[172] Dwight, Travels, vol. iv, p. 361.
[173] Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. v, pp. 154, 274; Massachusetts Historical Collections, Sixth Series, vol. iv, Belknap Papers, p. 503.
[174] The entire episode is treated with great fullness and equal vividness by Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution, pp. 164–188.
[175] Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. vi, pp. 153 et seq.
[176] From the first, devotion to the French cause had not been quite unanimous. Here and there, scattered through the country, a man might be found who from the beginning of the Revolution had cherished misgivings as to the essential soundness of the principles of the French in the conflict they were waging with despotism. Occasionally a man had ventured to speak out, voicing apprehension and doubt, although usually preferring to adopt the device of pseudonymity. Conspicuous in this by no means large group were the elder and the younger Adams, the former declaring himself in his “Discourses on Davila” (Cf. The Life and Works of John Adams, vol. vi, pp. 223–403), and the latter in the “Publicola” letters, written in 1791, in response to Paine’s treatise on “The Rights of Man”. Morse, John Quincy Adams, p. 18. But events, much more than political treatises, were to break the spell which the Revolution in its earlier stages cast over the people of America.
[177] No better testimony concerning the unfavorable impression created by the execution of the French king could be had than that supplied by the comment of Salem’s republican minister, the Reverend William Bentley. Under date of March 25, 1793, he wrote: “The melancholy news of the beheading of the Roi de France is confirmed in the public opinion, & the event is regretted most sincerely by all thinking people. The french lose much of their influence upon the hearts of the Americans by this event.” (Diary, vol. ii, p. 13. Cf. Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution, pp. 254 et seq.) This thrill of public horror also found expression in the following lines taken from a broadside of the day:
“When Mobs triumphant seize the rheins,
And guide the Car of State,
Monarchs will feel the galling chains,
And meet the worst of fate: