Thomas Jefferson received a singular letter, he wrote in his Autobiography, on July 20, 1789. The writer, Champion de Cicé, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was the chairman of a committee for the construction of a constitution for a new French government and he asked Jefferson to be present concerning their deliberations on a constitution. Jefferson excused himself. His role, he replied, was chief magistrate of the United States to France, and his duties, limited to his own country and answerable to the king, forbade him from intermeddling in the internal political affairs of another nation.’
And so, members of the committee began without Jefferson’s input. Those members, representative of the aristocracy, were stubbornly conservative and their voices vis-à-vis “preserving the ancient regime” would tolerate no compromise in the deliberations. The features of the new constitution were thus assuming a fearful aspect, and great alarm was produced among the honest patriots by these dissentions in their ranks.
Jefferson mentioned French anxiety about lack of progress toward an equitable constitution. He wrote in his Autobiography:
In this uneasy state of things, I received one day a note from the marquis de la Fayette [1757–1834, picture below], informing me that he should bring a party of six or eight friends to ask a dinner of me the next day. I assured him of their welcome.
Lafayette’s undated letter, now known to be 25 Aug. 1789, was as follows:
I Beg for liberty’s sake You will Breack Every Engagement to Give us a dinner to Morrow Wenesday. We shall Be some Members of the National Assembly—eight of us whom I want to Coalize as Being the only Means to prevent a total dissolution and a civil war. The difficulty between them is the King’s veto. Some want it Absolute, others will Have no Veto, and the only way to Unite them is to find some Means for a suspensive Veto so strong as so Complicated as to Give the king a due influence. If they don’t agree in a few days, we shall Have no Great Majority in a favour of Any plan, and it must end in a war Because the discontented party will unite either with Aristocratic, or factious people. These gentlemen wish to Consult You and me, they will dine tomorrow at your House as Mine is alwais full. I depend on you to receive us. Perhaps will they Be late but I shall Be precisely at three with you and I think this dinner of an immediate and Great importance.
Lafayette arrived. So too did the “leading patriots”—some royalists (later to be called Feuillants) and others republicans (later to be called Jacobins)—the “triumvirate” of Adrien Duport (republican), Joseph Barnave (republican), and Alexander La Meth (republican); Marie-Charles-César de Faÿ (Comte de la Tour-Maubourg and republican, but of the Noblesse); Marquis de Blacons (republican, who would later turn royalist); John Joseph Mounier (leader of moderate royalists); and François-Edouard-Augustin-Venceslas-Hippolyte (comte d’Agoult, royalist). Though the royalists and republicans were of different political stuff, they were agreeable to controvert openly, but in the spirits of respectfulness and compromise in avoidance of anticipated civil strife. Jefferson continues in his Autobiography:
The cloth being removed and wine set on the table, after the American manner, the Marquis introduced the objects of the conference by summarily reminding them of the state of things in the Assembly, the course which the principles of the constitution were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked by more concord among the Patriots themselves.
Lafayette set the stage for compromise, by telling his comrades of the urgency of the scenario—failure to act swiftly and decisively would mean that the Noblesse would win the day—and of his willingness to agree with whatever common opinion the “brethren” might forge.
The wine was begun at four o’clock in the afternoon at Jefferson’s Hôtel de Langeac and ended at 10 p.m. Jefferson wrote eloquently of that magical day:
I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of argument unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning, and chaste eloquence, disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity, as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato and Cicero. The result was an agreement that the king should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the legislature should be composed of a single body only, & that to be chosen by the people. This Concordate decided the fate of the constitution. The Patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled, carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the Aristocracy to insignificance and impotence
Jefferson, disturbed by his role as participant in French politics, consulted the next day with Comte de Montmorin, Minister of Foreign Affairs under Louis XVI, about the dinner observer” of the discussion. Montmorin replied that he knew everything about the dinner and had no complaints about Jefferson, being the host. Montmorin even encouraged Jefferson “habitually [to] assist at such conferences.”
Had Jefferson really been “a neutral and passive observer”? To what extent did Jefferson sway the conversation?
It is reasonable to conclude that Jefferson, true to his word to Montmorin, had been at least mostly neutral and passive. His French was far from perfect. Even those who can readily read French—and this applies to me—often have difficulty with following the conversations of Frenchmen, who often speak quickly and animatedly. Thus, Jefferson’s commentary on the “chaste eloquence” was mostly based on study of the delivery of speeches—animation, gesticulation, forbearance, and conciliation—and the manner of their reception, not the content of speeches.
Here we can recall Jefferson’s mawkish recollection of the great Cherokee warrior and orator Outassete—a frequent guest of Jefferson’s father—when on one occasion, as a young boy, Outassete gave an impassioned farewell oration to his people before the warrior embarked on a trip to England. The moon, to which the warrior seemed to speak, was
full of splendor, [and] his sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated actions, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho’ I did not understand a word he uttered.
Jefferson’s presence at the dinner was symbolic and supportive. As a symbol, he was a nonesuch, as he was likely at the time the world’s largest human symbol of equality and liberty. As a supporter, his presence was perhaps to convince all, Royalists especially, that the greatness of republican government was in its ability to accept compromise. Jefferson’s residence too needed an explanation, for Lafayette’s comment, “Mine is alwais full,” was verbiage. Lafayette’s note to Jefferson expressed profound desperation. There had been several unsuccessful gatherings at Lafayette’s residence and desperation demanded a change of venue to inject some hopefulness and fend off civil strife.
Nonetheless, another question needed to be answered. Why did Jefferson accept Lafayette’s proposal, if he knew that in doing so, even if as a passive observer, he was in contravention of his duties as minister to France—specifically, of his duties to the king of France? On July 20, he cordially rejected the Bishop of Bordeaux’s entreaty to assist in the construction of a French constitution.
On August 25, he quickly accepted Lafayette’s entreaty. The reasons for acceptance were several. First, there was urgency in Lafayette’s entreaty—“if they don’t agree in a few days, we shall Have no Great Majority in a favour of Any plan, and it must end in a war”—that was missing from the bishop’s. Second, though Lafayette’s letter was an entreaty—“I Beg for liberty’s sake You will Breack Every Engagement to Give us a dinner to Morrow Wenesday”—it did not seem to offer Jefferson any option other than acceptance. Lafayette was coming the next day, Wednesday, August 26, at 3 p.m. The best Jefferson could have done, if he was not open to the entreaty, would have been not to be there to receive him. Last, Lafayette, unlike the bishop, was a dear friend and political ally of Jefferson, and he was the leader of the French Patriots and the most significant of the French revolutionaries.
More must be said about Jefferson’s political, and moral, investment in the French Revolution, as he considered France at the time to be the most cultured and enlightened nation on the planet and thus, the logical successor to the contagion of the American Revolution. The whole world, said Jefferson, must take interest in the French Revolution, which was an aftereffect of the American Revolution, with its avowedly undersized cause. Here we recall this sentiment of Jefferson on the cause of the American Revolution:
So inscrutable was the arrangement of causes & consequences in this world that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all it’s inhabitants.
Jefferson was a moral and political progressivist—the political being answerable to the moral—and in keeping with thinkers like Marquis de Condorcet and Imanuel Kant, he believed that each generation of men, on the whole, was more intelligent and more morally aware than the prior generation. Thus, he eschewed serious study of political works like Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics—each of which was heavily studied in his day—because they were to him obsolete. Jefferson writes to Isaac Tiffany (26 Aug. 1816):
So different was the style of society then and with those people, from what it is now and with us, that I think little edification can be obtained from their writings on the subject of government. They had just ideas of the value of personal liberty, but none at all of the structure of government best calculated to preserve it.
Aristotle, for instance, maintained that a workable government for any polis could not be too large in size, otherwise it would be political chaos. Jefferson merely noted that Aristotle never thought of representative government, a decided improvement from direct democracy, which Jefferson too recognized could only be efficient in governments not too geographically bloated.
Regarding republicanism as an advance over existing forms of government, since it was not geographically challenged, Jefferson envisioned a union of republican states that covered the whole of North America. He even envisioned a global federation of republican nations, each in amicable relations with every other nation. For instance, to J. Evelyn Denison (5 Nov. 1825), Jefferson justified drawing professors from England to teach at University of Virginia for the sake of
regenerating the condition of man, the sources from which representative government is to flow over the whole earth.
The first step toward that global confederation of nations was the success of representative government in America. The second step, and a crucial one, was France, republicanized.
With the world’s most enlightened nation republicanized, Jefferson was certain that other nations would follow the leads of America and France. Jefferson wrote to George Mason (4 Feb. 1791):
I look with great anxiety for the firm establishment of the new government in France, being perfectly convinced that if it takes place there, it will spread sooner or later all over Europe. On the contrary, a check there would retard the revival of liberty in other countries.
There was a certain amount of desperation in Jefferson’s desire to see France a Jeffersonian republic. Jefferson the unflinching empiricist believed that republicanism, though deemed an advance compared with other forms of government, was an experiment. Pure democracies were geographically challenged and all forms of “aristocracy,” even if begun with pure intentions, eventually tended to become abusive of the general citizenry. Thus, early letters on the first stage of the revolution were sanguine, though it was fair to say that he saw what he wished to see more that what was happening. Jefferson writese to William Carmichael (4 Mar. 1789):
The revolution in this country seems to be going on well. Nothing was more demonstrable than is the unity of their & our interest for ages to come.
To TJ to James Madison (11 May 1789), he states:
The revolution of France has gone on with the most unexampled success, hitherto. There have been some mobs, occasioned by the want of bread, in different parts of the kingdom, in which there may have been some lives lost; perhaps a dozen or twenty. These have no professed connection, generally, with the constitutional revolution.
Jefferson would return to Virginia with the expectation of soon going back to and resuming his post in France. Things, however, did not go as planned. On July 14, 1790, there was the Fête de la Féderation—a feast where all present swore an oath to the nation, the law, and the king in honor of the fall of the Bastille. In 1792, up to 1600 prisoners, said to be enemies of social order, were executed. Lafayette would be deserted by his army and even imprisoned. In the chaos, Napoleon Bonaparte would eventually become dictator of France with a coup d’état on September 9, 1799.
Yet Jefferson never lost hope. To Samuel Adams (16 Feb. 1800), Jefferson said that he had faith in Bonaparte’s head, though he distrusted his heart. Bonaparte had “transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm.” Though some would see the dictator’s rise to power as a lesson against republicanism, Jefferson saw his ascendancy as a lesson against standing armies.
In 1802, Jefferson granted that France, under the leadership of the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, had slid from a “limited to an unlimited despotism.” Still “the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former.” He would eventually come to terms with the notion that the revolution in France had failed European liberals, unlike Jefferson, were tolerant of social stratification and intolerant on the judgment of the hoi polloi—and that Bonaparte was a cruel and unfeeling tyrant, incapable of moral sensing.
Hosting Lafayette’s dinner party on August 26, 1789, Jefferson, in spite of Montmorin’s failure to castigate him, had crossed the line vis-à-vis his duties as minister plenipotentiary to France. Even if he had been, as he had said, merely a passive observer to the eloquent discourse of the evening, his role as host of such a dinner involved him in the political affairs of France. Jefferson knew that his involvement was unpardonable, but his desire to see American republicanism transported to France so that it might take root and republicanized the rest, or at least most, of Europe was so large that common sense gave way to passion: the disengaged looker-on became engaged, or somewhat so.
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