The Forces in Conflict 141
the American Revolution only a conservative defense of established rights against
British encroachment. John Quincy Adams, then in Berlin, read Gentz’s essay,
liked it, translated it, and published it in Philadelphia in 1800. It served as a piece
of high- toned campaign literature in the presidential election of that year, in which
the elder Adams and the Federalist party were challenged by Jefferson and the
somewhat Francophile democrats. The merit of Gentz’s essay, said the younger
Adams in his preface, was that “it rescues that revolution [the American] from the
disgraceful imputation of having proceeded from the same principles as the
French.” In 1955 Adams’ translation of Gentz was reprinted in America as a
paper- back for mass distribution, with a foreword by Russell Kirk, known as a
publicist of the “new conservatism.” There was something in the atmosphere of
1955, as of 1800, which made it important, for some, to dissociate the American
Revolution from other revolutions by which other peoples have been afflicted.
My own view is that there was a real revolution in America, and that it was a
painful conflict, in which many were injured. I would suggest two quantitative and
objective measures: how many refugees were there from the American Revolution,
and how much property did they lose, in comparison to the French Revolution? It
is possible to obtain rough but enlightening answers to these questions. The num-
ber of émigré loyalists who went to Canada or England during the American
Revolution is set as high as 100,000; let us say only 60,000. The number of émigrés
from the French Revolution is quite accurately known; it was 129,000, of whom
25,000 were clergy, deportees rather than fugitives, but let us take the whole figure,
129,000. There were about 2,500,000 people in America in 1776, of whom a fifth
were slaves; let us count the whole 2,500,000. There were about 25,000,000 people
in France at the time of the French Revolution. There were, therefore, 24 émigrés
per thousand of population in the American Revolution, and only 5 émigrés per
thousand of population in the French Revolution.
In both cases the revolutionary governments confiscated the property of coun-
terrevolutionaries who emigrated. Its value cannot be known, but the sums paid in
compensation lend themselves to tentative comparison. The British government
granted £3,300,000 to loyalists as indemnity for property lost in the United States.
The French émigrés, or their heirs, received a “billion franc indemnity” in 1825
during the Bourbon restoration. A sum of £3,300,000 is the equivalent of
82,000,000 francs. Revolutionary France, ten times as large as revolutionary
America, confiscated only twelve times as much property from its émigrés, as mea-
sured by subsequent compensations, which in each case fell short of actual losses.
The difference, even allowing for margins of error, is less great than is commonly
supposed. The French, to be sure, confiscated properties of the church and other
public bodies in addition; but the present comparison suggests the losses of private
persons.
It is my belief also, John Quincy Adams notwithstanding, that the American
and the French revolutions “proceeded from the same principles.” The difference is
that these principles were much more deeply rooted in America, and that contrary
or competing principles, monarchist or aristocratic or feudal or ecclesiastical,
though not absent from America, were, in comparison to Europe, very weak. As-
sertion of the same principles therefore provoked less conflict in America than in