Two Letters

Consider these two letters:

Adams to Jefferson, January 31, 1796 (259)
“I consider all Reasoning upon French Affairs of little moment. The Fates must determine hereafter as they have done heretofore. Reasoning has been all lost. Passion, Prejudice, Interest, Necessity has governed and will govern; and a Century must roll away before any permanent and quiet System will be established. An Amelioration of human affairs I hope and believe will be the result, but You and I must look down from the Battlements of Heaven if We ever have the Pleasure of Seeing it.

TJ to JA, Sep 4th 1823
"The spirit of the Spaniard and his deadly and eternal hatred to the Frenchman, gives me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat this atrocious violation of the laws of god and man under which he is suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes afford reasonable hope that the nation will settle down in a temperate representative government, with an executive properly subordinated to that. Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece will follow suit. You and I shall look down from another world on these glorious achievements to man, which will add to the joys of heaven."

Could Jefferson in 1823 have had in mind Adams's letter from 1796, indicating to Adams that the French Revolution did not slow down the progress of representative government in the way that Adams had predicted in 1796?

Adams Skeptical about the French Revolution

By late 1788 and early 1789 Jefferson sees even more advances being made in the political life in France. He sees an orderly revolution in the works, perhaps similar to the events leading up to the signing of the Magna Carta in England. He observed that the third estate won the right to convene periodically, to register laws, and to propose amendments. “Thus a change in their constitution is, I think, certain: and the life of the present king or the minority of his heir will give time to confirm it” (Jefferson to Adams, December 5th 1788, 231-232). Jefferson is confident that the constitutional changes will remain firm in France. January sees more healthy changes, the power of taxing based on consent, accountability of ministers, the regular meeting of the estates, a degree of liberty to the press, and that these rights were to be fixed in a written document (Jefferson to Adams, January 14th 1789, 235-236).

Adams did not respond directly to these observations that Jefferson made. Perhaps this can be explained by what was probably his reservations or skepticism about the political movements in France coming to a happy end. This silence of Adams indicates that the disagreement about the nature and meaning of the French Revolution would be what would eventually lead to the strains in their friendship. These strains would eventually find themselves reflected in American institutions. By the late 1780s, public intellectuals, expecting a revolution to begin in France, began writing books about the American constitution and preparing to write a new Constitution for France. Turgot and Mably in France and Godwin in England wrote essays or books critiquing America for installing a constitution that allowed for three branches at the Federal level and also divided power between the federal and state level. The French critics were more enamored with the idea of a country with a single parliament and centralized federal power (Thompson, 1996, 364).