CHAPTER I
THE AGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
Two great parties are forming in all nations.... For one, there is a right of govern-
ment, to be exercised by one or several persons over the mass of the people, of di-
vine origin and to be supported by the church, which is protected by it. These
principles are expressed in the formula, Church and State.
To this is opposed the new system, which admits no right of government except
that arising from the free consent of those who submit to it, and which maintains
that all persons who take part in government are accountable for their actions.
These principles go under the formula, Sovereignty of the People, or Democracy.
—G. K. VAN HOGENDORP, ROTTERDAM, 1791
A young Philadelphian of good family, Thomas Shippen, in the course of a visit to
Europe, where he cultivated the acquaintance of “titled men and ladies of birth,”
bore a letter of introduction to Thomas Jefferson, the American Minister to France,
who presented him at the court of Versailles. They arrived, one day in February
1788, “at 1/2 past 10 and were not done bowing until near 2.” Young Shippen
chatted with the Papal Nuncio and the Russian Ambassador, who “was very po-
lite,” and on meeting a woman and her two daughters who were all countesses he
was introduced with all his “titles,” which he thought most people believed to be
hereditary. He was then paired with a German princeling for presentation to the
King, who mumbled a few words while hitching on his sword. It all made the
young man very conscious of his American nationality. He was “revolted” at the
King’s arrogance, but even more “mortified at the suppleness and base complai-
sance of his attendants.” Such oriental splendor he thought worth seeing—once. It
set him to thinking, for, as he wrote to his father, he detected ennui and uneasiness
on the faces at court, and was more convinced than ever that “a certain degree of
equality is essential to human bliss.”
The underlining was Shippen’s own. He added that America was peculiarly for-
tunate, since it provided the degree of equality that made for happiness, “without