IV

During the early stages of the French Revolution, Washington had

followed with the keenest sympathy and anxiety the efforts of our

ancestors, taking pride in the thought that the American example had

something to do, as it undoubtedly had, with what was happening. "The

young French nobility enrolled for the cause of [American]

independence," wrote Talleyrand in his memoirs, "attached itself

afterward to the principles it had gone to fight for." Pontgibaud, who

remained a royalist, who hated the Revolution and became an _émigré_,

observes the same fact, although deploring what occurred: "The officers

of Count de Rochambeau had nothing better to do [after Yorktown], I

believe, than to visit the country. When one thinks of the false ideas

of government and philanthropy with the virus of which these youths were

infected in America, and which they were to enthusiastically propagate

in France, with such lamentable success--since that mania for imitation

has powerfully helped toward the Revolution, without being its unique

cause--people will agree that all those red-heeled young philosophers

had much better, for their sake and ours, have stayed at court.... Each

of them fancied he would be called upon to play the part of

Washington." Asked to join Lafayette and "his former brothers-in-arms of

beyond the sea," he refused: "It has been justly said that in a

revolution the difficulty lies not in doing one's duty, but in knowing

where it is. I did mine because I knew where it was," and he joined the

princes and emigrated.[193]

Of this American influence Washington was aware, and spoke, as may be

surmised, in terms nearer those of Talleyrand than those of Pontgibaud.

"I am glad to hear," he wrote to Jefferson, "that the _Assemblée des

Notables_ has been productive of good in France.... Indeed the rights of

mankind, the privileges of the people, and the true principles of

liberty seem to have been more generally discussed and better understood

throughout Europe since the American Revolution than they were at any

former period."[194]

Few of Washington's observations are a greater credit to him, as a

statesman, than those concerning this extraordinary upheaval. From the

first he felt that the change would not prove a merely local one, but

would have world-wide consequences; that, in fact, a new era was

beginning for mankind. "A spirit for political improvements seems to be

rapidly and extensively spreading through the European countries," he

wrote to La Luzerne. "I shall rejoice in seeing the condition of the

human race happier than ever it has been." But let the people at the

helm be careful not to make "more haste than good speed in their

innovations."[195]

No less clearly did he foresee, long before the event, and when all was

hope and rejoicing, that it was almost impossible to count upon a

peaceful, gradual, and bloodless development where so many

long-established, hatred-sowing abuses had to be corrected. This,

however, was what, as a friend of France, he would have liked to see,

and even before the Revolution had really started he had expressed to

Lafayette, in striking words, his wish that it might prove a "tacit"

one: "If I were to advise, I should say that great moderation should be

used on both sides.... Such a spirit seems to be awakened in the kingdom

as, if managed with extreme prudence, may produce a gradual and tacit

revolution, much in favor of the subjects."[196]

The movement is started, the Bastile falls, and Lafayette sends the key

thereof to his former chief. "It is a tribute," he wrote, "which I owe

as a son to my adopted father, as an aide-de-camp to my general, as a

missionary of liberty to its patriarch." Washington placed the key at

Mount Vernon, where it is still, and returned thanks for this "token of

victory gained by liberty over despotism."[197]

The beginnings were promising. The great leader was full of admiration,

of awe, of apprehension. To Gouverneur Morris, then American minister to

France, President Washington, as he now was, wrote on the 13th of

October, 1789, in these prophetic terms: "The Revolution which has been

effected in France is of so wonderful a nature that the mind can hardly

realize the fact. If it ends as our last accounts to the 1st of August

predict, that nation will be the most powerful and happy in Europe; but

I fear, though it has gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm, it

is not the last it has to encounter before matters are finally settled.

In a word, the Revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in

so short a space, and with the loss of so little blood. The

mortification of the King, the intrigues of the Queen, and the

discontent of the princes and the noblesse will foment divisions, if

possible, in the National Assembly." The "licentiousness of the people"

is not less to be feared. "To forbear running from one extreme to the

other is no easy matter; and should this be the case, rocks and shoals,

not visible at present, may wreck the vessel."[198]

The grandeur and importance of the change fills him, in the meanwhile,

with wonder. In his before-quoted letter of April 29, 1790, to La

Luzerne he said: "Indeed, the whole business is so extraordinary in its

commencement, so wonderful in its progress, and may be so stupendous in

its consequences that I am almost lost in the contemplation. Of one

thing, however, you may rest perfectly assured, that nobody is more

anxious for the happy issue of that business than I am, as nobody can

wish more sincerely for the prosperity of the French nation than I do."

To another correspondent, Mrs. Graham, he described "the renovation of

the French Constitution," as "one of the most wonderful events in the

history of mankind." So late as the 20th of October, 1792, he was

writing to Gouverneur Morris: "We can only repeat the sincere wish that

much happiness may arise to the French nation and to mankind in general

out of the severe evils which are inseparable from so important a

revolution."

Throughout the unparalleled crisis, the French friends of Washington

kept him informed of events, of their hopes and fears. Lafayette's

letters have been printed; those of Rochambeau, written in his own

English, have not, and many of them are of great interest. The French

general had early foreseen the necessity for profound changes, owing to

abuses, to the excessive privileges of the few, the burdens of the many,

the increasing maladministration, especially since Necker had been

replaced by "a devil of a fool named Calonne."[199] Maybe the States

General will provide an adequate remedy, by devising a constitution: "I

hope very much of this General States to restore our finances and to

consolidate a good constitution."[200] But he has doubts as to what

"aristocratical men" will do.

Himself a member of the Assembly, Rochambeau considers that there are

not, in reality, three orders--the nobles, the clergy, and the third

estate--but two: "the privileged people and the unprivileged." The vote

being, in accordance with law and custom, taken per estate or order, the

two privileged ones always vote in the same way and can ever prevail.

Rochambeau informs Washington that, as for himself, he "voted in favor

of the equal representation of the third order; your pupil Lafayette

has voted for the same opinion, as you may believe it; but we have here

a great number of aristocratical men that are very interested to

perpetuate the abuses."[201]

He agrees with Washington that, in order to reach safe results,

developments should be slowly evolved; but the temper of the nation has

been wrought up, and it is, moreover, a fiery temper. "Do you remember,

my dear general," he writes, "of the first repast that we have made

together at Rod-Island? I [made] you remark from the soup the difference

of character of our two nations, the French in burning their throat and

all the Americans waiting wisely [for] the time that it was cooled. I

believe, my dear general, you have seen, since a year, that our nation

has not change[d] of character. We go very fast--God will that we

[reach] our aims."[202]

In his moments of deepest anxiety Rochambeau is pleased, however, to

remember "a word of the late King of Prussia," Frederick II, who,

considering what France was, what misfortunes and dangers she had

encountered, and what concealed sources of strength were in her, once

said to the French minister accredited to him: "I have been brought up

in the middle of the unhappiness of France; my cradle was surrounded

with refugee Protestants that, about the end of the reign of Louis XIV

and the beginning of the regency of the Duc d'Orleans, told me that

France was at the agony and could not exist three years. I [have] known

in the course of my reign that France has such a temper that there [is]

no bad minister nor bad generals [who] be able to kill it, and that

constitution has made it rise again of all its crises, with strength and

vigor. It wants no other remedy but time and keep a strict course of

diet."[203]

Events followed their course, but, while everything else was changing in

France, the feeling for Washington and the United States remained the

same. The two countries felt nearer than before, and showed it in many

ways. At the death of Franklin the National Assembly, on the proposal of

Mirabeau, went into mourning for three days; our first Constitution, of

1791, was notified to the American Government: "President Washington,"

the French minister informed his chief, "received the King's letter with

the tokens of the greatest satisfaction; and in accordance with your

orders a copy of the Constitution and of the King's letter to the

National Assembly was given to him as well as to Mr. Jefferson."[204]

Tom Paine, though an American, or rather because an American, was

elected by several departments a member of the Convention, took his

seat, but, as he knew no French, had his speeches translated and read

for him; he played an important part in the drafting of our second

Constitution, the republican one of 1793. As a sacred emblem of liberty,

the American flag was displayed in the hall where the Convention held

its sittings. A quite extraordinary decree was rendered by this body in

the second year of the Republic, "after having heard the petition of

American citizens," deciding, and this at a time when everybody was

liable to arrest, that "the wives of American citizens, whatever the

place of their birth, should be exempted from the law on the arrestation

of foreigners."

The 14th of July was, in the meantime, celebrated in America, just as in

France, as marking a new progress in the development of mankind. Our

minister, Ternant, gave Dumouriez a glowing account of such a

celebration: "It affords me great satisfaction to inform you that, in

spite of the news received the day before of the bad success of our

first military operations, the Americans have given, on the occasion of

this anniversary, touching signs of their attachment for France and

proof of the interest they take in the success of our arms. You will see

by the bulletins and newspapers accompanying this letter that the same

sentiments have been manifested in almost all the cities which count in

the Union, and that the 14th has been celebrated with the same ardor as

the 4th, which is the anniversary of American independence."[205]

For the person of the President French tokens of veneration and

friendship multiplied. In the same year--year 1 of the Republic--the

Convention had conferred on him the title of French citizen, as being

"one of the benefactors of mankind." French officers had united to offer

Mrs. Washington a dinner service, each piece ornamented with a star and

her initials in the centre, and the names of the States in medallions

around the border, the whole surrounded by a serpent biting its tail,

the emblem of perpetuity.

French dramatists could not wait until the great man should belong to

the past to make of him the hero of a tragedy in Alexandrine verse:

_Vashington ou la Liberté du Nouveau Monde, par M. de Sauvigny_,

performed for the first time on the Theatre of the Nation (as the

"Comédie Française" was then called), on the 13th of July, 1791, and in

which a nameless predecessor of mine, "l'Ambassadeur de France," brought

the play to a conclusion with praise of Washington, of Franklin, of

Congress, and of the whole American people:

Magistrats dont l'audace étonna l'univers,

Calmes dans la tempête et grands dans les revers,

Vous sûtes, par l'effet d'une sage harmonie,

Enfanter des vertus, un peuple, une patrie.

And in a kind of postscript, the author, commenting on the events

related in his play, observed with truth: "The great American Revolution

has been the first result of one greater still which had taken place in

the empire of opinion." Of any animosity against the English, the same

comment offers no trace.

Gloomy days succeeded radiant ones. Past abuses, danger from abroad,

general suffering, passions let loose, were not conducive to that

coolness and moderation which Washington had recommended from the first.

Ternant had been succeeded as representative of France by that famous

citizen Genet, who, in spite of his having some diplomatic experience

gathered as Chargé d'Affaires in Russia, and being in a way a man of

parts, an authority on Swedes and Finns, had his head turned the moment

he landed, so completely, indeed, that it is impossible, in spite of the

gravity of the consequences involved, not to smile when reading his

high-flown, self-complacent, self-advertising, beaming despatches: "My

journey (from Charleston to Philadelphia) has been an uninterrupted

succession of civic festivities, and my entry in Philadelphia a triumph

for liberty. True Americans are at the height of joy."[206]

In his next letters he insists and gloats over his own matchless deeds:

"The whole of America has risen to acknowledge in me the minister of the

French Republic.... I live in the midst of perpetual feasts; I receive

addresses from all parts of the continent. I see with pleasure that my

way of negotiating pleases our American brothers, and I am founded to

believe, citizen minister, that my mission will be a fortunate one from

every point of view. I include herewith American gazettes in which I

have marked the articles concerning myself."

Encouraged by the Anti-Federalists, who thought they could use him for

their own purposes, Genet shows scant respect for "old Washington, who

greatly differs from him whose name has been engraved by history, and

who does not pardon me my successes"; a mere "Fayettist," he

disdainfully calls him elsewhere. But Genet will have the better of any

such opposition: "I am in the meantime provisioning the West Indies, I

excite Canadians to break the British yoke, I arm the Kentukois, and

prepare a naval expedition which will facilitate their descent on New

Orleans."[207]

He had, in fact, armed in American waters, quite a fleet of corsairs,

revelling in the bestowal on them of such names as the _Sans-Culotte_,

the _Anti-George_, the _Patriote Genet_, the _Vainqueur de la Bastille_,

_La Petite Démocrate_.

His triumphs, his lustre, his listening to addresses in his own honor,

and reading articles in his own praise, his being "clasped in the arms

of a multitude which had rushed to meet him," his naval and military

deeds were short-lived. Contrary to the current belief, the too

well-founded indignation of "Fayettist" Washington had nothing to do

with his catastrophe. On receipt of the very first letter of the

citizen-diplomat, and by return of mail, the foreign minister of the

French Republic took the initiative and wrote him:

"I see that you have been received by an hospitable and open-hearted

people with all the manifestations of friendship of which your

predecessors had also been the recipients.... You have fancied,

thereupon, that it belonged to you to lead the political actions of this

people and make them join our cause. Availing yourself of the flattering

statements of the Charleston authorities, you have thought fit to arm

corsairs, to organize recruiting, to have prizes condemned, before even

having been recognized by the American Government, before having its

assent, nay, with the certitude of its disapproval. You invoke your

instructions from the 'Conseil exécutif' of the Republic; but your

instructions enjoin upon you quite the reverse: they order you to treat

with the _government_, not with a _portion_ of the people; to be for

Congress the spokesman of the French Republic, and not the leader of an

American party." The diplomat's relations with Washington are the

opposite of what France desires: "You say that Washington _does not

pardon you your successes, and that he hampers your moves in a thousand

ways_. You are ordered to treat with the American Government; there only

can you attain real successes; all the others are illusory and contrary

to the interests of your country. Dazzled by a false popularity, you

have estranged the only man who should represent for you the American

people, and if your action is hampered, you have only yourself to

blame."[208]

While this letter was slowly crossing the ocean, others from Genet were

on the way to France, written in the same beaming style. He continued to

gloat over his successes and mercilessly to abuse all Federalists, those

confessed partisans of "monocracy."

People were not for half-measures at Paris, in those terrible days.

Instead of prolonging a useless epistolary correspondence, the Committee

of Public Safety rendered a decree providing that a commission would be

sent to Philadelphia, with powers to disavow the "criminal conduct of

Genet," to disarm his _Sans-Culotte_ and other corsairs, to revoke all

consuls who had taken part in such armaments, and, as for Genet himself,

to have him arrested and sent back to France. What such an arrest meant

was made evident by the signatures at the foot of the decree: "Barère,

Hérault, Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois,

Saint-Just."[209]

Better than any one, Genet knew the meaning. But that same government

which he had abused was generous and protected him. "We wanted his

dismissal, not his punishment," said Secretary of State Randolph, who

refused to have him arrested. Genet hastened to give up a country so

hard to please, he thought, as that of his birth, became an American,

and as, with all his faults, he was not without some merits, being

welcomed in many families, and especially in the house of "General

Clinton, Governor," he wrote, "of the State of New York, and chief of

the Anti-Federalist party," he married his daughter, and died at

Schodack, N.Y., a respected citizen and agriculturist, in 1834. His

name has once more prominently appeared, and in the most honorable

fashion, in those gazettes whose articles in his favor pleased him so

much: a descendant of his has enlisted for the old country during the

present war, and has cast lustre on the name by his bravery.

The last years of the former commander-in-chief of the American and

French armies were saddened by difficulties, troubles, and quarrels with

American political parties and with the French nation. The Jay treaty

with England (November 19, 1794) had raised a storm: "At present the cry

against the treaty is like that against a mad dog; and every one in a

manner is running it down.... The string which is most played on,

because it strikes with most force the popular ear, is the violation, as

they term it, of our engagements with France."[210] Anti-Federalists

were indignant; the French not at all pleased, and their "captures and

seizures," coupled with a desire to be allowed (which they were not) to

sell their prizes in American harbors, increased the discontent. The

opposition press was unspeakably virulent, and the great man sadly

confessed he would never have believed that, he said, "every act of his

administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious

misrepresentations of them be made, by giving one side only of a

subject, and that, too, in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could

scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a

common pickpocket."[211]

The time came at last for his definitive retreat to Mount Vernon. He

reached it a saddened, grand old man, longing to be at last an American

farmer and nothing more, and never to go "beyond twenty miles" from his

home. "To make and sell a little flour annually, to repair houses going

fast to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers of a public

nature, and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pursuits, will

constitute employment for the few years I have to remain on this

terrestrial globe."[212]

His desire was to continue to the end in the regular occupations he

describes to McHenry, in a letter giving us the best picture we have of

everyday life at Mount Vernon. Wondering what he might say that would

interest a secretary of war, he writes: "I might tell him that I begin

my diurnal course with the sun; that if my hirelings are not at their

places at that time I send them messages expressive of my sorrow for

their indisposition; that, having put these wheels in motion, I examine

the state of things further, and the more they are probed, the deeper,

I find, the wounds are which my buildings have sustained by an absence

and neglect of eight years; by the time I have accomplished these

matters, breakfast (a little after seven o'clock, about the time, I

presume, you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry) is ready; that, this

being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me

until it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely miss seeing

strange faces, come, as they say, out of respect for me. Pray, would not

the word curiosity answer as well? And how different this from having a

few social friends at a cheerful board! The usual time of sitting at

table, a walk, and tea brings me within the dawn of candle-light;

previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve that as soon

as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary, I will

retire to my writing-table and acknowledge the letters I have received;

but when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage

in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. The next

comes and with it the same causes for postponement and effect, and so

on....

"It may strike you that in this detail no mention is made of any portion

of time allotted for reading. The remark would be just, for I have not

looked into a book since I came home; nor shall I be able to do it

until I have discharged my workmen, probably not before nights grow

longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomesday Book."[213]

But in this calm retreat, described with a truth and charm almost

reminding one of William Cowper's familiar letters, and where he was to

spend such a small number of years, trouble, as previously, soon knocked

at the door. It seemed at one time as if the former commander-in-chief

of Franco-American armies would have to lead the Americans against the

French. In spite of the preparations which he had himself to

superintend, he refused to believe that war would really occur: "My mind

never has been alarmed by any fears of a war with France."[214] But in

his judgments of the French, as governed by the Directoire, Washington

was gradually receding toward the time when he knew them only through

Steele and Addison, and had, "in the _Spectator_, read to No. 143."

He died without knowing that the threatening clouds would soon be

dispelled; that the next important event which would count in the annals

of the United States and make their greatness secure would come from

those same French people: the cession by them, unexpected and

unasked-for, not of New Orleans, but of the immense territory then

called Louisiana; and that, while his feelings toward the French had

undergone changes, those of the French toward him had remained

unaltered.

When the news came that on Saturday, 14th of December, 1799, the great

leader had passed away,[215] the French Republic went into mourning; for

ten days officers wore crape, flags were flown at half-mast, and the

head of the state, young Bonaparte, issued an order in which he said:

"Washington is dead. This great man fought tyranny. He established on a

safe basis the liberty of his country. His memory will ever be dear to

the French people as well as to all the free men of the two worlds, and

especially to French soldiers, who, like himself and the American

soldiers, fight now for equality and liberty."

An impressive and unparalleled ceremony thereupon took place at the

Invalides, the Temple of Mars, as it was then called. Detachments from

the Paris garrison lined the aisles; all that counted in the Republic

was present, Bonaparte included, and Fontanes, the most famous orator of

the day, delivered the funeral eulogy on the departed leader:

"Washington's work is scarcely perfected," he said, "and it is already

surrounded by that veneration that is usually bestowed only on what has

been consecrated by time. The American Revolution, of which we are

contemporaries, seems now consolidated forever. Washington began it by

his energy, and achieved it by his moderation. In rendering a public

homage to Washington, France pays a debt due to him by the two worlds."

In one of the first sentences of the oration, England (with whom we were

at war) was courteously associated to the homage rendered by us to the

great man: "The very nation," said Fontanes, "that recently called

Washington a rebel, now looks upon the emancipation of America as one of

those events consecrated by the verdict of centuries and of history.

Such is the privilege of great characters."[216]

In the centre of the nave stood the bust of Washington, wreathed in

flags and laurels. Years before, in Independence Hall at Philadelphia,

on a spot now marked by an inscription, the flags taken at Yorktown had

been laid at the feet of the President of Congress and of the minister

from France, Gérard de Rayneval. Now General Lannes, the future marshal,

came forth and with appropriate words laid before the image of the

former commander ninety-six flags taken from the enemy by the troops of

republican France.

A plan was formed thereupon, the realization of which troublous days did

not allow, to erect a statue of Washington in Paris (he now has two

there and one in Versailles, gratefully accepted gifts from America),

and a decree was prepared by Talleyrand recalling, as a motive, the

similitude of feelings between France and that "nation which is sure to

be one day a great nation, and is even now the wisest and happiest in

the world, and which mourns for the death of the man who did more than

any, by his courage and genius, to break her shackles and raise her to

the rank of independent peoples.... One of the noblest lives which have

honored mankind has just passed into the domain of history....

Washington's fame is now imperishable; Fortune had consecrated his

titles to it; and the posterity of a people which will rise later to the

highest destinies continuously confirms and strengthens those titles by

its very progress."

Châteaubriand, Lamartine, Guizot, Cornelis de Witt, Laboulaye, Joseph

Fabre, many other French thinkers and writers, vied with each other in

their praise and admiration throughout the century. Châteaubriand, who

had seen the great man at Philadelphia in 1791, inserted in his _Voyage

en Amérique_ his famous parallel between Bonaparte and Washington: "The

republic of Washington subsists; the empire of Bonaparte is no more; it

came and went between the first and second journey of a Frenchman[217]

who has found a grateful nation where he had fought for some oppressed

colonists.... The name of Washington will spread, with liberty, from age

to age; it will mark the beginning of a new era for mankind.... His fame

rises like one of those sanctuaries wherein flows a spring inexhaustible

for the people.... What would be the rank of Bonaparte in the universe

if he had added magnanimity to what there was heroical in him, and if,

being at the same time Washington and Bonaparte, he had appointed

Liberty for the heiress of his glory?"

Lamartine, receiving an Italian delegation in 1848, asked them to hate

the memory of Machiavelli and bless that of Washington: "His name is the

symbol of modern liberty. The name of a politician, the name of a

conqueror is no longer what is wanted by the world, but the name of the

most disinterested of men, and the most devoted to the people." Guizot

published his noteworthy study on the first President of the United

States, and the American colony in Paris, to commemorate the event, had

the portrait of the French statesman painted by Healy in 1841, and

presented it to the city of Washington, where it is preserved in the

National Museum.

Publishing, during the early years of the Second Empire, the series of

lectures he had delivered at the Collège de France during our Second

Republic, the great Liberal, Laboulaye, who did so much to make America

and the Americans popular in France, wrote in his preface: "Washington

has established a wise and well-ordered republic, and he has left to

after-times, not the fatal example of crime triumphant, but a wholesome

example of patriotism and virtue. In less than fifty years,[218] owing

to the powerful sap of liberty, we have seen an empire arise, having for

its base, not conquest, but peace and industry, an empire which before

the end of the century will be the greatest state in the civilized

world, and which, if it remains faithful to the thought of its founders,

if ambition does not arrest the course of its fortune, will offer to the

world the prodigious sight of a republic of one hundred million

inhabitants, richer, happier, more brilliant than the monarchies of the

old world. All this is Washington's work."[219]

Nearer our time, Joseph Fabre, the well-known historian of Joan of Arc,

wrote: "This sage was a wonder of reasoned enthusiasm, of thoughtful

intrepidity, of methodical tenacity, of circumspect boldness, facing

from abroad oppression, at home anarchy, both vanquished by his calm

genius."[220]

V

Once more now a republic has been established in France, which, having,

we hope, something of the qualities of "coolness and moderation" that

Washington wanted us to possess, will, we trust, prove perpetual. It has

already lasted nearly half a century: an unexampled phenomenon in the

history of Europe, no other republic of such magnitude having thus

survived in the old world since the fall of the Roman one, twenty

centuries ago.

If the great man were to come again, we entertain a fond hope that he

would deem us not undeserving now of the sympathies he bestowed on our

ancestors at the period when he was living side by side with them. Most

of the leading ideas followed by him throughout life are those which we

try to put in practise. We have our faults, to be sure; we know them,

others know them, too; it is not our custom to conceal them, far from

it; may this serve as an excuse for reviewing here by preference

something else than what might occasion blame.

That equality of chances for all, which caused the admiration of the

early French visitors to this country, which was one of the chief

things for which Washington had fought, and continues to be to-day one

of the chief attractions offered to the immigrant by these States, has

been secured in the French Republic, too, where no privileges of any

sort remain, the right to vote is refused to none, taxation is the same

for all, and military service is expected from everybody. No principle

had more importance in the eyes of Washington than that of "equal

liberty." "What triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions!"

Washington had written to John Jay, in a moment of depression, when he

feared that what Genet was to call "monocracy" was in the ascendant;

"what triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are unable

of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal

liberty are merely ideal and fallacious."[221]

In France, as in the United States, the unique source of power is the

will of the people. In our search for the solution of the great problem

which now confronts the world, that of the relations of capital and

labor, we endeavor to practise the admirable maxim of one of our

statesmen of to-day: "Capital must work, labor must possess." And though

we are still remote from this goal, yet we have travelled so far toward

it that, at the present day, one out of every two electors in France is

the possessor of his own house.[222]

The development of instruction was one of the most cherished ideas of

Washington, as it is now of his descendants. "You will agree with me in

opinion," he said in a speech to both houses of Congress in 1790, "that

there is nothing that can better deserve your patronage than the

promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the

surest basis of happiness." Instruction has become, under the Republic,

obligatory for all in France, and is given free of cost to all. Not a

village, not a hamlet, lost in the recesses of valleys or mountains,

that is without its school. The state expenditure for primary

instruction during the Second Empire amounted only to twelve million

francs; the mere salary of school-teachers alone is now twenty times

greater. We try to live up to the old principle: three things should be

given free to all--air, water, knowledge: and so it is that at the

Sorbonne, the Collège de France, in the provincial universities, all one

has to do in order to follow the best courses of lectures is to push

open the door. The man in the street may come in if he chooses, just to

warm himself in winter or to avoid a shower in summer. Let him; perhaps

he will listen too.

Very wisely, being, in many ways, very modern, Washington attached great

importance to inventions. In a speech to Congress on January 9, 1790, he

said: "I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving

effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful

inventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill and genius in

producing them at home, and of facilitating the intercourse between the

distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-office and

the post-roads."

Distances having immensely increased in America (as well as means to

cover them), these latter remarks are certainly still of value. With a

much less difficult problem to solve, we believe that, in the matter of

post-roads, and with a system of rural delivery coextensive with the

national territory, we would pass muster in the presence of the great

man. As for inventions, we hope that even the compatriots of Franklin,

Fulton, Whitney, Horace Wells, W.T.G. Morton, Morse, Bell, Edison, the

Wright brothers, and many more, would consider that our show is a

creditable one, with Jacquard's loom, the laws of Ampère on electricity,

Séguin's tubular boilers, Sauvage's screw, Niepce and Daguerre's

photography, Renard and Kreb's first dirigible, Lumière's cinematograph,

Curie's radium, with the automobile, which is transforming our way of

life (decentralizing overcentralized countries) as much as the

railroads did in the last century; and, more than all, because so

beneficent to all, with the discoveries of Chevreul, Flourens, Claude

Bernard, Laveran, Berthelot, and especially Pasteur.

On the question of the preservation of natural resources, to which, and

not too soon, so much attention has been paid of late, Washington had

settled ideas; so have we, ours being somewhat radical, and embodying,

for mines especially, the French principle that "what belongs to nobody

belongs to everybody," and by everybody must be understood the nation.

Concerning this problem and the best way to solve it, Washington sent

once a powerful appeal to the President of Congress, saying: "Would

there be any impropriety, do you think, sir, in reserving for special

sale all mines, minerals, and salt springs, in the general grants of

land belonging to the United States? The public, instead of the few

knowing ones, might in this case receive the benefits which would result

from the sale of them, without infringing any rule of justice that is

known to me."[223]

One of the most memorable and striking things done by the French

Republic is the building of a vast colonial empire, giving access to

undeveloped, sometimes, as in Dahomey, barbaric and sanguinary races,

still indulging in human sacrifices. Washington has laid down the rule

of what should be done with respect to primitive races. "The basis of

our proceedings with the Indian natives," he wrote to Lafayette, "has

been and shall be justice, during the period in which I have anything to

do with the administration of this government. Our negotiations and

transactions, though many of them are on a small scale as to the

objects, ought to be governed by the immutable principles of equality."

And addressing the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, John Carroll, he

again said: "The most effectual means of securing the permanent

attachment of our savage neighbors is to convince them that we are

just."

There is nothing we are ourselves more sincerely convinced of than that

such principles are the right ones and should prevail. That we did not

lose sight of them in the building of our colonial empire its very

vastness testifies; using opposite means, with so many other tasks to

attend to, we should have failed. The number of people living under the

French flag is about one hundred million now. Judging from the testimony

of independent witnesses,[224] it seems that, on this, too, we have

acted in accordance with the views of the former commander-in-chief, who

had written to Lafayette on August 15, 1786: "Let me ask you, my dear

marquis, in such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it

possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay

an annual tribute to the little piratical states of Barbary? Would to

Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind or crush

them into non-existence." The "reform" was begun by Decatur in 1815, and

perfected by Bourmont in 1830.

On one point Washington was very positive; this leader of men, this

warrior, this winner of battles, loathed war. He wanted, of course, his

nation, as we want ours, never to be without a military academy (our West

Point is called Saint-Cyr), and never to be without a solid, permanent

army, for, as he said, in a speech to Congress in 1796: "However

pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it ought never to be

without an adequate stock of military knowledge for emergencies ... war

might often depend not upon its own choice." Of this we are only too

well aware.

There is scarcely, however, a question that oftener recurs under his pen

in his letters to his French friends than the care with which wars

should be avoided, and no hopes were more fondly cherished by him than

that, some day, human quarrels might be settled otherwise than by

bloodshed. To Rochambeau, who had informed him that war-clouds which had

recently appeared in Europe were dissipated (soon, it is true, to return

more threatening), he expressed, in 1786, his joy at what he considered

a proof that mankind was becoming "more enlightened and more humanized."

To his friend David Humphreys he had written from Mount Vernon, July 25,

1785: "My first wish is to see this plague to mankind (war) banished

from off the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in

more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing implements and

exercising them for the destruction of mankind. Rather than quarrel

about territory, let the poor, the needy, the oppressed of the earth,

and those who want land, resort to the fertile plains of our Western

country, the _second land of promise_, and there dwell in peace,

fulfilling the first and great commandment." His dream was of mankind

one day "connected like one great family in fraternal ties."[225]

On this matter, of such paramount importance to all the world, and in

spite of so much, so very much remaining to be done, we may, I hope,

consider in France that our Republic would deserve the approval of the

departed leader. We have indeed vied with the United States (and praise

be rendered to empires and kingdoms who have played also the part of

realms of good-will), in an effort to find better means than wars for

the settlement of human quarrels. Success could not be expected at once,

but it is something to have honestly, earnestly tried. The great man

would have judged failures with indulgence, for he well knew how others'

dispositions are to be taken into account. "In vain," he had said, "is

it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes for

peace."[226]

And at the present hour, when it seems to the author of these lines

that, as he writes, his ears are filled with the sound of guns, wafted

by the wind over the submarine-haunted ocean, what would be the feeling

of our former commander if he saw what is taking place, and the stand

made by the descendants of those soldiers intrusted years ago to his

leadership? Perhaps he would think, as he did, when told by Lafayette of

a recent visit to the battle-fields of Frederick II of Prussia: "To view

the several fields of battle over which you passed could not, among

other sensations, have failed to excite this thought: 'Here have fallen

thousands of gallant spirits to satisfy the ambitions of their

sovereign, or to support them perhaps in acts of oppression and

injustice. Melancholy reflection! For what wise purpose does Providence

permit this?'"

Perhaps--who knows?--considering the silent resolution, abnegation, and

unanimity with which the whole people, from the day when war was

declared on them by a relentless enemy, tried to uphold the cause of

independence and liberalism in a world-wide conflict, the leader might

be tempted to write once more in the pages of his private journal the

three words he had written on May 1, 1781. Who knows? Of one thing we

are sure, no approval could please us more than that of the

commander-in-chief of former days.