The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EUROPE / REFLECTIONS ON THE 18TH CENTURY
I agree with you in . . . eulogies on the eighteenth century. It
certainly witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals,
advanced to a higher degree than the world had ever before seen.
With
some exceptions only, through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, morality occupied an honorable chapter in the political
code of nations.
How then has it happened that these nations,
France especially and England, so great, so dignified, so
distinguished by science and the arts, plunged all at once into all
the depths of human enormity, threw off suddenly and openly all the
restraints of morality, all sensation to character, and unblushingly
avowed and acted on the principle that power was right? I say France
and not Bonaparte; for, although he was the head and mouth, the nation
furnished the hands which executed his enormities. England, although
in opposition, kept full pace with France, not indeed by the many
force of her own arms, but by oppressing the weak and bribing the
strong. At length the whole choir joined and divided the weaker
nations among them. Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than
mine; and yet fell short of the fact, for instead of a million, the
destruction of eight or ten millions of human beings has probably been
the effect of these convulsions. I did not, in '89, believe they would
have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But although your
prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a better
final result. That same light from our west seems to have. spread and
illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it. It has given
them a glimmering of their rights and their power. The idea of
representative government has taken root and growth. among them. Their
masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely offers of this
modification of their powers. Belgium, Prussia, Poland, Lombardy,
etc., are now offered a representative organization; illusive probably
at first, but it will grow into power in the end. Opinion is power,
and that opinion will come. Even France will yet attain representative
government.
The idea then is rooted, and will be established,
although rivers of blood may yet flow between them and their object.
The allied armies now couching upon them are first' to be destroyed,
and destroyed they will surely be. A nation united can never be
conquered. We have seen what the ignorant, bigoted and unarmed
Spaniards could do against the disciplined veterans of their invaders.
What then may we not expect from the power and character of the French
nation? The oppressors may cut off heads after heads, but like those
of the Hydra they multiply at every stroke. The recruits within a
nation's own limits are prompt and without number; while those of
their invaders from a distance are slow, limited, and must come to an
end. I think, too, we perceive that all these allies do not see the
same interest in the annihilation of the power of France. There are
certainty some symptoms of foresight in Alexander that France might
produce a salutary diversion of force were Austria and Prussia to
become her enemies. France, too, is the neutral ally of the Turk, as
having no interfering interests, and might be useful in neutralizing
and perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a re-acting jealousy,
too, exists with Austria and Prussia, I think their late strict
alliance indicates; and I should not wonder if Spain should discover a
sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be nothing. Here then we
see new coalitions in embryo, which, after France shall in turn have
suffered a just punishment for her crimes, will not only raise her
from the earth on which she is prostrate, but give her an opportunity
to establish a government of as much liberty as she can bear enough to
ensure her happiness and prosperity. When insurrection begins, be it
where it will, all the partitioned countries will rush to arms, and
Europe again become an arena of gladiators. And what is the definite
object they will propose? A restoration certainly of the
status quo prius, of the state of possession of '89. I see no
other principle on which Europe can ever again settle down in lasting
peace.
to John Adams, 11 January 1816
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