Gazette Of The United States

EXTRACT
of a Letter from Paris, to a gentleman in New-Haven,
dated August 30th, 1789.

It is extremely gratifying, my dear Sir, to have spent the last six months in this country— where, next to the American revolution, the greatest and most wonderful scenes are unfolding. The progress of truth and reason is beyond calculation. We might have believed from theory, that government would meliorate—that the people might discover in time that as laws are made for them, they ought to be made by them—that Kings should be but Executive Magistrates, and therefore subject to the laws. But when we consider the slow and almost imperceptible progress of such ideas from the days of Magna Charta to the last revolution in England, their retrograde motion from the time of the great Henry, to Louis XVIth. in France, and their dormant state for many ages in all the rest of Europe, it is astonishing that so many events of this nature should be crowded into fifteen years. It is but since the American war that the faculty of thinking has been by any means general in France. The example of America in her theoretical ideas of liberty has certainly been a great thing for France. But greater, if possible, will be her example in the development of these ideas in her government. The Constitution of France, which is in a good degree of forwardness, will be as nearly like the American, as is consistent with having an hereditary Chief Magistrate. If they had not a King on hand, they would not create one. They will now preserve him with such powers as the people choose to delegate to their Executive Chief. And he will gladly accept of what they may give him, acknowledging the source from whence it flows, the jus divinum of his fellow citizens.

The other nations of Europe have now an example nearer home—and they will soon follow it. The gospel of civil liberty will run and be glorified—nations are coming to its light, and Kings to the brightness of its rising. It cannot be ten years before Germany, Spain, and South America will be free: How many other States will precede, and how many follow them, cannot now be known; but all Europe must do one or the other. One principal occasional cause of these revolutions, is the immense national debts accumulated by the expensive wars of the present century. Spain finds a deficiency of eighty millions. The Emperor's dominions are exhausted by war and taxes. No Sovereign in Europe can impose a new tax, without the consent of the people, for France could not do it. Spain must assemble her Cortes, or submit to a bankruptcy, either of which is the direct road, and the first, the beaten road, to a revolution. Assembling the Notables here, has done the same thing.