The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FRANCE / REVOLUTION AND JACOBINS
The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain, on account
of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the
Jacobins of France. I considered that sect as the same with the
Republican patriots, and the Feuillants as the Monarchical patriots,
well known in the early part of the Revolution, and but little distant
in their views, both having in object the establishment of a free
constitution, differing only on the question whether their chief
Executive should be hereditary or not. The Jacobins (as since called)
yielded to the Feuillants, and tried the experiment of retaining their
hereditary Executive. The experiment failed completely, and would have
brought on the re-establishment of despotism had it been pursued. The
Jacobins knew this, and that the expunging that office was of absolute
necessity. And the nation was with them in opinion, for however they
might have been formerly for the constitution framed by the first
assembly, they were come over from their hope in it, and were now
generally Jacobins. In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty
persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent.
These I deplore as much as any body, and shall deplore some of them to
the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they
fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a
machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain
degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands the fate of
enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their memories,
while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which
they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty
of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was
ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections
have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but
rather than it should have failed I would have seen half the earth
desolated; were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country,
and left free, it would be better than as it now is. I have expressed
to you my sentiments, because they are really those of ninety-nine in
an hundred of our citizens. The universal feasts, and rejoicings which
have lately been, had on account of the successes of the French,
showed the genuine effusions of their hearts. You have been wounded by
the sufferings of your friends, and have by this circumstance been
hurried into a temper of mind which would be extremely disrelished if
known to your countrymen.
There are in the United States some characters of opposite
principles; some of them are high in office, others possessing great
wealth, and all of them hostile to France, and fondly looking to
England as the staff of their hope. These I named to you on a former
occasion. Their prospects have certainly not brightened. Excepting
them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the
Constitution, anxious to preserve it, and to have it administered
according to its own republican principles. The little party above
mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping-stone to monarchy, and
have endeavored to approximate it to that in its administration in
order to render its final transition more easy. The successes of
republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their
prospects, and I hope to their projects. I have developed to you
faithfully the sentiments of your country, that you may govern
yourself accordingly. I know your republicanism to be pure, and that
it is no decay of that which has embittered you against its votaries
in France, but too great a sensibility at the partial evil which its
object has been accomplished there.
to William Short, 3 January 1793
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