200 Chapter IX
In Germany there was little incentive to detailed examination of American gov-
ernment. Some Germans, following the Anglo- Hanoverian school, thought of the
American Revolution as anarchy, or set forth a historical- realistic theory of juris-
prudence against the natural- rights theory or non- political “republicanism” which
other Germans espoused. Nevertheless, events arising from the American war
stirred up political commentary in Germany, especially in connection with the
supplying of German troops to Great Britain, which many Germans disapproved.
The city of Kassel, in the heart of Hesse, was in fact a main center of pro-
Americanism. “For the first time in history,” says a recent German writer, speaking
of the sale of Hessian mercenaries, “there was a positive criticism by burghers and
educated circles of the actions of the small absolutist state. We cannot doubt that
these events aroused political criticism of existing conditions.”^41 Reformists in
Germany, however, generally hoped for improvement either through enlightened
monarchy as in the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or through the operation of
diets and estates, privileged and historically constituted bodies, like the diet of
Württemberg. The American constitutions had nothing to suggest along either of
these lines. The idea that the “people,” that is, the governed, should take part in the
formation or conduct of government was unfamiliar. Only in a stray work, like
Schmohl’s Nordamerikfi und Democratic, do we find a summons to the reader, and
still an indefinite one, “to rise to a realization of the dignity of a free man, who
feels himself to be part of the law- making power.”^42 Poor Schmohl emigrated to
America, but died at sea.
Probably in other countries discussion of the American governments and con-
stitutions was even more sporadic than in Germany. We know that the gazettes of
Moscow and St. Petersburg printed sympathetic reports of the American Revolu-
tion. Alexander Radishchev, in his Voyage from Petersburg to Moscow (for which he
was exiled to Siberia) not only reprinted his Ode to Liberty, inspired by the Ameri-
can Revolution, but cited several of the American state constitutions, chiefly as an
argument for liberty of the press. Radishchev, according to Catherine II, was worse
than Pugachev, because he quoted Benjamin Franklin.^43
The French, however, spurred on by certain Americans in their midst, engaged
in a kind of full- dress debate on the American constitutions and American gov-
ernments, examining and criticizing their features in detail.
What most impressed the French was the very act of constitution- making itself,
the constituting or reconstituting of government through the principle of the peo-
ple as constituent power. What they learned from America was the possibility of
having a constituent assembly or a convention. The very word “convention” in this
sense, which the French were to make memorable in their own way in 1792, came
41 F. Valjavec, Die Entstehung der politischen Strömungen in Deutschland, 1770–1815 (Munich,
1951), 109; Gallinger, op.cit., 33.
42 J. C. Schmohl, Nordamerika und Demokratie (Copenhagen, 1782). Apparently really published
at Konigsberg. Quoted by Gallinger, op.cit., 69; see also King, op.cit., 176 and P. Merlan, “Parva Ha-
manniana II: Hamann and Schmohl,” in Journal of the History of Ideas (1949), X, 567–74.
43 Max Laserson, The American Impact on Russia (New York, 1950), 53–71; M. M. Shtrange, Russ-
koye Obshchestvo i Frantsuzkaya Revolyutsiya (Russian Society and the French Revolution 1789–1794)
(Moscow, 1956), 43–45. I am indebted to Mr. W. L. Blackwell for reading this Russian work.