[184] Amsterdam, 1783. The author is strongly anti-English and is indignant at the "guilty Anglomania" still existing in France.
[185] In the Mercure de France, 1785, prefacing a review of Crèvecœur's Letters from an American Farmer, and reproduced at the beginning of the French edition of the Letters, 1787.
[186] Observations sur le gouvernement et les loix des Etats Unis d'Amérique, Amsterdam, 1784, 12mo; in the form of letters to John Adams. The Constitutions under discussion are those of the original States. "Tandis," says Mably, "que presque toutes les nations de l'Europe ignorent les principes constitutifs de la société et ne regardent les citoyens que comme les bestiaux d'une ferme qu'on gouverne pour l'avantage particulier du propriétaire, on est étonné, on est édifié que vos treize Républiques ayent connu à la fois la dignité de l'homme et soient allé puiser dans les sources de la plus sage philosophie les principes humains par lesquels elles veulent se gouverner." (P. 2.)
[187] Wanting, on his return to America, to make Washington's acquaintance, Franklin's own grandson called similarly provided. Lafayette to Washington, warmly praising the young man, July 14, 1785. Mémoires, correspondance et manuscrits du Général Lafayette, publiés par sa Famille, Brussels, 1837, I, 201.
[188] May 25, 1788. J.P. Brissot, Correspondance et Papiers, ed. Perroud, Paris, 1912, p. 192.
[189] 1787. Text of the reports of the sittings. Ibid., pp. 105 ff.
[190] Ibid., pp. 114, 116, 126, 127, 136.
[191] "Under that name of liberty the Romans, as well as the Greeks, pictured to themselves a state where no one was subject save to the law, and where law was more powerful than men." (Bossuet.)
[192] Nouveau Voyage dans les Etats Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale, Paris, 3 vols., April, 1791, but begun to be printed, as shown by a note to the preface, in the spring of 1790. The work greatly helped to make America better and very favorably known in Europe, for it was translated into English, German, and Dutch. While Brissot was returning to France (January, 1789), his brother-in-law, François Dupont, was sailing for the United States, to settle there among free men and, scarcely landed, was writing to a Swiss friend of his, Jeanneret, who lived in Berlin, of his delight at having left "a small continent like that of Europe, partitioned among a quantity of petty sovereigns bent upon capturing each other's possessions, causing their subjects to slaughter one another, in ceaseless mutual fear, busy tightening their peoples' chains and impoverishing them—and I am now on a continent which reaches from pole to pole, with every kind of climate and of productions, among an independent nation which is now devising for itself, in the midst of peace, the wisest of governments. We are not governed here by a foolish or despotic sovereign.... Farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and manufacturers are encouraged and honored; they are the true nobles.... Between the man who sells his labor and the one who buys it the agreement is between equals. The French are, however, very popular in this country." Brissot, Correspondance ed. Perroud, pp. 218, 219.
[193] Mémoires du [Chevalier de Pontgibaud] Comte de Moré, 1827, pp. 105, 132. Writing at that date, Lafayette's former companion thought that monarchy had been re-established in France forever.