en a
constitution and an enlightened absolutism, between abrogation of old
laws and multiplication of new, between representation and direct
democracy, the people controlling and the people governing, kings by
contract and kings by mandate.

Yet all these fractions of opinion were called Liberal: Montesquieu,
because he was an intelligent Tory; Voltaire, because he attacked the
clergy; Turgot, as a reformer; Rousseau, as a democrat; Diderot, as a
freethinker. The one thing common to them all is the disregard for
liberty.

II

THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA

The several structures of political thought that arose in France, and
clashed in the process of revolution, were not directly responsible
for the outbreak. The doctrines hung like a cloud upon the heights,
and at critical moments in the reign of Lewis XV. men felt that a
catastrophe was impending. It befell when there was less provocation,
under his successor; and the spark that changed thought into action
was supplied by the Declaration of American Independence. It was the
system of an international extra-territorial universal Whig, far
transcending the English model by its simplicity and rigour. It
surpassed in force all the speculation of Paris and Geneva, for it had
undergone the test of experiment, and its triumph was the most
memorable thing that had been seen by men.

The expectation that the American colonies would separate was an old
one. A century before, Harrington had written: "They are yet babes,
that cannot live without sucking the breasts of their mother-cities;
but such as I mistake if, when they come of age, they do not wean
themselves; which causes me to wonder at princes that like to be
exhausted in that way." When, in 1759, the elder Mirabeau announced
it, he meant that the conquest of Canada involved the loss of America,
as the colonists would cling to England as long as the French were
behind them, and no longer. He came very near to the truth, for the
war in Canada gave the signal. The English colonies had meditated the
annexation of the French, and they resented that the king's government
undertook the expedition, to deprive them of the opportunity for
united action. Fifty years later President Adams said that the
treatment of American officers by the British made his blood boil.

The agitation began in 1761, and by the innovating ideas which it
flung abroad it is as important as the Declaration itself, or the
great constitutional d