had gone to war for it. If the king was right in America,
he was utterly wrong at home, and if the Americans acted
rightly, the argument was stronger, the cause was a
hundredfold better, in France itself. All that justified
their independence condemned the Government of their
French allies. By the principle that taxation without
representation is robbery, there was no authority so
illegitimate as that of Lewis XVI. The force of that
demonstration was irresistible, and it produced its effect
where the example of England failed. The English
doctrine was repelled at the very earliest stage of the
Revolution, and the American was adopted. What the
French took from the Americans was their theory of
revolution, not their theory of government their cutting,
not their sewing. Many French nobles served in the war,
and came home republicans and even democrats by conviction. It was America that converted the aristocracy to the reforming policy, and gave leaders to the Revolution.
"The American Revolution," says Washington, "or the
peculiar light of the age, seems to have opened the eyes
of almost every nation in Europe, and a spirit of equal
liberty appears fast to be gaining ground everywhere."
When the French officers were leaving, Cooper, of Boston,
addressed them in the language of warning: "Do not let
your hopes be inflamed by our triumphs on this virgin soil.
You will carry our sentiments with you, but if you try to
plant them in a country that has been corrupt for centuries,
you will encounter 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
