Note 45 — Chapter I
Reading edition
Typical excerpts from Short's reports to Jefferson are: July 20, 1792: "Those mad & corrupted people in France who under the name of liberty have destroyed their own government [French Constitution of 1791] & disgusted all ... men of honesty & property.... All the rights of humanity ... are daily violated with impunity ... universal anarchy prevails.... There is no succour ... against mobs & factions which have assumed despotic power."
July 31: "The factions which have lately determined the system ... for violating all the bonds of civil society ... have disgusted all, except the sans culottes ... with the present order of things ... the most perfect & universal disorder that ever reigned in any country. Those who from the beginning took part in the revolution ... have been disgusted, by the follies, injustice, & atrocities of the Jacobins.... All power [is] in the hands of the most mad, wicked & atrocious assembly that ever was collected in any country."
August 15: "The Swiss guards have been massacred by the people & ... streets literally are red with blood."
October 12: "Their [French] successes abroad are unquestionably evils for humanity. The spirit which they will propagate is so destructive of all order ... so subversive of all ideas of justice—the system they aim at so absolutely visionary & impracticable—that their efforts can end in nothing but despotism after having bewildered the unfortunate people, whom they render free in their way, in violence & crimes, & wearied them with sacrifices of blood, which alone they consider worthy of the furies whom they worship under the names of Liberté & Egalité!"
August 24: "I shḍ not be at all surprized to hear of the present leaders being hung by the people. Such has been the moral of this revolution from the beginning. The people have gone farther than their leaders.... We may expect ... to hear of such proceedings, under the cloak of liberty, égalité & patriotism as would disgrace any chambre ardente that has ever created in humanity shudders at the idea." (Short MSS., Lib. Cong.)
These are examples of the statements to which Jefferson's letter, quoted in the text following, was the reply. Short's most valuable letters are from The Hague, to which he had been transferred. They are all the more important, as coming from a young radical whom events in France had changed into a conservative. And Jefferson's letter is conclusive of American popular sentiment, which he seldom opposed.