Europe and the American Revolution 209
new constitution for his own state. Nor did it suit their requirements to find Jef-
ferson demanding a more independent executive and such “British” ideas as a sepa-
ration and balance of powers.
Adams’ book remaining unknown in France, and the more jarring ideas of Jef-
ferson being brushed aside, the counterattack of the Turgot school fell upon the
now deceased Abbé Mably. Philip Mazzei arrived in Paris, mixed with Morellet,
Condorcet, and others, and with Jefferson’s blessing wrote his four- volume work to
correct French misconceptions of the United States. The whole second volume was
a refutation of Mably. Mazzei also included in his book two tracts by Condorcet,
one on the influence of the American Revolution on Europe, the other on “the
uselessness of separating the legislative power among several bodies.”
Mazzei’s complaint against Mably—except as he thought that Mably shared in a
general wrong- headedness about America—was that Mably was a kind of crypto-
aristocrat, pessimistically harping on the “prejudices” that Americans shared with
Europe, and dissatisfied with everything in the American constitutions except the
restraints that they placed on democracy. He ridiculed Mably’s idea that the consti-
tution of Massachusetts would, in contrast to that of Pennsylvania, allow the inevi-
table transition to aristocracy to occur peaceably. It was one of Mably’s delusions,
said this friend of Jefferson, to suppose that the constitution of Massachusetts was
really less democratic than that of other states.^57
More interest attaches to the views of Condorcet, the friend and biographer of
Turgot, the intellectual luminary of the revolution soon to come in France. Like
Turgot, he wanted a single assembly to represent simply the nation as such. Like
Turgot and many others, in all countries, including England, he was aware of the
realities in British public life: “Inequality of representation may render it illusory,
as in England.”^58 Like Brissot, with whom he was to be closely associated in the
politics of the Revolution, he would prevent the usurpation of power by making
the single assembly dependent on frequent election, by providing for referendums
and initiative on the part of the voters, and by detailed declarations of rights. Like
the physiocrats, he would give almost unlimited economic freedom. And, like the
mathematician that he was, his ideas were alarmingly self- evident, abstract, abso-
lute, and simple.
Recognition of natural rights in America, he declared, “teaches that these rights
are everywhere the same,” and that all men in all countries should enjoy all of them
with one exception—the right to vote, which “the virtuous citizen must know how
to renounce in some constitutions.”^59 In fact, though the Revolution was to make
him accept a manhood suffrage, Condorcet in 1788 would give a full vote only to
persons (men or women, for he was an early sponsor of women’s rights, and Mme.
Condorcet was an upper- class Mme. Roland) who possessed enough landed prop-
erty to live on the income without working. To smaller land- owners he would give
corresponding fractional votes. Precautions against the abuse of power were the
less necessary, he asserted, in proportion as the declaration of rights was more spe-
57 P. Mazzei, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats- Unis, 4 vols. (Paris, 1788), II, 75–77.
58 Ibid., I, 287.
59 Ibid., IV, 248.