CHAPTER XXXI
AMERICA: DEMOCRACY NATIVE
AND IMPORTEDBeware, ye American aristocrats! Your principles and efforts are leading you to a
precipice.... If the cause of France, which is the cause of human nature, should
succeed, then farewell kings, aristocrats and the long catalogue of clerical imposi-
tions.
—ELIHU PALMER, 1793
The cursed foul contagion of French principles has infected us.... If she fails the
world will be free. I have the highest confidence in the success of England.
—GEORGE CABOT, 1798
I see how the thing is going. At the next election England will set up Jay or Ham-
ilton, and France, Jefferson, and all the corruption of Poland will be introduced;
unless the American spirit should rise and say, we will have neither John Bull nor
Louis Baboon.
—PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS TO HIS WIFE, 1797
It was the Americans who had first given the example of rebellion, proclaimed the
rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, and established a new public au-
thority in their state constitutions by recognizing a constituent power in bodies
called conventions. They had attracted the lively notice and admiration of dissatis-
fied persons in many parts of Europe. A mere fifteen years later the American
image had already faded in a more blinding light on the screen of the world’s
opinion, and the mild accents of the heralds of liberty had been succeeded by a
more ringing and compelling voice. If an influence had passed from America to