The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FRANCE / REVOLUTION / HISTORY OF
I received, through Mr. Warden, the copy of your valuable work on the
French Revolution, for which I pray you to accept my thanks. That its
sale should have been suppressed is no matter of wonder with me. The
friend of liberty is too feelingly manifested, not to give umbrage to
its enemies. We read in it, and weep over, the fatal errors which have
lost to nations the present hope of liberty, and to reason for fairest
prospect of its final triumph over all imposture, civil and religious.
The testimony of one who himself was an actor in the scenes he notes,
and who knew the true mean between rational liberty and the frenzies
of demagogy, are a tribute to truth of inestimable value. The perusal
of this work has given me new views of the causes of failure in a
revolution of which I was a witness in its early part, and then
augured well of it. I had no means, afterwards, of observing its
progress but the public papers, and their information came through
channels too hostile to claim confidence. An acquaintance with many of
the principal characters, and with their fate, furnished me grounds
for conjectures, some of which you have confirmed, and some corrected.
Shall we ever see as free and faithful a tableau of subsequent acts of
this deplorable tragedy? Is reason to be forever amused with the
bochets of physical sciences, in which she is indulged merely
to divert her from solid speculations on the rights of man, and wrongs
of his oppressors? It is impossible. The day of deliverance will come,
although I shall not live to see it. The art of printing secures us
against the retrogradation of reason and information, the examples of
its safe and wholesome guidance in government, which will be exhibited
through the wide-spread regions of the American continent, will
obliterate, in time, the impressions left by the abortive experiment
of France.
Monsieur Paganel, 15 April 1811
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