Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which, according to Washington’s expression, “saw opening before them a career that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and respected.”  Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every day more apparent in the form of its government, this noble and healthy ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors.  More than eighty years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of their liberties as well as of their Constitution.

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the disastrous Seven Years’ War and by the treaty of 1763.  She saw triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at the dismemberment they had suffered.  It was a triumph for her arms and for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate but for a long while doubtful enterprise.  A fresh element, however, had come to add itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful, which were hatching within her.  She had promoted the foundation of a Republic based upon principles of absolute right; the government had given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people emancipated from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indomitable energy.  France felt her heart still palpitating from the efforts she had witnessed and shared on behalf of American freedom; the unreflecting hopes of a blind emulation were already agitating many a mind.  “In all states,” said Washington, “there are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle.”  In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the inflammable materials everywhere accumulated in France were already providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the country well-nigh perished.

CHAPTER LVIII.——­LOUIS XVI.—­FRANCE AT HOME.—­MINISTRY OF M. NECKER. 1776-1781.

We have followed the course of good and bad fortune; we have exhibited France engaged abroad in a policy at the same time bold and generous, proceeding from rancor as well as from the sympathetic enthusiasm of the nation; we have seen the war, at first feebly waged, soon extending over every sea and into the most distant colonies of the belligerents, though the European continent was not attacked at any point save the barren rock of Gibraltar; we have seen the just cause of the United States triumphant and freedom established in the New World:  it is time to inquire what new shocks had been undergone by France whilst