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History of European Ideas 32 (2006) 2857

The French moment of the American nationalidentity. St. John de Cre vecoeurs

agrarian myth $

Manuela AlbertoneUniversity of Turin, Palazzo Nuovo, IV piano, Stanza No 6, Via S. Ottavia 20, 10124 Turin, Italy

Available online 13 June 2005

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to return to the genesis of the American agrarian myth in theeighteenth century, as a path to investigate the origins of the American national identity. This

will be done by means of a comprehensive reassessment of St. John de Cre vecoeur, theNorman noble whose name is bound to the success of Letters from an American Farmer. Hiswork contains the origins of the agrarian ideal as a peculiarly American phenomenon, prior toindependence and before Republican ideology placed agrarian democracy at its foundations,making the project of agrarian development and democratic participation inseparable onefrom another. A Frenchman who became American and then, after 25 years, French again,Cre vecoeur represents an ideal lens through which to analyse the hitherto insufcientlyexplored contribution of French economic culture to the creation of American nationalidentity. As a multi-faceted gure whose richness has been dominated by his image as theauthor of a best-selling autobiographical novel, Cre vecoeur is here also seen (partly throughunpublished sources) as an agronomist who was no stranger to physiocracy and as a diplomatand French intellectual who always felt profoundly American. It was precisely this attachmentto the land, seen as fundamental to the vision of a new and distinct form of peacefulcohabitation and democratic partnership, that became a political theme and an economic

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www.elsevier.com/locate/histeuroideas

0191-6599/$- see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2005.04.003

$ This essay is part of wider research currently being undertaken, on the reception in America from therevolution to the early decades of the nineteenth century of French economic tradition, particularly of physiocracy, and its contribution to the development of American national identity and Republicanideology.

E-mail address: [email protected].
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development project of the new nation and, as such, was a main plank of the agrarian ideologyof Thomas Jeffersons Republicans.r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The universality of the American sense of homeland, linked to the diffusion of aseries of values rather than to the defence of land, constitutes an element that hascharacterised the image of the United States since the revolution of 1776. In theformative period of American national identity it imposed itself to the detriment of diverse currents of American eighteenth-century thought and other possible optionsthat emerged during policy-making.

It was precisely this attachment to the land, seen as fundamental to the vision of anew and distinct form of peaceful cohabitation and democratic partnership, thatbecame a political theme and an economic development project of the new nationand, as such, was a main plank of the agrarian ideology of Thomas JeffersonsRepublicans. A product of Americas unique geography, it was fed by thecosmopolitan culture of the eighteenth century, and the resultant perception thatAmericans represented an exception was strongly inuenced by French Enlight-enment thought in particular: the philosophes saw Americas experience as therealization of their ideas and as a powerful instrument to use in their criticisms of the

European situation. Moreover, French economic culture was able to present,through physiocracy, a model of economic progress, based on agriculture and on theconcept of economics as a science, that, beyond the rigour of its theoreticalprinciples, had penetrated into the many distribution channels of Enlightenmentculture as an acknowledgment of natures supremacy.

The idea of an agrarian democracy that expressed American identity took shapebetween the second half of the eighteenth century and the opening decades of thenineteenth as an alternative to the social hierarchies of the old continent. From therevolution onwards economic debate was closely linked to politics, and revolu-tionary thinkers saw the need to reconcile the economy with Republican principles:

Jeffersons ideology rested on an economic interpretation of politics in which thenotion of political economy reinforced the Republican concept that politics,economics and society were interconnected. As opportunities arose through by thecreation of the new State, the clash between Republicans and Federalists in the 1780sand 1790s, led the Jeffersonians to outline a politico-economic vision centred on thefarmer as a politically active player and economically dynamic producer in thesetting of commercialized agriculture and an extended and decentralised participa-tory democracy aimed at defending the rights of the Confederations 13 memberstates. The Federalists counter-proposed a hierarchy with democratic origins,founded on a strong central power and benecial to a development programmebased on commerce and on nancial interests; this was rooted in the British modeland was judged by the Republicans to be incompatible with personal freedom andwith the traditional autonomy of the individual American states. As the battle

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against protectionism was waged in the name of economic freedom, which signiedbattling against privilege and the aristocracy of the merchant classa socialhierarchy founded on the farmer appeared to be anti-English. 1

Coming from a country that was a traditional rival to England, the Frencheconomic model of an agrarian society of free landowners found a receptive audienceamong revolutionary Americans. For Democrats like Franklin and Jefferson, whohad personal contacts in physiocratic circles, as well as for George Logan and JohnTaylor, among the ideologists of the agrarian democracy, a physiocratic analysis of the economic process centred on a national reality offered the possibility of economicdevelopment based on agriculture and free trade. According to Republicandemocratic thought, this was understood to be a unique American approach tothe creation of the new State.

The aim of this essay is to return to the genesis of those values which at the timeseemed to be specically American; this will be done by means of a comprehensivereassessment of St. John de Cre vecoeur, the Norman noble whose name is bound tothe success of Letters from an American Farmer . His work contains the origins of theagrarian myth as a peculiarly American phenomenon, prior to independence andbefore Republican ideology placed agrarian democracy at its foundations, makingthe project of agrarian development and democratic participation inseparable onefrom another. A Frenchman who became American and then, after 25 years, Frenchagain, Cre vecoeur represents an ideal lens through which to analyse the hithertoinsufciently explored contribution of French economic and political culture to the

creation of American national identity. As a multi-faceted gure whose richness hasbeen dominated by his image as the author of a best-selling autobiographical novel,Cre vecoeur is here also seen (partly through unpublished sources) as an agronomistwho was no stranger to physiocracy and as a diplomat and French intellectual whoalways felt profoundly American.

Cre vecoeur was the rst to express in literature a fundamental Americancharacteristic: the ability to question ones own identity. He did this as an Americanwho, with a Rousseauian sensibility and introspection, asked himself the questionsthat Europeans were asking about America, in the knowledge of the differences andpeculiarities that existed between the old and new worlds. 2

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1 For work on political economy in historiographical thought on American republicanism, see LanceBanning. The Jeffersonian Persuasion : Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, 1978); Dew R. Mc Coy. TheElusive Republic. Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: The University of NorthCarolina Press, 1980); Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onouf. A Union of Interests. Political and EconomicThought in Revolutionary America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990). The works of JoyceAppleby, which demonstrate a rare attention on the contribution of French eonomic-political culture, isfundamental (see Joyce Appleby. What is still American in the Political Philosophy of ThomasJefferson? The William and Mary Quarterly XXXIX (April 1982): 287309; Joyce Appleby. Capitalismand a New Social Order. The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press,

1984); Joyce Appleby. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1992).2 On the decentralised perspective of American thought in relation to European debates, and on

provincialism as a creative and critical value in the founding fathers thought, see the recent work by



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The origins of agrarian ideology

While describing his situation as a farmer to an English guest in his home, James,the protagonist of Letters from an American Farmer , asked himself and theEuropean:

Where is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity thanthat of an American farmer, possessing freedom of action, freedom of thoughts,ruled by a mode of government which requires but little from us? 3

This was how St. John de Cre vecourt, who introduced himself to abbe Raynal (towhom he dedicated his book) as a simple cultivator of the land, marked in

language and in imagery the beginning of American literature and nationalconsciousness. 4 Written in the eighteenth-century epistolary form, the 12 lettersthat made up the book were presented as answers (articulated in essays) from anAmerican farmer to questions posed by an imaginary cultured English visitor eagerto understand colonial life. The Letters made their rst appearance in Londonduring the nal year of the conict that brought about the birth of the United States.The intention of the English publishers, Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis, who in1781 had published an extract from book XVIII of Raynals Histoire des deux Indesentitled Re volution de lAme rique , was to serve the Whig cause of supportingreconciliation between the colonies and the mother country. 5 For this reason it was

decided to publish only the letters that showed American life in a favourable light,

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( footnote continued )Bernard Bailyn. To begin the world anew. The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (NewYork: Alfred A. Knoff, 2003).

3 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters from an American Farmer . Ed. S. Manning. (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1997) 25. From hereon references will always be made to this edition, the secondEnglish edition, London, Th. Davies and L. Davis, 1783 ( Letters from an American Farmer : describingcertain provincial situations , manners , and customs , not generally known ; and conveying some idea of the lateand present interior circumstances of the British Colonies in North America. Written for the information of a friend in England , by J. Hector St. John , a farmer in Pennsylvania , London, Th. Davies and L. Davies,1782).

4 Having enrolled in the French army in Canada, where he worked as a cartographer, in 1759, aged 24,Cre vecoeur moved to the colony of New York where he specialised as a surveyor. In 1765 he wasnaturalised as an English colonial subject and changed his name to John Hector Saint John. In 1769 hemarried the daughter of a loyalist New York family, and settled into a property at Pine Hill, in OrangeCounty, New York, becoming an owner-cultivator. In the following decade he began work on the Letters ,until the revolution broke out. Suspected of loyalist sympathies, he decided to return to France. Between1779 and 1780 he was imprisoned under the charge of espionage by the British, his house was destroyedand his wife killed. In 1781 he was the guest of the brother of Turgot, who was a friend of the family andan expert in agronomic issues. Under the recommendation of Mme dHoudetot, who introduced him intoFrench intellectual circles and [him canc.] to Franklin, he was nominated French consul to New Yorkbetween 1783 and 1792. Having returned to France, he lived on the margins of the revolution and died in

1813.5 On the discussion regarding Cre vecoeurs role in the nal decision on the works structure see DavidRobinson. Cre vecoeurs James: the Education of an American Farmer. Journal of English andGermanic Philology LXXX:4 (October 1981): 552570.



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excluding the more critical ones among the material that Cre vecoeur brought withhim when he left America to return to France, selling a part in London. 6

The work enjoyed immediate success, far beyond the publishers expectations. 7

The Monthly Review recognised how the book reected the philosophical spirit of the age, while the Journal de Normandie extolled its infusion of passion for afertile and free land like America. The Courier de lEurope underlined the rolethat the Letters , together with Raynals Histoire , might play in the abolition of slavery, which would be enforced by the emancipated colonies. 8 Reviewing theFrench translation, the Journal de Paris noted the full economic and political forcecoming from colonial farmers: On voit des hommes que de longs travaux arrachenta lindigence, que des de frichemens cre ent proprie taires et citoyens, and whichassociated with the douceur du gouvernement. 9 Although suspected of being loyalto the English, Cre vecoeur was also harshly attacked as an enemy to Englishinterests, in so far as the Letters incited emigration during a difcult moment forGreat Britain; such was the criticism of Samuel Ayscough, who in his Remarksobserved too that the writing style confuted the French philosophers attempts toportray himself as an American farmer. 10 Extracts from the Letters were put to

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6 A large part of the manuscripts, in which hostility towards the revolution is revealed, was discovered inFrance and published in 1925 with the title, Sketches of Eighteenth Century America . Ed. Henri L.Bourdin, Ralph H. Gabriel and Stanley T. Williams. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925); however,it is only recently that the critical edition of the 22 manuscripts not included in the Letters has appeared,purchased by the Library of Congress in Washington in 1986 (John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. More

Letters from an American Farmer. An Edition of the Essays in English left unpublished by Cre `vecoeur . Ed.Denis D. Moore (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1995)).

7 The work was also published in Dublin in the same year, (J. Exshaw, 1782) and by 1784 there werealready four English-language editions in circulation (Belfast, J. Magee, 1783 and London, T. Davies,1783). The American edition was not published until 1793, in Philadelphia by Matthew Carey. Cre vecoeurhimself undertook the translation into French ( Lettres dun cultivateur ame ricain , e crites a` W. S. Ecuyer,depuis lanne e 1770, jusqua` 1781. Traduites de l Anglois par *** , vol. 2, Paris, Cuchet, 1784), which was infact an enlarged version, dedicated to Lafayette, in which he openly sided with the American cause,inserting new anti-English letters. Another three-volume edition was published in 1787 ( Lettres duncultivateur ame ricain addresse es a Wm S y on Esqr. Depuis lAnne e 1770 jusquen 1786, traduites delAnglois , vol. 3, Paris, Cuchet, 1787), with material left out of the English edition but made up of 16letters, four more than the original, enriched by his experiences as consul. The French edition, whichclearly shows the inuence of philosophe circles, is less compact and lacks the literary incisiveness of themore agile English text. This essays analysis will therefore refer mainly to the English edition, in which theCre vecoeurs original ideas can be found, as this was received by American culture.

8 See [Cfr. canc.] Monthly Review LXVI (June, August, October 1782): 401405, LXVII: 140146,273277; Journal de Normandie , 11 aou t 1787, reproduced in Bernard Chevignard. St. John de Cre vecoeura New York en 17791780. Annales de Normandie XXXIII:2 (1983): 162; Courier de lEurope, Gazetteanglo-franc - aise. XIII: 31 (vendredi 18 avril 1783): 245247.

9 Journal de Paris nn. 38, 41 (lundi 7 fe vrier 1785): 158, (jeudi 10 fe vrier 1785): 172.10 Samuel Ayscough. Remarks on the Letters from an American Farmer ; or a detection of the errors of Mr.

J. Hector St. John ; Pointing out the pernicious Tendency of these Letters to Great Britain (London: JohnFielding, 1783) 810. Defending himself from Ayscoughs accusations, Cre vecoeur publicly upheld his

dual nationality in the Courier de lEurope, announcing in the same article the news of the translation of the work into French on which he was working and declaring possession of more original copies than werein the hands of the English, editors. This would seem to conrm his active role in the editorial selection(Courier de lEurope, Gazette anglo-franc - aise , XIII: 37 (vendredi 9 mai 1783): 296).



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effective use as publicity to boost emigration, promoting somewhat illusoryopportunities. 11 Mazzei, like Ayscough, reckoned the idyllic descriptions of American life to be exaggerated and unreliable, while Brissot, who pointed out theambiguity of Cre vecoeurs neutral position at the start of the revolution, did nothesitate to exalt the value of the Letters , defending them from the attacks of Chastellux, who had been critical of the Quaker communities outlined as a socialmodel in the sections describing the island of Nantucket. 12

Cre vecoeurs work reconciled Romantic tastes with rigorous Enlightenmentrationalism through the use of Rousseauian sensibility in which the human being,free and unconstrained, found fertile soil on the American continent. The ideal of anagrarian society of independent owner-farmers, expressed by this provincial Frenchnobleman who belonged to a family related to Mme dHoudetot, became the rstverication of the ideas of the philosophe s made in loco by an American (albeit oneeducated in Europe) as an example of a practised utopia. 13 Considered byWashington to be the primary reference point for an understanding of Americanreality, by Jefferson to be a learned presentation of the best aspects of New Worldsociety, the Letters conrmed, as an alternative to European realities, the validity of the American model:

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11 See Manasseh Cutler. Description du sol, des productions etc. de cette portion des Etats-Unis situe e entrela Pennsylvanie, les rivie `res de lOhio et du Scioto et le lac Erie , traduite dune brochure imprime e a Salem enAme rique en 1787 (Paris, 1789) 2229. The description of the territory of Ohio was added to the Frenchedition of the Letters in 1787 and translated into English for the Ohio Companys advertising campaigns

(see. Henry N. Smith. Virgin Land. The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1950) 278). Cre vecoeur himself, in a hand-written letter to the Duke of LaRochefoucauld, penned during his mission to New York, spoke of the opportunities opened by theOhio Company, referring to the third volume of the French edition of the Letters : Je vous envoye lepamphlet que ces Messieurs (connu s sous le nom de la Compagnie de lOhio) mont fait passer. Lescommencements de ce nouvel Etablissement mont paru si inte ressans que Jen ai recueilli toutes les pieceset toutes les anecdotes, an que un Jour on puisse voir combien le de velopement des plus foiblescirconstances, dans un pay s tel quel celui ci, est rapide et surprenant. An de vivre en paix avec lesSauvages, ces terreins qui consistent en plus de quatre Millions dAcres, doivent e tre ache te s une secondefois des pre miers proprie taires. (letter by Cre vecoeur to the duke of de La Rochefoucauld, New York, 10December 1787, Archives Municipales de Mantes-la-Jolie, Fonds Clerc de Landresse, Correspondanceentre J. Hector de Cre vecoeur et le duc de La Rochefoucauld ).

12 See Filippo Mazzei, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les Etats-Unis de lAme rique septentrionale ,vol. 4, Colle-Paris, Froulle , 1788, t. IV, pp. 99101; Jacques-Pierre Brissot. Me moires (1754 1793 ), parClaude Perroud, vol. 2, Paris, Picard, (1910), t. II, pp. 4852; Filippo Mazzei. Examen critique desvoyages dans lAme rique septentrionale de M. le marquis de Chastellux. Londres, s. e (1786): 1620, andalso the article in LAnalyse des Papiers Anglois 2 (11 Aprile 1788): 368. During the time in which he waswriting the Examen , Brissot visited Cre vecoeur assiduously, who was in France between 1785 and 1787(Me moires y cit. , vol. II, p. 49) On the portrayal of Quaker communities in Cre vecoeur, see BernardChevignard. Une Apocalypse se cularise e: Le Quakerisme selon Brissot de Warville et St. John deCre vecoeur , in Le Facteur religieux en Ame rique du Nord: Apocalypse et autres travaux . Ed. Jean Be ranger.(Bordeaux: Maison des Sciences de lHomme dAquitaine, 1981) 4968, and for an overview of the Frenchcircles in which discussions on the Quakers were carried out, Robert Darnton. George Washington s false

Teeth (New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003) 119136.13 See Bernard Chevignard, Les souvenirs de Saint John de Cre vecoeur sur Madame dHoudetot. Dix-huitie me Sie cle XIV (1982): 243262. The work by Bronis "aw Baczko. Lumie res de lutopie (Paris: Payot,1978), is a good reference point on the concept of utopie pratique e.



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et tous les avantages attache s au sol, a la constitution et aux moeurs des treizeProvinces-Unies y tout le bonheur que peuvent procurer a lhomme une douceinde pendance, un travail assidu, lattachement dune famille che rie, la jouissancedune proprie te su re et le gitime. 14

This was how the Correspondance litte raire reviewed the 1784 Frenchtranslation, demonstrating the interest of a part of the French world for Americaas a political, economic and social ideal, which, beginning with the clash between thecolonies and the motherland, expressed itself in a programme of transformationsinspired by the American experience of democracy as opposed to the Englishalternative. Cre vecoeurs Letters also presented colonial society as a uniqueexperience, the antithesis of European privileges and oligarchies and, even beforethe colonies split from England, it had linked the image of the farmer as anindependent landowner to the idea of democracy. 15 As a French-born naturalisedAmerican, Cre vecoeur transposed his own experiences as a colonial cultivator to themain character of his book. Far from nursing anti-English sentiments, he was, as aFrenchman possessing a strong American national awareness even before therevolutiondifferent from the English, without actually being opposed to them. 16

In the third and most famous of the Letters , What is an American? Cre vecoeurdened in economic terms the change that had produced the American nationalidentity, bringing about a new social hierarchy founded on land: On it is foundedour rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our importance as inhabitants of such

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14 See Washingtons letter to Richard Henderson, 19 June 1788, in George Washington. Writings . Ed.John Rhodehamel (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1997) 688; Jeffersons letter to LaVingtrie, 12 February 1788, in Thomas Jefferson. The Papers . Ed. Julian P. Boyd. (Princeton, PrincetonUniversity Press, 1950-, t.XII) 586; Correspondance litte raire, philosophique et critique par Grimm,Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc., par Maurice Tourneux, vol. 15, Paris, Garnier, 1880, t. XIV, Janvier 1785,p. 88.

15 From the 1960s there has been a revisionist reading of the Letters , since their consolidatedinterpretation as a symbol of the American dream and the optimism of the agrarian myth, above all tied inwith the success of the third Letter What is an American? (see D. H. Lawrence. Studies in ClassicAmerican Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1923) 2033). Concentrating on the Sketches and the nalchapters of the Letters in particular the ninth Letter, in which the brutality of slavery is denounced, andthe twelfth letter, in which the protagonist James leaves his land and takes refuge among the Indians toescape the violence of the revolutionrevisionist perspectives have reviewed the work from a pessimisticperspective, as an expression of the rst criticisms of the contradictions in American society (among themany studies, see Elayne A. Rapping. Theory and Experience in Cre vecoeurs America. AmericanQuarterly XIX:4 (1967): 707718; James C. Mohr. Calculated Disillusionment: Cre vecoeurs LettersReconsidered. South Atlantic Quarterly LXIX (1970): 354363; Thomas Philbrick. St. John de Cre `vecoeur(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970); Steven Arch. The Progressive Steps of the Narrator inCre vecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer. Studies in American Fiction XVIII (1990): 145158;Nathaniel Philbrick. The Nantucket Sequence in Cre vecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer. New

England Quarterly LXIV (1991): 414432.16 In 1787 Cre vecoeur, with Brissot, Clavie re and Bergasse, founded the Socie te Gallo-Ame ricaine , whichaimed at intensifying political and commercial relations between the two countries and manifested the roleof France in countering British commercial power.



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a district y this is what may be called the true and the only philosophy of anAmerican farmer. 17 A new social stratication was thus developed from the gureof the farmer, in whose name the principles of dignity and hierarchy, founded ontradition and custom and tied to the notion of deference that was characteristic of European societies were repudiated. 18 The social model represented by smallholdersin the American interior between the sea and the forests dened a new class, hithertounknown in Europe:

The simple cultivation of the earth puries them; but the indulgences of thegovernment, the soft remonstrances of religion, the rank of independentfreeholders, must necessarily inspire them with sentiments very little known inEurope among a people of the same class. What do I say? Europe has no such aclass of men. 19

The idea that the earth guaranteed personal independence was therefore at theroot of a new social hierarchy founded on agrarian model, which justied theexercise of rights of citizenship and the conviction that agriculture was the mostdignied activity, capable of ensuring national prosperity. 20

Between economics and botany

In the rst part of the Letters we read that, It is from the surface of the ground,

which we till, that we have gathered the wealth we possess.21

Many years later, in1801, Cre vecoeur in his Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie , conrmed his belief thatmanufacturing was dependent on agriculture and declared himself in favour of aland tax. One could even see a vague concept of advances in his hope thatAmericans would follow Europes example for improving agriculture, which becameprosperous only when les produits de la terre puissent sufre a payer les frais de cesame liorations. 22 Writing about the American farmer in the French edition of the

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17 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters y cit ., p. 27.18 On American societys overcoming of the concept of deference, see my essay, Manuela Albertone.

Gerarchia sociale , repubblica e democrazia: la gura del farmer nellAmerica del XVIII secolo , in Il pensierogerarchico in Europa XVIII-XIX secolo (a cura di Antonella Alimento e Cristina Cassina: Firenze, Olschki,2002) 83109.

19 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters y cit. , pp. 4546.20 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters y cit. , pp. 43, 54.21 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters y cit. , p. 16. Cre vecoeur continued to express his

conviction that agriculture would remain the underlying activity of the American economy for severalgenerations to come, a concept later taken up by Jefferson in the Notes on the State of Virginia (ThomasJefferson. Notes on the State of Virginia . Ed. William Peden (New York: W. W. Norton and Company,1954): 165.

22 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans le tat de New York, parun membre adoptif de la Nation One ida. Traduit et publie par lauteur des Lettres dun Cultivateur Ame ricain .

vol. 3, Paris, Crapelet, Maradan, an IX-1801, t. II, pp. 332, 351352. The work came out of the originalplan to add an extra volume to the 1787 French edition of the Letters . It took the form of a translation of anonymous papers that survived the shipwreck of a boat sailing from Philadelphia to Copenhagen andwas dedicated to Washington, who was likened to Napoleon. (See Percy G. Adams. The historical value of



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Letters , he said: ses travaux sont fonde s sur la grande base de la nature me me,linte re t personnel, qui, sans quil y songe, saccorde avec celui des autres. 23

Vernon Parrington, who has placed Cre vecoeur among the pioneers of Americanliterature, dened his thought as physiocratic, supported by a warm humanitarian-ism and agrarian values. 24 When Cre vecoeur dedicated his work to Raynal he hadread at least the rst two editions of the Histoire des deux Indes and probably eventhe third, 25 thereby obtaining a synthesis of European, particularly French,Enlightenment culture. 26 The importance placed on an agriculture bound to theimage of America as a land of freedom, which emerges from the Histoire , testied toCre vecoeur that the American agrarian model enjoyed great favour in France, in theframework of belief that agriculture represented the real wealth of the State and thatevery resource not coming from the earth was articial and unstable, both materiallyand morally. 27 The Histoire s exaltation of smallholdings, which Cre vecoeur raisedto the level of a social model, was an expression of widespread agronomic mind. Atthe same time it allowed the inclusion of some points from the Marquis de

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( footnote continued )Cre vecoeurs Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans New York. American Literature XXV:2 (May1953): 155168).

23 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Lettres dun cultivateur ame ricain, e crites a` W. S. Ecuyer , depuis1770 , jusqua 1781y cit., t. II, p. 278.

24 Vernon L. Parrington. Main Currents in American Thought. An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920. vol. 3, t. I (New York, Harcourt, Brace and C., 19271930) 142.

25

Dating the Letters with precision is a complicated and controversial affair. Most critics agree with H.C. Rices judgement that Letters two to eleven were written between 1770 and 1774 (Howard C. Rice. LeCultivateur Ame ricain: Etude sur loeuvre de Saint-John de Cre `vecoeur (Paris, Champion, 1932, pp. 5457,229230)). However, in the biography of his ancestor, Saint John de Cre vecoeur. Sa vie et ses ouvrages1735 1813 (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1883) 297, Robert de Cre vecoeur maintains that the rstversion was nished later, possibly between 1780 and 1781. More recently B. Chevignard, taking the issueup again and basing his ideas on unpublished documents, has advanced the theory that the text may havebeen written in its literary form between 1779 and 1780, during Cre vecoeurs imprisonment in New York.(Bernard Chevignard. St. John de Cre vecoeur in the looking Glass: Letters from an American Farmerand the Making of a man of Letters. Early American Literature XIX (Fall 1984): 173190). In any case in1781, Cre vecoeur was already fully installed in French philosophe circles and, furthermore, was in contactwith the editor Davis (who in that year published the Re volution de l Ame rique ) regarding the publicationof his work; therefore by this time he was almost certainly acquainted with the third edition of RaynalsHistoire . Furthermore, it is now a generally accepted belief that he had an active part in editorial decisionsconcerning the Letters publication (see notes 4 and 8 above). A letter to Jefferson written on 18 May 1785also supports the theory that he began the text after his arrival in Europe: Cre vecoeur thanked Jeffersonfor having corrected some mistakes in the Letters , and excused himself by explaining that he had lostseveral manuscripts on his journey (Thomas Jefferson. The Papers y cit ., t. VIII, p. 155).

26 On direct links between the Letters and Raynals Histoire see David Eisermann. La Raynalisationde lAmerican Farmer: la re ception de lHistoire des deux Indes par Cre vecoeur, in Lectures de Raynal.LHistoire des Deux-Indes en Europe et en Ame rique au XVIIIe sie cle. Actes du Colloque deWolfenbutte l . Ed. H. J. Lu sebrink and M. Tietz, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth-Century. 286(1991): 329339.

27

Guillaume-Thomas-Franc-

ois Raynal. Histoire philosophique et politique des e tablissemens et ducommerce des Europe ens dans les deux Indes , vol. 4, Gene ve, J. Pellet, 1780, t. IV, libro XIX, p. 611. (LaHaye, 1774, vol. VII, p. 308). See Miche le Duchet. Diderot et lHistoire des deux Indes, ou le criture fragmentaire (Paris, Nizet, 1978).



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Mirabeaus LAmi des hommes , a structurally complex and occasionally incoherentwork, through which ltered physiocratic themes, even through part of reectionslacking the rigour of the French e conomistes .28

The idea that agriculture was a science is nevertheless present in Cre vecoeur:

I intend my children neither for the law nor the church, but for the cultivation of land, I wish them no literary accomplishments; I pray heaven that they may beone day nothing more than expert scholars in husbandry: this is the science whichmade our continent to ourish more rapidly than any other. 29

As a science, agriculture followed the laws of a nature that, over and above thepervasive Rousseauian sensibility of the Letters , was construed as order whose rulesfound expression in the American agrarian countryside, demarcated by the

rationality of cultivation: Every disposition of the elds, fences, and trees, seemedto bear the marks of perfect order and regularity, which, in rural affairs, alwaysindicate a prosperous industry. 30

The entire treatment of the eleventh letteran imaginary visit by a Russiannobleman to the celebrated Pennsylvanian botanist John Bartram, is conducted fromthe perspective of natural history; from this standpoint nature, whose laws can beunderstood and applied universally, implied the order of a systematic botany.Moreover, the attention paid to the natural landscape is aimed at conserving theharmony created between the adaptation of mankind and plants to Americasspecic environmental conditions. Cre vecoeur also meant to use this to refute the

degeneration theories on which European opinions about natural Americaninferiority rested, and which were to be found even in Raynal, despite the factthat his Histoire again linked them to the evils of colonialism. 31

Men are like plants. The goodness and avour of the fruit proceeds from thepeculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derivefrom the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit. In addition to its echoes of Montesquieu, this consideration of nature and its laws contains an economicdeterminism that is the basis for Cre vecoeurs optimism; however, this articulatednot so much an idyllic agrarianism as an awareness that only respect for economicconditions could generate prosperity, which would turn to misery should they fail. 32

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28 Victor Riquetti de Mirabeau. LAmi des Hommes, ou Traite de la population , 6 vol., Hambourg, chezChre tien He rold, 17601762, t. I, pp. 8081.On the inuence of Mirabeaus LAmi des Hommes on theHistoire des deux Indes , in particular the rst three parts praising small properties and preceding hisadhesion to physiocracyof which it became a distribution channel following its successsee GianluigiGoggi. Filangieri e LAmi des hommes di Mirabeau. Italianistica. Rivista di letteratura Italiana , X:2(MaggioAgosto 1981): 188214; I thank the author for the learned points of clarication he provided.Among more recent works, see Paul Benhamou. La diffusion de lHistoire des deux Indes en Ame rique(1770-1820), in Raynal. De la pole mique a lhistoire. Textes re unis et pre sente s par Gilles Bancarel etGianluigi Goggi (Oxford Voltaire Foundation, 2000) 301312.

29 John Hector St. John de Cre vecoeur. Letters y cit. , p. 214.30

John Hector St. John de Cre vecoeur. Lettersy

cit. , p. 174.31 John Hector St. John de Cre vecoeur. Letters y cit. , pp. 4243.32 John Hector St. John de Cre vecoeur. Letters y cit. , p. 45. This is one of the keys to interpreting the

tension between the positive outlook of the early letters and the pessimism of the last, in which the



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Knowledge of botany and natural history was an indispensable requisite of thecultured farmer, represented by the protagonist, James, who made known, despitehis simulated simplicity and rejection of academic education, his detailed studies of American farming techniques. 33 The attention that the Letters pay to natural historyis essential to an understanding of the roots of American agrarian ideal.

In the fourth and fth letters, in which the organizational model of the island of Nantucket is sketched, Quaker society is described in terms of natural history,characterised by the conguration of land, its produce and customs, and placedoutside of time and history: I want not to record the annals of the island of Nantucket; its inhabitants have no annals, for they are not a race of warriors. 34 Theimage of the American that Cre vecoeur wished to present was purposely atemporaland distinguished by attachment to the land. This was in line with an apoliticalagrarian model that preceded Jeffersons position and Republican ideology, yet drewclose to both by not adopting an historic approach. 35 Similarly, the story of Jamessabandonment of land and home when confronted by the violence of the revolution,and his seeking refuge among Indian tribes, served to illustrate the desire to lay thefoundations of the community in primitive nature, detached from historical context.

Precedents for this concentration on natural history were to be found in Americantravel literature, which gave detailed accounts aimed at providing an essentiallyEnglish public with descriptions and information of colonial territories and theirpopulations. 36 But Cre vecoeur used natural history in a novel way, as an alternative

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( footnote continued )protagonist is overwhelmed by the events of the revolution (see David Robinson. Cre vecoeurs James ycit.).

33 See the whole of the rst letter, in which the protagonist introduces himself to the English traveller as asimple cultivator, guided by nature, this is the only line I am able to follow: the line which nature hasherself traced for me. (David Robinson. Cre vecoeurs James y cit., pp. 1123).

34 David Robinson. Cre vecoeurs James y cit., p. 85. See Pamela Regis. Describing Early America.Bartram, Jefferson, Cre `vecoeur and the Rhetoric of Natural History (Dekalb: Northern Illinois UniversityPress, 1992).

35 Let historians give the detail of our charters, the succession of our several governors, and of theiradministrations; of our political struggles, and of the foundation of our towns: let annalists amusethemselves with collecting anecdotes of the establishment of our modern provinces: eagles soar high, I, afeebler bird, cheerfully content myself with skipping from bush to bush, and living on insignicantinsects. (John Hector St. John de Cre vecoeur. Letters y cit., p. 66). Many years later, Jefferson wouldwrite in a letter: Our Revolution commenced on more favourable ground. It presented us an album onwhich we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt uproyal parchements, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealedto those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. (Letter by Jefferson to John Cartwright,Monticello, 5 June 1824, in Thomas Jefferson. The Writings . Ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb, Albert E. Bergh,vol. 20,t. XVI, (Washington: Th. Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903): 44).

36 Robert Rogers. A Concise Account of North America, London, printed for the author, and sold by J.Millan, 1765; William Smith. An historical account of the expedition against the Ohio Indians , in the year1764 (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1765); William Stork. An Account of East Florida , with A journal kept by

John Batram of Philadelphia, botanist to His Majesty the Floridas. (London: W. Nicoll and G. Woodfall,1766); James Adair. The History of American Indians. (London: E. and C. Dilley, 1775); Jonathan Carver.Travels through the Interior Parts of North America in the years 1766 , 1767 , and 1768 . (London: J. Walter,1778).



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perspective to traditional values, pitting Americas unique territory and agrarianreality against the veneration of the Ancients and of classicism:

In Italy, all the objects of contemplation, all the reveries of the traveller, musthave a reference to ancient generations, and to very distant periods, clouded withthe mist of ages. Here, on the contrary, every thing is modern, peaceful, andbenign. Here we have had no war to desolate our elds. Our religion does notoppress the cultivators. We are strangers to those feudal institutions which haveenslaved so many. Here nature opens her broad lap to receive the perpetualaccession of new comers, and to supply with food. I am sure I cannot be called apartial American when I say, that the spectacle, afforded by these pleasing scenes,must be more entertaining, and more philosophical, than that which arises frombeholding the musty ruins of Rome. 37

Cre vecoeurs American agrarian myth purported to be modern and foreign to theveneration of the Ancients. 38 The ideal of economic self-sufciency, which in Europewas of interest only to a minority, in America assumed democratic importance andwas sustained by a Lockian concept of freedom, linked to the earth and outside of history. 39 Far from being infused with Arcadian values, the agrarian model of theLetters represented a modern agricultural system that not only involved the moralregeneration of the farmer, but also economic transformation and development. 40

The landscape so admired by foreign visitors depicted a nature transformed,revealing the best husbandry as well as the most assiduous attention and the

presence of farmers well-versed in agrarian techniques and committed to increasingland productivity by means that were more agronomic than physiocratic. The rurallandscape was not shaped by large holdings, but rather by the similarities of properties whose owners held only as much land as they were able to cultivate ontheir own, while preserving any remainder communally as John Locke would haveprescribed. 41 Thus the description of the rst Nantucket community offered a model

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37 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 1415.38 By so doing Cre vecoeur placed himself outside the tradition that tied the pre-eminence of landowners

to the classical model. On the protracted debate on classical Republicanism as a category of historicinterpretation, a recent contribution has been made by John Pococks postscript in the new edition of hisThe Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), which re-proposes the existence of a tension between ancientliberty and modern liberty as a key to reading American events. On recent discussion surrounding theeconomic origins of a modern Repubicanism in eighteenth-century France, useful to an understanding of Cre vecoeurs culture, see my essay Nuove discussioni sullidea di repubblica nel XVIII secolo. RivistaStorica Italiana CXIV:2 (2002): 458476.

39 In the beginning all the World was America (John Locke. Two Treatises of Government . Ed. PeterLaslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), Second Treatise , libro II, cap. V, p. 319).

40 See Leo Marx. The Machine in the Garden. Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York:Oxford University Press, 1964).

41 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 41, 113, 178179. The same Lockyan principle

that land was originally mans common patrimony and that property was limited by the needs of theindividual was developed by Franklin as a means to re-found social hierarchies in a letter of 1783 (letter byFranklin to Robert Morris, Passy, 25 December 1783, in Benjamin Franklin. The Writings . Ed. Albert H.Smyth, vol. 10, t. IX, (New York, London: Macmillan and Co., 19051907) 138; see John Locke. Second



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for community agriculture, which stimulated competition between individualproducers. 42

Economic thought and agrarian experimentation

Not only did Cre vecoeur engage in agricultural experiments on his Americanholding, but he also gave a signicant contribution to both American and Frenchagrarian literature. In his treatise on the potato, 43 Parmentier, who was an essentialreference point in the diffusion of this new crop in France, recognised Cre vecoeursimportance for having imported two new potato species from New York and forhaving described how Americans cultivated it. In fact, it was by publishing a treatise

on potatoes in the same year as the Letters , that Cre vecoeur sought to re-establishhis image as a French social gure and intellectual, encouraging the cultivation of thepotato in his native Normandy and diffusing [his canc.] knowledge of Americancultivation techniques. 44

With the encouragement of the brother of Turgot and dedicated to the Duke of Harcourt (both pioneers in agricultural experimentation), the Traite de la culture des pommes-de-terre was published anonymously in Caen with a dedication dated 1stJanuary 1782 and signed Normano-Americanus .45 This work was essentially anagricultural manual containing precise descriptions of potato varieties, methods of

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( footnote continued )Treatise y cit ., libro II, cap. V, par. 25). For Cre vecoeur the Lockyan principle was at the foundation of the landowners independence: I have never possessed or wish to possess anything more than what couldbe earned or produced by the united industry of my family. I wanted nothing more than to live at homeindependent and tranquil. (John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit. , p. 212).

42 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 41, 113, 178179. The same Lockyan principlethat land was originally mans common patrimony and that property was limited by the needs of theindividual was developed by Franklin as a means to re-found social hierarchies in a letter of 1783 (letter byFranklin to Robert Morris, Passy, 25 December 1783, in Benjamin Franklin. The Writings . Ed. Albert H.Smyth, vol. 10 t. IX (New York, London: Macmillan and Co., 19051907) 138; see John Locke. Second Treatise y cit., libro II, cap. V, par. 25). For Cre vecoeur the Lockyan principle was at the foundation of the landowners independence: I have never possessed or wish to possess anything more than what couldbe earned or produced by the united industry of my family. I wanted nothing more than to live at homeindependent and tranquil. (John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit. , pp. 9495.

43 Antoine Parmentier. Traite de la culture et les usages des pommes de terre, de la patate et dutapinambour (Paris, Barrois, 1789) 42, 73, 109110, 121, 237, 314.

44 De me me quune Abeille, apre s avoir parcouru les champs lointains, ne rentre jamais dans la ru che,sans y rapporter la portion de miel et de cire que lui demande la re publique; de me me tout bon Citoyen quivoyage, doit a son retour un tribut de lumie res, dobservations et de connoissances, proportionne a sonintelligence. (John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite de la culture des pommes-de-terre, Et desdiffe rens usages quen font les Habitans des Etats-Unis de lAme rique. Caen (1782): 56).

45 The work, which was 74 octavo pages long, soon became difcult to nd. To the best of ourknowledge, only two copies conserved at the Bibliothe que Municipale di Caen are available to researchers.

Two handwritten letters from Cre vecoeur to the marshal of Castries conrm the authorship of the work(New York, 1st February 1785, Archives Nationales, Affaires Etrange res, B 1 909, fol. 25v.), along withanother to the duke of La Rochefoucauld (New York, 17 February 1787, Archives Municipales deMantes-la-Jolie y cit.) in which he refers to his pamphlet on the potato.



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cultivation, necessary tools and various culinary uses for the plant, along withrecipes that drew from his experience as a Normand, qui a passe trente ans aumilieu des peuples dAme rique. 46 This, however, had more than an agronomicobjective, for it touched on wider issues of political economy. It referred mainly toEngland, where the potato had been introduced for the feeding of the populationand the rearing of livestock, thus nding a reliable solution to famines and a meansof increasing cereal exports by reducing their internal consumption. 47 (It alsopointed to Ireland, which perhaps provided a better example.) In Normandy the freetrade in cereals had led to an increase in land values: cette liberte est devenue unesource de prospe rite nationale, a rendu les me taux plus communs, a augmente lindustrie, etc. 48 The introduction of the potato in place of buckwheat, which wasprevalent in Norman agriculture, provided further stimulus to rising production. Thetrust placed in free corn trade and understanding of the economys thrust werereinforced by Enlightenment faith, nurtured by an eighteenth-century philanthropicsentiment: A quoi bon les lumie res du 18.e sie cle, si elles ne servent pas a nous faireapercevoir, a nous faire adopter tout ce que le ge nie des hommes a invente pour lebonheur de la socie te humaine?. 49

Although England was held up as a model of political economy, the Americancolonies were still the point where the cultivation and use of potatoes were mostwidespread. Cre vecoeur held that American prosperity and the potato wereintertwined, and not simply because Americans ignored European crops in favourof local varieties. Detailing the virtues of the potato became a way of exalting

American agriculture and economy in general, here judged to be superior toEuropean models:

en fait dindustrie premie re, de connoissances utiles, de la perfection desMe chaniques, de la bonte des outils, de la commodite des instrumens, et desdiffe rens me tiers utiles a la socie te , ce quon voit dans ce pays-la en ge ne ral est fortsupe rieur a ` ce quon observe dans les campagnes de lEurope : lAme ricainest un peuple nouveau, il est vrai, et cest pre cise ment cette raison qui la rendu cequil est. 50

Cre vecoeur expounded in detail his technical knowledge and American experience,as he was aware that it was precisely in French intellectual circles that he could ndconvinced supporters of agronomic experimentation, such as the Duke of Harcourt,

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46 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., p. II.47 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., pp. 1011, 20. Cre vecoeur had an authoritative

support for his praise of the English agrarian model in the gure of Raynal (Guillaume-Thomas-Franc - oisRaynal. Histoire y cit ., t. IV, libro XIX, p. 606).

48 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., p. 23.49 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., pp. 18, 47.50 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., p. 31. In a note, Cre vecoeur outlined a close link

between economic, social and cultural motivations: Le grand desir que chacun a dame liorer son Terrein,les grandes et utiles connoissances re pandues dans toutes les Provinces, par labondance des livres, par lacirculation immense des Gazettes les plus instructives, toutes ces causes ont de ja produit les effects les plussalutaires.(pp. 18, 47).



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who had dedicated himself a naturaliser les Arbres e trangers les plus utiles, andthe Marquis of Turgot, in whose lands grew what Cre vecoeur declared to be thenest species of potatoes to be found in France. 51 Furthermore, Cre vecoeur did notignore literature on the potato that preceded his treatise but made use of it when, forexample, he wrote of how to obtain our from potatoes, omitting a detaileddescription of it puisquun excellent Citoyen la de ja publie e. This was probablyanother Norman, Franc - ois-Georges Mustel, author of the Lettre dun citoyen a ` sescompatriotes au sujet de la culture des Pommes de terre , published in 1770. 52

Cre vecoeur attained full membership of the cultural life of his mother countrythrough the Parisian intellectual circles of which became part and also because of hisreputation as a newspaper correspondent. 53 He was elected as a correspondingmember of the Acade mie des Sciences and associate of the agricultural societies of Caen and Paris, before nally entering the Institute in 1796. 54

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51 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Traite y cit ., p. 31. In a note, Cre vecoeur outlined a close linkbetween economic, social and cultural motivations: Le grand desir que chacun a dame liorer son Terrein,les grandes et utiles connoissances re pandues dans toutes les Provinces, par labondance des livres, par lacirculation immense des Gazettes les plus instructives, toutes ces causes ont de ja produit les effects les plussalutaires, pp. III, 47, 57.

52 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Traite y cit ., p. 31. In a note, Cre vecoeur outlined a close linkbetween economic, social and cultural motivations: Le grand desir que chacun a dame liorer son Terrein,les grandes et utiles connoissances re pandues dans toutes les Provinces, par labondance des livres, par lacirculation immense des Gazettes les plus instructives, toutes ces causes ont de ja produit les effects les plussalutaires., p. 38. In his essay, Une pomme de terre a ` la sauce ame ricaine: le Traite de la Culture des

Pommes-de-terre de Saint-John de Cre `vecoeur (1782 ), in Me moires de lAcade mie des sciences , arts et belleslettres de Dijon , t. 131, Dijon, Acade mie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres, 1992, pp. 4555, BernardChevignard has drawn a comparison between the early passage in which Cre vecoeur likens himself to a beemaking its contribution to the hive (see note 44 above) with a similar image in Mustels work (t. 131,Dijon, Acade mie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres, 1992, p. 51). However, only in Cre vecoeur is thebeehive compared to a republic. An interest in bees as a model of collective behaviour is in fact also presentin the Letters , in the celebrated anecdote of the bees, which succeed in defending themselves from apredatory bird by the strength of their cooperation (pp. 2829). This is inserted in the passage in which thereference to the Emperor of China and the sacred nature of agriculture borrowed an image in RaynalsHistoire (see note 111 below). The reference to bees in the Letters reproduced Raynals words almostexactly, in the section in which he talks about the introduction of bees into America: I am astonished tosee that nothing exists but what has its enemy; one species pursues and lives upon the other (John HectorSt. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 2829). See Guillaume-Thomas-Franc - ois Raynal. Histoir-ey cit ., t. IV, livro XVIII, p. 342: Tous les e tres ont une espe ce ennemie. On the fable of the bees, whichhas been interpreted as a parable of the American resurrection (D. H. Lawrence. Studies y cit ., pp.2728), see also Robert P. Winston. Strange order of Things!: the Journey to Chaos in Letters from anAmerican Farmer. Early American Literature XIX (1984/1985): 249267).

53 In 1785, acting on Cre vecoeur advice, the city of New Haven offered honorary American citizenship tothe Countess dHoudetot, the Duke of de La Rochefoucauld, to Condorcet, to Turgot, to Lacretelle and toSaint-Lambert (see Howard C. Rice. Le Cultivateur Ame ricain y cit. , p. 33).

54 In 1786 Cre vecoeur presented two works on American acacia and on a type of stockpot used to cookpotatoes to the Paris Socie te dagriculture (John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Me moire sur la culture etles usages du Faux-Acacia dans les Etats-Unis de lAme rique septentrionale , in Me moires dAgriculture ,

d Economie rurale et domestique , publie s par la Socie te Royale dAgriculture de Paris (Trimestre dhiver,1786, Paris, Cuchet, s.d.) 122143; John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Rapport sur les usages et lesavantages de la Marmite Ame ricaine , par MM. le Duc de Liancourt, Saint-Jean de Cre vecoeur et Cadet deVaux, in ibid., pp. 107115).



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Having been nominated French consul to New York, Cre vecoeur dedicatedhimself with equal scientic rigour to spreading agronomic knowledge in the UnitedStates, publishing articles on maize and potato cultivation in American newspapers,as well as articles on the introduction of new plants, on the relationship of climate toagriculture and on sheep rearing. 55 It was at this time that he began acorrespondence with Jefferson regarding a liqueur extracted from potatoes in theSouth. 56 However, his focus was never exclusively technical and he actively appliedhimself to the founding of American agricultural societies and backed thegovernment pro-agriculture policies. He was encouraged by the conviction that,despite Englands status as reference point for progressive agrarian techniques, theprofound differences that existed between the two countries necessitated differentsystems of cultivation. 57

In a period marked by economic expansion and rising land values, that sparkedoff a speculative market of which Cre vecoeur was aware through prospects offeredby the Ohio Company, 58 the model that emerges from the Letters is one of acommercial agriculture within a system of economic freedom, albeit outsidemainstream circuits. It was commerce that, according to the fourth letter on the

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55 Why are no salutary laws enacted to revive, to strengthen and to perfect among us that rst of allarts, that primordial invention, Husbandry, now drooping and neglected. Independent Journal (3 March1784). See also Boston Magazine (May 1784); Massachusetts Magazine (February 1785); WorchesterMagazine (April 1786); New Jersey Gazette (28 August 1786); New York Journal (19 April 1787);Independent Chronicle (12 July 1787); Columbia Magazine (December 1787); American Mercury (7 May

and 8 June 1788); Newport Herald , (September 1788); Pennsylvania Gazette (22 October 1788); New JerseyJournal (10 February 1790); Farmers Journal (22 July 1790).

56 Letters by Cre vecoeur to Jefferson, 23 January, 1 July, 1 September 1784, in Thomas Jefferson. ThePapers y cit ., t. VI, pp. 508509, t. VII pp. 376377, 413415. During Cre vecoeurs time in Paris between1785 and 1787, relations with Jefferson were intense. From a letter by Morellet we learn that Cre vecoeurcollaborated with the abbe on the French translation of Jeffersons Notes on Virginia , to whom he sent the1787 edition of the Lettres . For his part, once Cre vecoeur had returned to New York, Jefferson, who fromParis acted as agent for the circulation of European publications in America, sent Cre vecoeur a series of pamphlets to pass on to Brissot (Letter from Morellet to Jefferson, 11 January 1787; letter fromCre vecoeur to Jefferson, Paris, 16 April 1787; letter from Cre vecoeur to Jefferson, New York, 20 October1788, Thomas Jefferson. The Papers y cit ., t. XI, pp. 37, 294295, t. XIV, p. 31). Jefferson himself circulated the 1987 edition of the Lettres : in a letter sent to him on 27 October 1787 by Le Mau deLEupay, thanking him for the three volumes, we read the following in relation to the high productivity of American grain: cest ches vous aujourdhuy quil faut aller sinstruire de Lagriculture y votre terre estLa terre promise, cest a votre humanite , a La douceur de vos moeurs et La bonte de votre gouvernementque vous deve s cette faveur (Thomas Jefferson. The Papers y cit ., t. XII, p. 290). See also note 25, above.

57 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 24. Everything that has a tendency to promotethe interests of agriculture should be applauded and imitated. Massachusetts Magazine (May 1790).Defending his work from Mazzeis attacks, Cre vecoeur wrote in a letter to Mme dHoudetot that hiscultivateur ame ricain held an advantage over Mazzei: davoir, de s lanne e 1783, preche dans lesgazettes de ce pays sous la signature dAgricole; davoir fait connatre et enn dy avoir introduit le sainfoin, la luzerne, les veches, le vignon, et depuis deux ans la racine de disette, quon commence a cultiverdans plusieurs e tats (letter from Cre vecoeur to Mme dHoudetot, New York, 20 March 1789, in Robert

de Crevecoeur. Saint-John de Cre `vecoeury

cit. , pp. 378379).58 See note 9 above and also Jean Bouchary, Les Compagnies nancie `res a Paris a` la n du XVIIIe sie `cle,vol. 3, Paris, Marcel Rivie re, 19401942; Durand Echeverria. Mirage in the West. A History of the FrenchImage of American Society to 1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).



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island of Nantucket, formed the basis of the moral constitution of colonial society:the spirit of commerce, which is the simple art of reciprocal supply of wants, is wellunderstood here by every body. 59 The inhabitants of Nantucket practised a systemof virtous commerce as indicated by the simplicity of custom, the rejection of luxuryand laxity, the solidity of family ties and an agriculture that contributed to theimprovement of nature. These principles were untouched by the moral evils of economic internationalization, although ever at risk of being contaminated by it. 60

As accurately Cre vecoeur observed in the Sketches , among the aws of Americanagrarian society were the debts that burdened the farmers. He denounced these witharguments bordering on physiocratic:

The number of debts which one part of the country owes to the other wouldgreatly astonish you y . The interest is a canker worm which consumes theirindustry. Many can never surmount these difculties. The land is sold, theirlabours are lost, and they are obliged to begin the world anew. 61

The same closeness to physiocratic positions was manifest in his opposition topaper currency and English nancial power, themes that were moreover to be foundin English political journalism:

These Englishmen are strange people; because they can live upon what they callbank notes, without working, they think that all the world can do the same. Thisgoodly country never would have tilled and cleared with these notes. 62

Cre vecoeur considered that agriculture ensured the most virtuous lifestyle, but itwas from Raynal that he had drawn the conviction that commerce had a civilisingeffect and was necessary to the existence of political bodies. As his dedication to theabbe attests, his reading of the Histoire des deux Indes led to his rst musings oninternational relations: I traced the extended ramications of a commerce whichought to unite, but now convulses, the world. 63

Nevertheless, it was not only the events of the revolution that brought toCre vecoeurs attention the benets of commerce and its ability to guarantee socialstability, based as it was on mans innate sociability. 64 A wide-ranging reection onthe effects of commerce on tradition is developed throughout the fourth to the ninth

letters. Three kinds of social organisations are delineated: agrarian democracy,

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59 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit. , p. 112.60 The model of a farming and commercial society, to which Americans had to remain faithful in order

to maintain their freedom, was outlined explicitly in Raynals Histoire (Guillaume-Thomas-Franc - oisRaynal. Histoire philosophique y cit. , t. IV, libro XVIII, pp. 370, 381382).

61 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Sketches y cit. , p. 144).62 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 2122.63 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 7.64 From this perspective Christine Holbo (Imagination, commerce and the politics of associationism in

Cre vecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer. Early American History XXXII:1 (1997): 2065) has

proposed a new reading of the Letters from a psychological-literary viewpoint. Under the inuence of John Pococks work, she has placed the work in a framework of seventeenth-century partiality andempirical psychology, considered to be at the root of commercial humanism, as values shared by a civilsociety and a meeting-point of sociability, sensitivity and commerce.



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represented by the freeholders of the inland areas between the sea and the forest; thenot exclusively agrarian society on the isle of Nantucket, which revealed internalforms of dependence; and the negative model of commercialized urban society,typied by Charles-Town in the ninth letter and made famous by the crudedescription of the agony of a black slave imprisoned in a hanging cage. 65

However, it is in the Sketches , which presented colonial reality in the bitteresttone, that the lack of commercial outlets was considered a cause of poverty forAmerican smallholders. 66 This claim is made because in Cre vecoeurs agrarian modelthe city fullled an important role insofar as it catered for the needs of the farmingmarket. And so, the Letters , which disclose a clear understanding of commercialeconomy regulated by the principle of supply and demand, in addition conceived thecity to be an element of the agrarian model that was at the service of agriculture. Theisland of Nantucket is a positive example of this, whereas Charles-Town represents anegative example in which the city exploited the countryside, destroying theharmony between man and nature. 67

A diplomat between economics and politics

Cre vecoeur tried therefore to provide solutions to the problems of politicaleconomy that were at the heart of European debate, and he did so from a perspectivethat took into account American conditions without showing an unconditionally

positive image of them.68

His diplomatic career belies the romantic gure of thesimple cultivator of land. As his consular correspondence of 17831790demonstrates, Cre vecoeur in fact took advantage of his consular post to promotecommercial relations and the exchange of economic know-how between France andthe United States. 69

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65 Would you prefer the state of men in the woods to that of men in a more improved situation? Evilpreponderates in both; in the rst they often eat each other for want of food, and in the other they oftenstarve each other for want of room. For my part, I think the vices and miseries to be found in the latterexceed those of the former, in which real evil is more scarce, more supportable, and less enormous. (JohnHector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 163).

66 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Sketches y cit. , p. 150. See Norman A. Plotkin. Saint-John deCre vecoeur rediscovered: Critic or Paneygyrist? French Historical Studies III:3 (1964): 390404.

67 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., pp. 40, 86, 90 (A physiocratic approach to the city-countryside relationship is also present in the Histoire philosophique y cit ., t. IV, libro XIX, p. 611). SeeJames Machor. The Garden City in America: Cre vecoeurs Letters and the Urban-Pastoral Context.American Studies XXIII:1 (1982): 6983.

68 On Cre vecoeurs construction of literary work beginning from complexity and the contradictions of reality, see Bernard Chevignard. Andrew et Andre : quelques variations sur le the `me du self-made man chezSaint-John de Cre `vecoeur , in Actes du 6e Colloque du Groupe de Recherche et dEtude Nord Ame ricaines(GRENA ). 2 4 mars 1984 : From rags to riches . Le mythe du self-made man (Aix-en- Provence:Publications de lUniversite de Provence, 1984) 921.

69

See his article, Information to the Merchants of North America , respecting the advantage of a mercantileconnection between France and America , New York Packet and American Adviser, 27 January 1785. In aletter to Jefferson in 1788, Cre vecoeur by now expressed a global economic vision and a clear perception of commercial needs: The exports of this country have singularly increased within these 2 years, and the



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Cre vecoeur decried the poor quality of French products compared to Englishcompetition, as well as the tendency to export luxury products that were in lowdemand in a young and frugal state like America. In a note sent to the Marshall of Castries in 1784, he recommended the exportation of more useful products likegunpowder, paper (much needed by a nation that published so many newspapers),crockery, drinking glasses and hardware. He asked the French government to urgemanufacturers to imitate English products and, in order to stimulate Americanexports to France, he requested the latter to guarantee freedom of commerce and theabolition of privileges and monopolies, above all that of the tobacco trade. 70

Even though he engaged in economic discussions, Cre vecoeur was rmlyconvinced that luxury and democracy were irreconcilable. In a letter written to theDuke of La Rochefoucault in 1787, the day after returning to New York following 2years in Paris, he welcomed the revival of the city (now the seat of Congress) and theelimination of signs of war, but nevertheless lamented the growth of luxury:

ce nest pas le Congre s qui nous fait tout ce mal; il nous vient des Europe ens, et dela foiblesse des ame ricains qui par foiblesse se soumettent a ` ces recherchesdhabillement, a ce Luxe de table et qui nissent par y prendre du gout. Onsapperc- oit aussi que ceux qui reviennent de voyages en Europe en rapportentbien des nuances peu propres a la De mocratie; que deviendra donc cette unionde tats qui ne sont encore attache s par aucuns Liens coe rcitifs? 71

The correspondence with Rochefoucault also reveals that Cre vecoeur did notintend to limit his consular activity to technical issues. 72 In a period when consularpositions in the United States were particularly important, since they were a sourceof information on a little-known country, he added a political dimension to his

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( footnote continued )Imports have decreased in proportion. Manufactures of the most useful kind are establishing inPennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts; in the South they begin to cultivate Cotton, and in theNorth, they are erecting engines to spin it. (Letter from Cre vecoeur to Jefferson. New York, 20 October1788, in Thomas Jefferson. The Papers y cit ., t. XIV, p. 30).

70 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Commerce de la France avec les Etats-Unis. Ide es que je croisutiles et que pour cette raison je prends la liberte denvoyer a Monseigneur le Marechal de Castries , 4November 1784, in Archives du Ministe re des Affaires Etrange res, Etats-Unis, Me moires et Documents,vol. XIV, Correspondance consulaire de New York par St. John de Cre `vecoeur 1783 1790 , ff. 300309. Heended this note by saying that he felt French, despite being away from his homeland for 28 years.

71 Lettera from Cre vecoeur to the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, New York, 25 July 1787, ArchivesMunicipales de Mantes-la-Jolie y cit.

72 During the last years of the Ancient regime consulates were under the jurisdiction of the navy. Theposition of consulates in the United States was complex and delicate, because France now found herself dealing with a federal state for the rst time. Article 29 of the friendship and commerce treaty of 1778instituted reciprocal consulates between the two countries with powers xed by a convention, but this also

involved relations between Congress and the states. It was decided that the functions of the consulateswere matters for Congress, but powers attributed to them restricted the jurisdiction of the states. Aconsular convention was not established until 1788 (see Maurice Degros. Ladministration des Consulatssous la Re volution. Revue dhistoire diplomatique (1982) 68111).



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mission, taking an active part in discussions with his American and Europeancontacts on the new constitution. 73 It was precisely for this very reason that heattracted the criticism of the French minister de Moustier, who was busyrestructuring the consuls in order to create an efcient body of functionariesindependent of politics. In the eyes of the minister, Cre vecoeur, with his Letters , hadinduced:

en erreur beaucoup de migrants franc - ais. Pour avoir trop longtemps ve cu en payse tranger y il a contracte des pre juge s en faveur des usages et des lois anglaises yon pourrait, estimait-on a Paris, lui recommander de ne pas pro ner une nation quinest de ja que trop admire e en Ame rique et de tre Franc - ais.

74

Cre vecoeurs efforts in promoting FrenchAmerican commerce neverthelessbrought tangible results: he was responsible for the founding of a maritime postalservice between Lorient and New York, aimed at guaranteeing regular communica-tions and trade of goods between the two countries. This was well appreciated byJefferson, who was convinced that Cre vecoeurs presence would ensure itscontinuity. 75

Agrarian myth and political thought

Notwithstanding his diplomatic experience and maturing political conscience,

Cre vecoeurs image remained tied to the Letters , the agrarian model and Britishloyalist tendencies. And it was of course true that the English edition of his workreected the pre-revolutionary period in America, before a clear understanding of the relationship between economic freedom and political freedom existed. 76

Consequently, although his agrarianism lay at the root of Republican agrarianideology, it was yet to be perceived as a political proposition.

The Letters dealt with the uniqueness of American society, and yet theymanifested a sense of an attachment to England and English national pride whenappraising the colonies prosperity, together with a sense of reverence for thatgovernment, that philantropic government, which has collected here so many men

and made them happy.77

Moreover, Cre vecoeur was allied to a section of French

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73 For Cre vecoeurs political opinions see also pp. 1920.74 Distribution des Consulats de France dans les Etats-Unis et caracte `re des differens sujets qui y sont

employe s, 1788, Archives du Ministe re des Affaires Etrange res, Personnel, vol. 20, ff. 23524375 Letter from Jefferson to Cre vecoeur, Parigi, 22 August 1785, in Thomas Jefferson. The Papers y cit ., t.

VIII, p. 421. In fact, fearing the end of the six paquebots service, Cre vecoeur expressed all his concerns forthe substitution at the navy of Marshal de Castries (to whom he owed his nomination as consul on 22 June1783) in a letter to La Rochefoucauld in 1788: labsence de ces vaisseaux est une grande perte pour lesmarchands, qui commenc - oient a former des liaisons avec la France, cest meme pour nous une hontenationale. (Lettera di Cre vecoeur to the duke of La Rochefoucault, New York, 1 December 1788,

Archives Municipales de Maintes-la-Joliey

cit.)76 See Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onuf. A Union of Interests y cit.77 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 66. The same concept was expressed in Raynals

Histoire : Cest a linuence de son excellente constitution quelles doivent la paix et la prospe rite dont



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opinion for which England represented the land of political freedom, even though hemight better be described as a monarcho-anarchist, given that always keepingpace with his admiration for the English crown was the conviction that the colonialagrarian model must be founded on the abdication of imperial power. 78 Americanlaws came from the government, which in turn is derived from the original geniusand strong desire of the people ratied and conrmed by the crown, a crown thatoffered security and protection in exchange for modest tributes. 79

Right up to the eve of the revolution few really believed in the possibility of thecolonies separation from the mother country. Cre vecoeur, who probably began toformulate his ideas between 1769 and 1776, 80 therefore gave voice to a widely sharedposition; furthermore, in doing so, he had an authoritative reference point in themoderate Toryism of the rst two editions of Raynals Histoire .81 The dedication toRaynal in the 1782 edition of the Letters , in the very year after the Parisiangovernment banned the third edition of the Histoire , contributed to the perceptionthat the Letters belonged to the anglophile camp; 82 certainly, Cre vecoeurs decisionto distance himself from the revolution was reinforced by Raynals political stance. 83

For all that, the English sympathies of the Letters and the hostility to the revolutionin the Sketches were actually more a defence of agrarian realities and a rejection of violence than a reection of loyalist sentiments.

To the farmer depicted in the Sketches the revolution looked like a civil war, inwhich the colonial roughs, envious of the smallholders, had destroyed the prosperityof the countryside, whereas in the Letters it was seen as the crushing of a minority:

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( footnote continued )elles jouissent. Tant que ces colonies vivront sous un re gime si sain et si doux, elles continueront a faire desprogre s (Guillaume-Thomas-Franc - ois Raynal. Histoire philosophique y cit . (Amsterdam, 1770, vol. VI,p. 420).

78 See Myra Jehlen. J. Hector St. John Cre vecoeur: a Monarcho-Anarchist in Revolutionary America.American Quarterly XXXI:2 (1979): 204222. As regards the growing awareness of national identityduring the reorganisation of the British Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century, see T. H.Breens essay, Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution : Revisions Once More inNeed of Revising , in German and American Nationalism. A Comparative Perspective . Ed. H. Lehmann andH. Wellenreuther (Oxford, New York: Berg, 1999) 3369.

79 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 43.80 See note 26, above.81 See Edoardo Tortarolo. La re ception de l Histoire des deux Indes aux Etats-Unis , in Lectures de

Raynal y cit ., pp. 305328 and Mathe Allain. La re volution ame ricaine dans lHistoire philosophique delabbe Raynal. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 263 (1989): 277ss.

82 The Correpondance secre te (21 January 1781, t. XI, pp. 5152) attributed the censorship of thework to Raynals anglomania (see Carlo Borghero. Raynal , Paine e la rivoluzione americana , in La politicadella ragione. Studi sullilluminismo francese (a cura di Paolo Casini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1978) 349381).

83 The Correpondance secre te (21 January 1781, t. XI, pp. 5152) attributed the censorship of thework to Raynals anglomania (see Carlo Borghero. Raynal , Paine e la rivoluzione americana , in La politicadella ragione. Studi sullilluminismo francese (a cura di Paolo Casini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1978) 368 segg.Nevertheless we should not forget that the complexity and diversity of the analyses that emerge from the

various editions of the Histoire were clearly read from an anti-American point of view only after thesuccess of the Letter to the abbe Raynal by Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine. A Letter addressed to the abbe Raynal on the affairs of North America in which the Mistakes in the abbe s account of the revolution of America are corrected and cleared up (Philadelphia, 1782)).



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The innocent class are always the victims of the few. 84 Cre vecoeur separated thereality of colonial self-government from independence, a distinction that explainsboth his aversion to the revolution, which he personally experienced as a civil war,and his move away from Raynals optimism. I am conscious that I was happybefore this unfortunate revolution; 85 the tragedy of the war is lived out in the lastletter as confusion and uncertainty over which position to take: self-preservation,therefore, the rule of Nature, seems to be the best rule of conduct. 86 It is this verydefence of the agrarian model that marks his separation from England: Must I thenbid farewel to Britain, to that renowned country? Must I renounce a name so ancientand so venerable? Alas! She herself, that once-indulgent parent, forces me to take uparms against her. 87

Despite the isolationist position and the incomprehension of the revolution thatpervades the last lettersentiment and feeling are the only guides I know 88 theagrarian perspective of the Letters is still not without political foundations. Theagrarian model already involved for Cre vecoeur a discussion on personal, economicand political liberty, albeit without direct participation. His acceptance of themonarchy was engendered by a conception of political power characterised by aweak State presence, in view of which the form of regime was of secondaryimportance compared to the stability of a government which asked little of theindependent cultivators. Seen in this light, the farmer, whose success was linked tosteady honesty and sobriety rather than to good fortune, would constitute the powerof Jeffersonian democracy and would also be the prototype of Jacksons independent

yankee.89

Belonging to society derived its legitimacy from property rather than politicalpower: This formerly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasantfarm, and, in return, it has established all our rights. On it is founded our rank, ourfreedom, our power, as citizens; our importance, as inhabitants of such a district. 90

The family unit, societys founding nucleus in which the individual is not isolated,

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84 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 191.85 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 191.86 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 193. I am a lover of peace, what must I do? I

am divided between the respect I feel for the ancient connection and the fear of innovations, with theconsequence of which I am not well acquainted, as they are embraced by my own countrymen. (ibid., p.191).

87 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 197.88 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 191. The harshness and incomprehension of the

conict for Cre vecoeur is afrmed by the account of his stay in New York, between his release from theEnglish on 17 September 1779 and his departure for Ireland on 1 September 1780, Esquisse de ma viedepuis ma sortie de prison a ` New York le 17 septembre jusques a ` mon retour dans la me me ville comme consul de France le 17 novembre 1783 , a manuscript published for the rst time in Bernard Chevignard. St. Johnde Cre vecoeur a New York y cit., pp. 164173.

89 From oppression to freedom; from obscurity and contumely to some degree of consequencenot byvirtue of any freaks of fortune, but by the gradual operation of sobriety, honesty, and emigration. (John

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Lettersy

cit ., pp. 6667). See Russel B. Nye. Michel-Guillaume St. Jean deCre vecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer , in Landmarks of American Writing . Ed. Henning Cohen(New York: Basic Books, 1969).

90 John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Letters y cit ., p. 27.



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with its internal democracy came to exemplify a small republic with a hierarchy of itsown and became the rst link forged between democracy and republic. Furthermore,the Letters clearly give a notion of representative government as the foundation of anew social hierarchy, the manifestation of a democracy of owner-farmers:

Europe contains hardly any other distinctions but lords and tenants; this faircountry alone is settled by freeholders, the possessors of the soil they cultivate,members of the government they obey, and the framers of their own laws, by meansof their representatives. 91

Although the agrarian ideal implied the concept of representative democracy rightfrom the start of Cre vecoeurs thinking, his adhesion to the revolution came later,through his contact with the Parisian scene. Cre vecoeurs intellectual developmentalongside the philosophes also resulted in a livelier interest in political problems,something that is evident in the 1787 French edition of the Letters , from thecorrespondence with Jefferson and La Rochefoucauld in his period as consul, and inthe Voyage dans la Haute Pensylavanie .

Cre vecoeur dened his political stance during decisive years for the United Statesand France, albeit without turning his back on his colonial experience. While in NewYork he followed with interest the closing phases of the French Ancient regime,supported the plans for provincial assemblies that gave substance to political debateoriginating from physiocratic matrices, and placed his faith in the Assemble e desNotables, 92 qui semblable a la Convention fe de rale, doit gue rir bien des blessures,et pre venir bien des maux. 93 However, he did not support revolutionary violence

and, as a Frenchman, he assessed Americans (in the Voyage ) to be: un peuple qui,plus heureux que nous, a passe de lasse