Europe and the American Revolution 211
John Stevens was persuaded that John Adams was trying to foist aristocracy upon
the United States. We Americans, declared Stevens, enjoy “perfect equality” as a na-
tion of small farmers; there has never been and is not now a trace of aristocracy
among us; we have no orders, ranks, or nobility. Our governments are nearly perfect
democracies because our governors are our agents; it is a fallacy to suppose that all
men must have the right to vote in a democratic system. A balance of orders may be
necessary in Europe, but America is different, and Adams and Delolme will never
convince us that we need any such “orders” here, any “independent and self- existing
powers,” or any “interest separate from that of the community at large.” Neverthe-
less, says Stevens, it is of course wise to have a second chamber of legislation, and to
give the executive and the judiciary a power of restraining the legislature.
The interest of this pamphlet, in America, lies in the fact that this affluent
landed gentleman supposes himself to be a democrat, more so than Adams, and
that, even in refuting Adams, he still favors a constitutional separation of powers.
His dispute with Adams arose from a misunderstanding, whether willful or not;
for Adams had never said that there should be hereditary ranks and orders of men
in America. Fundamentally Adams and Stevens agreed on what was desirable.
Those who disagreed had been silenced or left the country.
In France the same pamphlet had a different significance. It appeared in French
in the early weeks of 1789, on the eve of the elections to the Estates General. There
was a general belief that France would soon receive a new constitution, and Con-
dorcet and Dupont, in adapting this American pamphlet, and spurred on by
Mazzei and possibly by Jefferson, intended to clear the ground for a French consti-
tution by discrediting the British constitution as a model. That the American Ste-
vens actually favored a threefold separation of powers was confusing; but then
Stevens himself had been unclear, for he did roundly denounce the government of
England and the society of ranks and orders. In any case the notes to the transla-
tion, furnished by Condorcet and Dupont, and longer than the translation itself,
could straighten out the matter. In these notes the annotators either elaborated or
contradicted their author as best suited their purpose. They gained the prestige of
American precedent for their attack on England and on aristocratic society. They
disagreed on the matter of constitutional powers; they declared, unlike Stevens,
that an upper chamber, and an executive equipped with a veto, were useless imita-
tions of the discredited British constitution. There need be only a single omnicom-
petent assembly, checked by frequent election, by direct intervention of the people,
and by declaration of rights.
The Examen du gouvernement de l ’Angleterre, thus originating as an American
reply to Adams, did have an effect in France in the crucial year 1789. The Abbé
in small manufacturing enterprises. Since the New Jersey convention voted unanimously to ratify the
federal constitution, it would appear that the elder Stevens approved of it, though it embodied pretty
much the views of John Adams which the younger Stevens was simultaneously attacking. The younger
Stevens in 1787 was a heavy holder of continental paper (to the extent of $28,000); he was the sort of
man, and of the sort of family, which, according to Beard’s form of economic interpretation, should
have agreed with John Adams instead of attacking him. But this “farmer of New Jersey” talked like a
pre- Jeffersonian democrat. On the two Stevenses see F. McDonald, We the People: The Economic Ori-
gins of the Constitution (Chicago, 1958), 127.