180 Chapter IX
prehensive government, for although Spain joined in the American War of Inde-
pendence, it naturally feared the spread of rebellion to its own American domin-
ions. Alvarez, in his preface, declares that all eyes are on the Anglo- Americans,
that the newspapers are full of their affairs, and that Spaniards have recently shown
a commendable new interest in serious books. He proposes to give information,
but he gives none. He declares that New England (probably meaning British
America) is divided into eleven provinces and four counties, and that the Anglican
Church is established in all of them; he says virtually nothing on the Revolution;
and he drifts off into commercial topics, Indian affairs, and a miscellany of fanciful
anecdotes.^4
Between the two extremes, in the middle zone of France and Germany, there
was a far more lively interest in the American Revolution than in the south, to-
gether with a more highly developed press and a wider penetration of the liberal-
ism of the Enlightenment, while on the other hand there was no chance for private
persons to do anything in the way of practical politics, as in Holland and the Brit-
ish Isles. The result was an incredible outburst of discussion, speculation, rhapsody,
and argument, a veritable intoxication with the rêve américain. It is mostly with
France and Germany that the following pages deal. But the theme can be set by
two Swiss from Basel, Peter Ochs, the future Director of the Helvetic Republic,
and his mentor, Isaac Iselin, the Swiss philosophe and physiocrat.
“What do you think of the success of the Americans?” wrote Ochs to Iselin in
- “Might it perhaps be from the side of the other continent that we shall see
the realization of what you have taught about the history of mankind?”
“I am tempted to believe,” replied Iselin, “that North America is the country
where reason and humanity will develop more rapidly than anywhere else.”^5
Channels of Communication
Europeans were made conscious of the American Revolution in many ways,
through the press, through discussions in reading clubs or Masonic lodges, through
the reports of returned soldiers, and through the deliberate propaganda of Ameri-
cans and others. All worked upon a basic receptivity in Europe, since the revolu-
tion in America gave the opportunity for discussion, in a colorful and dramatic
context, of those general ideas about government and politics which had come to
occupy the European mind.
It was in the last third of the eighteenth century that a public opinion, as such,
took form, and, indeed, the very expression, “public opinion,” dates in several
languages from this time. It consisted in groups of people habitually interested in
public events, subscribing as individuals or in clubs to newspapers and magazines,
incipiently political in their outlook, not at first in the sense that they expected
to take any action in politics themselves, but in the sense that they were aware of
4 F. A lv a re z , Noticia del establecimiento y poblacion de la colonias inglesas en la America septentrionale
(Madrid, 1778).
5 G. Steiner, ed., Korrespondenz des Peter Ochs (Basel, 1927), I, 102, 104.