higher clergy.
On the contrary the lower clergy have
obtained five sixths of these deputations.
These are the sons of peasants who have done all the
drudgery of the service for 10, 20, 30 guineas a year,
and whose oppressions and penury contrasted by the
pride and luxury of the higher clergy had rendered
them perfectly disposed to humble the latter.
They have done it in many instances with a
boldness they were thought insusceptible of.
Great hopes have been formed that these would
concur with the Tiers Etat in voting by persons.
In fact about half of them seem as yet so disposed:
but the bishops are intriguing and drawing them over with
the address which has ever marked ecclesiastical intrigue.
The deputies of the Tiers Etat seem almost to a man
inflexibly determined against the vote by orders.
This is the state of parties as well as can be
judged from conversation only during the
fortnight they have been now together.
But as no business has been yet begun, no votes as yet
taken, this calculation can not be considered as sure.
A middle proposition is talked of, to form
the two privileged orders into one chamber.
It is thought more possible to bring
them into it than the Tiers Etat.
Another proposition is to distinguish questions,
referring those of certain descriptions to a vote
by persons, others to a vote by orders.
This seems to admit of endless altercation,
and the Tiers Etat manifest no respect for that
or any other modification whatever.
Were this single question accommodated, I am of opinion
there would not occur the least difficulty in the great
and essential points of constitutional reformation.
But on this preliminary question the parties
are so irreconcilable that it is impossible
to foresee what issue it will have.
The Tiers Etat, as constituting the nation,
may propose to do the business of the nation
either with or without the minorities in the houses
of clergy and nobles which side with them.
In that case, if the king should agree to it,
the majorities in those two houses would secede,
and might resist the tax-gatherers.
This would bring on a civil war.
On the other hand, the privileged orders, offering
to submit to equal taxation, may propose to the
king to continue the government in its former train,
resuming to himself the power of taxation.
Here the tax-gatherers might be resisted by the people.
In fine it is but too possible that between parties so
animated, the king may incline the balance as he pleases.
Happy that he is an honest unambitious man, who
desires neither money nor power for himself; and that
his most operative minister, though he has appeared
to trim a little, is still in the main a friend to public liberty.
I mentioned to you in a former letter the construction
which our bankers at Amsterdam had put on the
resolution of Congress appropriating the last Dutch loan
by which the money for our captives would not
be furnished till the end of the year 1790.
Orders from the board of treasury
have now settled this question.
The interest of the next month is to be first paid, and
after that the money for the captives and foreign officers
is to be furnished before any other payment of interest.
This ensures it when the next February
interest becomes payable.
My representations to them on account of the
contracts I had entered into for making the medals
have produced from them the money for that object,
which is lodged in the hands of Mr. Grand.
Mr. Neckar in his discourse proposes among his
bonifications of revenue, the suppression of our two free
ports of Bayonne and Lorient, which he says occasion a
loss of 600,000 livres annually to the crown by contraband.
(The speech being not yet printed I state this
only as it struck my ear when he delivered it.
If I have mistaken it, I beg you to receive this
as my apology, and to consider what follows
as written on that idea only).
I have never been able to see that
these freeports were worth one copper to us.
To Bayonne our trade never went, and it is leaving Lorient.
Besides the right of entrepot is a perfect substitute
for the right of free port.
The latter is a little less troublesome
only to the merchants and captains.
I should think therefore that a thing so useless
to us and prejudicial to them might be relinquished
by us on the common principles of friendship.
I know the merchants of these ports will make a clamor,
because the franchise covers their contraband
with all the world.
Has Monsr. de Moustier said anything
to you on this subject?
It has never been mentioned to me.
If not mentioned in either way, it is rather
an indecent proceeding, considering that
this right of freeport is founded in treaty.
I shall ask of M. de Montmorin on the first occasion whether
he has communicated this to you through his minister; and if
he has not, I will endeavor to notice the infraction to him
in such manner as neither to reclaim nor abandon the right
of freeport, but leave our government free to do either.
The gazettes of France and Leyden
as usual will accompany this.
I am in hourly expectation of receiving from you
my leave of absence, and keeping my affairs
so arranged that I can leave Paris within
eight days after receiving the permission.12On 17 June 1789 Jefferson attended the National Assembly and listened
to the debates, and on that day he reported the crisis in a letter to John Jay.You will have seen by my former letters that
the question whether the States general should
vote by Persons, or by Orders, had stopped their
proceedings in the very first instance in which
it could occur, that is, as to the verification of their powers,
and that they had appointed committees to try
if there were any means of accommodation.
These could do nothing.
The king then proposed that they should appoint others to
meet persons whom he should name, on the same subject.
These conferences also proved ineffectual.
He then proposed a specific mode of verifying.
The Clergy accepted it unconditionally:
the Noblesse with such conditions and modifications
as did away their acceptance altogether.
The commons, considering this as a refusal came to the
resolution of the 10th inst. (which I have the honor to
send you) inviting the two other orders to come and
take their places in the common room, and notifying
that they should proceed to the verification of powers
and to the affairs of the nation either with or without them.
The clergy have as yet given no answer.
A few of their members have accepted the invitation
of the Commons and have presented themselves
in their room to have their powers verified,
but how many it will detach in the whole from that body
cannot be known till an answer be decided on.
The Noblesse adhered to their former resolutions,
and even the minority, well disposed to the commons,
thought they could do more good in their own chamber
by endeavoring to increase their numbers and bettering
the measures of the majority than by joining the Commons.
An intrigue was set on foot between the leaders of
the Majority in that house, the queen and princes.
They persuaded the king to go for some time to Marly.
He went on the same day.
The leaders moved in the chamber of Nobles that
they should address the king to declare his own
sentiments on the great question between the orders.
It was intended that this address should be delivered
to him at Marly, where separated from his ministers
and surrounded by the queen and princes, he might
be surprised into a declaration for the nobles.
The motion was lost however by a very great majority,
that chamber being not yet quite ripe for throwing
themselves into the arms of despotism.
Necker and Montmorin, who had discovered this intrigue,
had warned some of the minority to defeat it,
or they could not answer for what would happen.
These two and St. Priest are the only members
of the Council in favor of the commons.
Luzerne, Puy-Segur and the others are high aristocrats.
The commons having verified their powers,
a motion was made the day before yesterday to declare
themselves constituted and to proceed to business.
I left them at two o’clock yesterday,
the debates not then finished.
They differed only about forms of expression
but agreed in the substance and probably
decided yesterday or will decide today.
Their next move I fancy will be to suppress all taxes,
and instantly reestablish them till the end of their session in
order to prevent a premature dissolution: and then they will
go to work on a Declaration of rights and a constitution.
The Noblesse I suppose will be employed altogether
in counter operations; the Clergy, that is to say, the higher
clergy, and such of the Curés as they can bring over
to their side will be waiting and watching
merely to keep themselves in their saddles.
Their deportment hitherto is that of meekness and cunning.
The fate of the nation depends on
the conduct of the king and his ministers.
Were they to side openly with the Commons
the revolution would be completed without a convulsion,
by the establishment of a constitution tolerably free,
and in which the distinction of Noble and Commoner
would be suppressed.
But this is scarcely possible.
The king is honest and wishes the good of his people,
but the expediency of a hereditary aristocracy is
too difficult a question for him.
On the contrary his prejudices, his habits and his
connections decide him in his heart to support it.
Should they decide openly for the Noblesse, the Commons,
after suppressing taxes and finishing their Declaration of
rights, would probably go home, a bankruptcy takes place
in the instant Mr. Necker must go out; a resistance
to the tax gatherers follows and probably a civil war.
These consequences are too evident and violent
to render this issue likely.
Though the queen and princes are infatuated enough
to hazard it; their party in the ministry would not.
Something therefore like what I hinted in my letter
of May 12 is still the most likely to take place.
While the Commons, either with or without their friends
of the other two houses, shall be employed in framing
a constitution, perhaps the government may set the other
two houses to work on the same subject: and when
the three schemes shall be ready, joint committees
may be negotiated to compare them together, to see
in what parts they agree, and probably they will agree
in all except the organization of the future states general.
As to this, it may be endeavored by the aid of wheedling
and intimidation to induce the two privileged chambers to
melt themselves into one, and the commons, instead of one,
to agree to two houses of legislation.
I see no other middle ground to which they can be brought.
It is a tremendous cloud indeed which hovers over
this nation, and he at the helm has neither the courage
nor the skill necessary to weather it.
Eloquence in a high degree, knowledge on matters of
account and order are distinguishing traits in his character.
Ambition is his first passion, Virtue his second.
He has not discovered that sublime truth that a bold,
unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid, even to Ambition
and would carry him further in the end than
the temporizing wavering policy he pursues.
His judgment is not of the first order, scarcely
even of the second, his resolution frail, and upon
the whole it is rare to meet an instance of a person
so much below the reputation he has obtained.
As this character by the post and times in which
providence has placed it is important to be known;
I send it to you as drawn by a person
of my acquaintance who knows him well.
He is not indeed his friend, and allowance must
therefore be made for the high coloring.
But this being abated, the facts and ground work
of the drawing are just.
If the Tiers separate, he goes at the same time:
if they stay together and succeed in establishing a
constitution to their mind, as soon as that is placed in safety,
they will abandon him to the mercy of the court, unless
he can recover the confidence which he has lost at present,
and which indeed seems to be irrecoverable.13
On July 11 Jefferson wrote a letter to Tom Paine on the progress
the National Assembly was making on human rights.
On July 19 Jefferson wrote again to John Jay to
report on the current condition of Europe.
The capture of three French merchant ships
by the Algerines under different pretexts,
has produced great sensation in the seaports
of this country, and some in its government.
They have ordered some frigates to be
armed at Toulon to punish them.
There is a possibility that this circumstance,
if not too soon set to rights by the Algerines,
may furnish occasion to the States general,
when they shall have leisure to attend to matters of this
kind, to disavow any future tributary treaty with them.
These pirates respect still less their treaty with Spain,
and treat the Spaniards with an insolence greater
than was usual before the treaty….
Our supplies to the Atlantic ports of France
during the months of March, April, and May,
were only 12,220 quintals 33 ℔ of flour, and
44,115 quintals 40 ℔ of wheat in 21 vessels….
The gazettes of France and Leyden accompany this.
I send also a paper (called the Point du jour)
which will give you some idea of the
proceedings of the National assembly.14
On 26 August 1789 the National Assembly
adopted the French Declaration of Rights.
The next day Thomas Jefferson received notice that he could return
home for a leave of absence after more than five years of service.
On August 27 Jefferson wrote to John Jay about current situation in Europe.
An engagement has taken place between the Russian
and Swedish fleets in the Baltic which has been not at all
decisive, no ship having been lost on either side.
The Swedes claimed a victory because
they remained in the field till the Russians quitted it.
The latter effected a junction soon after with another part
of their fleet, and being now about 10 ships strongest,
the Swedes retired into port, and it is imagined they
will not appear again under so great a disparity,
so that the campaign by sea is supposed to be finished.
Their commerce will be at the mercy of their enemies;
but they have put it out of the power of the Russians
to send any fleet to the Mediterranean this year.
A revolution has been effected
very suddenly in the Bishopric of Liege.
Their constitution had been changed by force
by the reigning sovereign about 100 years ago.
This subject had been lately revived and discussed in print.
The people were at length
excited to assemble tumultuously.
They sent for their prince, who was at a country seat,
and required him to come to the town house
to hear their grievances.
Though in the night, he came instantly, and was
obliged to sign a restitution of their ancient constitution,
which took place on the spot, and all became quiet,
without a drop of blood spilt.
This fact is worthy notice only as it shows
the progress of the spirit of revolution.
No act of violence has taken place in Paris since my last,
except on account of a difference between the French
and Swiss guards which gave rise to occasional
single combats in which 5 or 6 were killed.
The difference is made up.
Some misunderstandings had arisen between the
committees of the different districts of Paris as to
the form of their future municipal government.
These gave uneasiness for a while,
but have been also reconciled.
Still there is such a leaven of fermentation remaining
in the body of the people, that acts of violence are
always possible, and are quite unpunishable,
there being as yet no judicature which can venture
to act in any case however small or great.
The country is becoming more calm.
The embarrasments of the government
for want of money are extreme.
The loan of 30 millions proposed by Mr. Necker
has not succeeded at all.
No taxes are paid.
A total stoppage of all payment to the creditors
of the state is possible every moment.
These form a great mass in the city as well as country,
and among the lower class of people too,
who have been used to carry the little savings of their
service into the public funds upon life rents of five,
ten, twenty guineas a year, and many of whom
have no other dependence for daily subsistence.
A prodigious number of servants are now also
thrown out of employ by domestic reforms,
rendered necessary by the late events.
Add to this the want of bread which is extreme.
For several days past a considerable proportion
of the people have been without bread altogether:
for though the new harvest is begun,
there is neither water nor wind to grind the grain.
For some days past the people have besieged the doors
of the bakers, scrambled with one another for bread,
collected in squads all over the city, and need only
some slight incident to lead them to excesses
which may end in nobody can tell what.
The danger from the want of bread however, which
is the most imminent, will certainly lessen in a few days.
What turn that will take which arises from
the want of money is difficult to be foreseen.
Mr. Necker is totally without influence
in the National assembly, and is I believe,
not satisfied with this want of importance.
That assembly is just finishing their bill of rights.
The question will then be whether to take up first
the Constitution or the business of finance.
No plan of constitution has been yet given in.
But I can state to you the outlines of what
the leading members have in contemplation.
The Executive power in a hereditary king with a power
of dissolving the legislature and a negative on their laws,
his authority in forming treaties to be greatly restrained.
The Legislative to be a single house of representatives
chosen for two or three years.
They propose a body, whom they call a Senate,
to be chosen by the Provincial assemblies as our
federal senate is, but with no power of negativing
or amending laws: they may only remonstrate
on them to the Representatives, who will decide
by a simple majority the ultimate event of the law.
This body will therefore be a mere council of revision.
It is proposed that they shall be of a certain age
and property and be for life.
They may make them also their court of impeachment.
They will suppress the parliaments, and establish
a system of judicature somewhat like that of England
with trial by jury in criminal cases, perhaps also in civil.
Each province will have a subordinate
provincial government, and the great cities
a municipal one on a free basis.
These are the ideas and views of the most
distinguished members; but they may suffer
great modifications from the assembly.
And the longer the delay the greater
will be the modifications.
A considerable interval having taken place since any
popular execution, the Aristocratic party is raising its head.
They are strengthened by a considerable defection from
the patriots in consequence of the general suppression of
abuses of the 4th of August in which many were interested.
Another faction too of the most desperate views has
acquired strength in the assembly as well as out of it.
These wish to dethrone the reigning branch
and transfer the crown to the Duke d’Orleans.
The members of this faction are mostly persons
of wicked and desperate fortune, who have nothing
at heart but to pillage from the wreck of their country.
The Duke himself is as unprincipled as his followers,
sunk in debaucheries of the lowest kind
and incapable of quitting them for business.
Not a fool, yet not head enough to conduct anything.
In fact I suppose him used merely as a tool because of
his immense wealth, and that he acquired a certain degree
of popularity by his first opposition to the government,
then credited to him as upon virtuous motives.
He is certainly borrowing money on a large scale.
He is in understanding with the court of London
where he has been long in habits of intimacy.
The ministry here even apprehend that
that court will support his designs by war.
I have no idea of this, but no doubt at the same time that
they will furnish him money liberally to aliment a civil war
and prevent the regeneration of this country.
It was suggested to me some days ago that the court of
Versailles were treating with that of London for a surrender
of their West India possessions in consideration of
a great sum of money to relieve their present distress.
Every principle of common sense was in opposition
to this fact: yet it was so affirmed as to merit enquiry.
I became satisfied the government had never such an idea;
but that the story was not without foundation altogether:
that something like this was in contemplation
between the faction of Orleans and the court of London
as a means of obtaining money from that court.
In a conversation with the Count de Montmorin
two days ago, he told me their colonies were
speaking a language which gave them uneasiness
and for which there was no foundation.
I asked him if he knew anything
of what I have just mentioned.
He appeared unapprized of it, but to see at once that
it would be a probable speculation between two parties
circumstanced and principled as those two are.
I apologized to him for the enquiries I had made
into this business by observing that it would be
much against our interest that any one power
should monopolize all the West India islands.
“Pardi, assurement” was his answer.
The emancipation of their islands is an idea prevailing
in the minds of several members of the national assembly,
particularly those most enlightened
and most liberal in their views.
Such a step by this country would lead to other
emancipations or revolutions in the same quarter.15
On August 28 he wrote to James Madison about the progress
the French were making, and he noted that they were
being influenced by America’s democratic institutions.
On September 6 Jefferson wrote to Madison from Paris
during the
French Revolution about the right of
living people to change old laws and governments.
The question, Whether one generation of men has
a right to bind another, seems never to have been
started either on this or our side of the water.
Yet it is a question of such consequences as
not only to merit decision, but place also among
the fundamental principles of every government.
The course of reflection in which we are immersed here,
on the elementary principles of society, has presented
this question to my mind; and that no such obligation
can be transmitted, I think very capable of proof.
I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident,
“that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;”
that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.
The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his
when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society.
If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of
its lands in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants,
and these will generally be
the wife and children of the decedent.
If they have formed rules of appropriation,
those rules may give it to the wife and children,
or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased.
So they may give it to its creditor.
But the child, the legatee or creditor, takes it,
not by natural right, but by a law of the society
of which he is a member, and to which he is subject.
Then no man can by natural right oblige the lands
he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that
occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him.
For if he could, he might during his own life, eat up
the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come;
and then the lands would belong to the dead,
and not to the living, which is the reverse of our principle.
What is true of every member of the society, individually,
is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole
can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.
To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude,
let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born
on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day,
and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding
generation in the moment of attaining
their mature age all together.
Let the ripe age be supposed of twenty-one years,
and their period of life thirty-four years more,
that being the average term given by the bills of mortality
to persons of twenty-one years of age.
Each successive generation would in this way come and go
of the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now.
Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations
during its course fully and in its own right.
The second generation receives it clear of the debts and
incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on.
For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth
would belong to the dead and not to the living generation.
Then, no generation can contract debts greater than
may be paid during the course of its own existence.
At twenty-one years of age they may bind themselves
and their lands for thirty-four years to come;
at twenty-two, for thirty-three;
at twenty-three, for thirty-two;
and at fifty-four, for one year only; because these are the
terms of life which remain to them at the respective epochs.
But a material difference must be noted, between the
succession of an individual and that of a whole generation.
Individuals are parts only of a society,
subject to the laws of a whole.
These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied
by a decedent to his creditor, rather than to any other,
or to his child on condition he satisfies the creditor.
But when a whole generation, that is, the whole society,
dies, as in the case we have supposed, and another
generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole,
and there is no superior who can give their territory
to a third society, who may have lent money
to their predecessors; beyond their faculties of paying.
What is true of generations succeeding one another
at fixed epochs, as has been supposed for clearer
conception, is true for those renewed daily,
as in the actual course of nature.
As a majority of the contracting generation will continue
in being thirty-four years, and a new majority will then
come into possession, the former may extend
their engagement to that term and no longer.
The conclusion then, is that neither the representatives
of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled,
can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay
in their own time, that is to say,
within thirty-four years of the date of the engagement.
To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the
XIV and XV had contracted debts in the name of the
French nation to the amount of ten thousand milliards,
and that the whole had been contracted in Holland.
The interest of this sum would be five hundred milliards,
which is the whole rent-roll or net proceeds
of the territory of France.
Must the present generation of men have retired
from the territory in which nature produces them,
and ceded it to the Dutch creditors?
No; they have the same rights over the soil on which
they were produced, as the preceding generations had.
They derive these rights not from them, but from nature.
They, then, and their soil are by nature clear
of the debts of their predecessors.
To present this in another point of view, suppose Louis XV
and his cotemporary generation had said to the money
lenders of Holland, give us money, that we may eat, drink,
and be merry in our day; and on condition you will demand
no interest till the end of thirty-four years, you shall then,
forever after, receive an annual interest of fifteen per cent.
The money is lent on these conditions, is divided
among the people, eaten, drunk and squandered.
Would the present generation be obliged to apply
the produce of the earth and of their labor,
to replace their dissipations? Not at all.
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts
of one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested
by our seeing, habitually, in private life, that he who
succeeds to lands is required to pay the debts of his
predecessor; without considering that this requisition
is municipal only, not moral, flowing from the will
of the society, which has found it convenient to appropriate
the lands of a decedent on the condition of a payment
of his debts; but that between society and society, or
generation and generation, there is no municipal obligation,
no umpire but the law of nature.
The interest of the national debt of France being, in fact,
but a two thousandth part of its rent-roll, the payment of it
is practicable enough; and so becomes
a question merely of honor or of expediency.
But with respect to future debts, would it not be wise and
just for that nation to declare in the constitution
they are forming, that neither the legislature
nor the nation itself, can validly contract more debt than
they may pay within their own age, or within
the term of thirty-four years?
And that all future contracts shall be deemed void,
as to what shall remain unpaid
at the end of thirty-four years from their date?
This would put the lenders and the borrowers also,
on their guard.
By reducing, too, the faculty of borrowing within its natural
limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free
a course has been procured by the inattention of money
lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations
are not responsible for the preceding.
On similar ground it may be proved that no society
can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law.
The earth belongs always to the living generation:
they may manage it, then, and what proceeds from it,
as they please, during their usufruct.
They are masters, too, of their own persons,
and consequently may govern them as they please.
But persons and property make the sum
of the objects of government.
The constitution and the laws of their predecessors
are extinguished then in their natural course
with those whose will gave them being.
This could preserve that being
till it ceased to be itself, and no longer.
Every constitution, then, and every law,
naturally expires at the end of thirty-four years.
If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising,
in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them
as free as if the constitution or law had been
expressly limited to thirty-four years only.
In the first place, this objection admits the right,
in proposing an equivalent.
But the power of repeal is not an equivalent.
It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so
perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could
always be obtained, fairly and without impediment.
But this is true of no form: The people cannot assemble
themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious.
Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition.
Factions get possession of the public councils,
bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray
from the general interests of their constituents;
and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every
practical man that a law of limited duration is much more
manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle, that the earth belongs to the living
and not to the dead, is of very extensive application
and consequences in every country,
and most especially in France.
It enters into the resolution of the questions, whether
the nation may change the descent of lands held in tail;
whether they may change the appropriation of lands
given anciently to the church, to hospitals, colleges,
orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity;
whether they may abolish the charges and privileges
attached on lands, including the whole catalogue,
ecclesiastical and feudal; it goes to hereditary offices,
authorities and jurisdictions, to hereditary orders,
distinctions and appellations, to perpetual monopolies
in commerce, the arts or sciences, with a long train of
et ceteras; renders the question of reimbursement,
a question of generosity and not of right.
In all these cases, the legislature of the day could authorize
such appropriations and establishments for their own time,
but no longer; and the present holders, even where
they or their ancestors have purchased,
are in the case of bona fide purchasers
of what the seller had no right to convey.
Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir, and
particularly as to the power of contracting debts, and
develop it with that cogent logic which is so peculiarly yours.
Your station in the councils of our country gives you
an opportunity of producing it to public consideration,
of forcing it into discussion.
At first blush it may be laughed at,
as the dream of a theorist;
but examination will prove it to be solid and salutary.
It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law
for appropriating the public revenue; and it will exclude,
at the threshold of our new government, the ruinous
and contagious errors of this quarter of the globe,
which have armed despots with means which nature
does not sanction, for binding in chains their fellow-men.
We have already given, in example, one effectual check
to the dog of war, by transferring the power of
declaring war from the executive to the legislative body,
from those who are to spend, to those who are to pay.
I should be pleased to see this second obstacle
held out by us also, in the first instance.
No nation can make a declaration against the validity of
long-contracted debts, so disinterestedly as we,
since we do not owe a shilling which will not be paid,
principal and interest, by the measures you have taken,
within the time of our own lives.16
Before Jefferson left Paris on 26 September 1789, he promised
pregnant Sally Hemings that he would free all her children at the age of 21.
Four of her children survived to that age, and they were freed.
They embarked on Fulton’s steamship Clermont on October 22
and arrived at Norfolk, Virginia on November 23.
The Virginia Assembly welcomed him at Richmond on December 9,
and the Jefferson family reached their home at Monticello on December 23.
Notes
1. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 80-98.
2. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume V ed. Paul Leicester Ford, p. 477-478.
3. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 955-956.
4. Ibid., p. 954-955.
5. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography by Nathan Schachner, p. 375.
6. The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson by William Howard Adams, p. 288-289.
7. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 939.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 940-941.
10. Ibid., p. 943-946.
11. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume V ed. Paul Leicester Ford, p. 472-473.
12. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 950-954.
13. From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 17 June 1789 (Online)
14. From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 19 July 1789 (Online)
15. From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 27 August 1789 (Online)
16. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 959-964.
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