Preceding by several years Joel Barlow's own, this epic, due to the pen of L. de Chavannes de La Grandière, appeared with ample annotations by the author himself, and dedicated to John Adams, under the title of L'Amérique Délivrée.[184]
The new Tasso, who justly foresaw the immense influence that the change in America would have on Europe, addressed, in tones of the most ardent admiration, Washington and Congress:
Illustre Washington, héros dont la mémoire
Des deux mondes vengés embellira l'histoire;
Toi que la main des Dieux, en nos siècles pervers,
Envoya consoler, étonner l'univers
Par le rare assemblage et l'union constante
D'un cœur pur et sans fard, d'une âme bienfaisante,
Aux talents de Turenne, aux vertus des Catons,
Et qui te vois plus grand que les deux Scipions,
Jouis de ton triomphe, admire ton ouvrage.
Congress is a Greek Areopagus, whose members have Themis and Minerva for their advisers:
Auguste Aréopage, où Minerve elle-même
Prononce avec Thémis par l'organe suprême
De tant de Sénateurs, ornements des Etats,
Une foule d'arrêts où tous les potentats
Du droit des nations devraient venir apprendre
Les principes sacrés, et jusqu'où peut s'étendre
Le sceptre qu'en leurs mains les peuples ont commis,
—you have cast on us "a torrent of light and shown us how to break the detestable bonds of tyrants." A prophetical foot-note, commenting on this passage, announces that "this will perhaps, be seen sooner than one thinks. Happy the sovereigns who will know how to be nothing but just, pacific, and benevolent." Six years later the French Revolution began.
Using humble prose, but reaching a much wider public, Lacretelle, of the same group of thinkers as d'Alembert, Condorcet, and Turgot, himself later a member of the French Academy, was also writing in a strain of exultant admiration: "Since Columbus's discovery, nothing more important has happened among mankind than American independence"; and addressing the new-born United States, he told them of the world's expectation and of their own responsibilities, so much depending on their success or failure: "New-born Republics of America, I salute you as the hope of mankind, to which you open a refuge, and promise great and happy examples. Grow in force and numbers, amid our benedictions....
"In adopting a democratic régime, you pledge yourself to steadfast and pure morality.... But you do not give up those comforts in life, that splendor of society brought with them by riches, sciences, and arts.... The vicinity of corruption will not alter your morals; you will allow the vicinity, not the invasion. While permitting wealth to have its free play, you will see that exorbitant fortunes be dispersed, and you will correct the great inequality in enjoyments by the strictest equality in rights....
"Lawmaking peoples, never lose sight of the majesty of your function and of the importance of your task. Be nobly proud and holily enthusiastic at the prospect of your destinies' vast influence. By you the universe is held in expectation; fifty years from now it will have learned from you whether modern peoples can preserve republican constitutions, whether morals are compatible with the great progress of civilization, and whether America is meant to improve or to aggravate the fate of humanity."[185]
This sense of the responsibility of the new republic toward mankind of the future, and of the importance for all nations of its success or failure caused French thinkers to concern themselves with the problem, to express faith and admiration, but to submit also such recommendations as their studies of humanity's past made them consider of use. The Observations on the Government and the Laws of the United States, of modest, liberal, and noble-minded Abbé de Mably, are, for example, the outcome of such reflections.[186]