The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FRANCE / REVOLUTION
I am to make you my acknowledgments for your favor of January 10th,
and the information from France which it contained. It confirmed what
I had heard more loosely before, and accounts still more recent are to
the same effect. I look with great anxiety for the firm establishment
of the new government in France, being perfectly convinced that if it
takes place there, it will spread sooner or later all over Europe. On
the contrary, a check there would retard the revival of liberty in
other countries. I consider the establishment and success of their
government as necessary to stay up our own, and to prevent it from
falling back to that kind of a half-way house, the English
constitution.
to Colonel Mason, 4 February 1791
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