counter obstacles more formidable than ours. Our
liberty has been won with blood; you will have to shed it in torrents
before liberty can take root in the old world." Adams, after he had
been President of the United States, bitterly regretted the Revolution
which made them independent, because it had given the example to the
French; although he also believed that they had not a single principle
in common.

Nothing, on the contrary, is more certain than that American
principles profoundly influenced France, and determined the course of
the Revolution. It is from America that Lafayette derived the saying
that created a commotion at the time, that resistance is the most
sacred of duties. There also was the theory that political power comes
from those over whom it is exercised, and depends upon their will;
that every authority not so constituted is illegitimate and
precarious; that the past is more a warning than an example; that the
earth belongs to those who are upon it, not to those who are
underneath. These are characteristics common to both Revolutions.

At one time also the French adopted and acclaimed the American notion
that the end of government is liberty, not happiness, or prosperity,
or power, or the preservation of an historic inheritance, or the
adaptation of national law to national character, or the progress of
enlightenment and the promotion of virtue; that the private individual
should not feel the pressure of public authority, and should direct
his life by the influences that are within him, not around him.

And there was another political doctrine which the Americans
transmitted to the French. In old colonial days the executive and the
judicial powers were derived from a foreign source, and the common
purpose was to diminish them. The assemblies were popular in origin
and character, and everything that added to their power seemed to add
security to rights. James Wilson, one of the authors and commentators
of the constitution, informs us that "at the Revolution the same fond
predilection, and the same jealous dislike, existed and prevailed. The
executive, and the judicial as well as the legislative authority, was
now the child of the people, but to the two former the people behaved
like stepmothers. The legislature was still discriminated by excessive
partiality." This preference, historic but irrational, led up
naturally to a single chamber. The people of America and their
delegates in Congress were o