The political philosophy of the American Revolution has long been
confused with that of the French Revolution. As matter of fact, they
stand at opposite poles. Our philosophy was religious, the French
non-religious. America had been peacefully assimilating, for a century
and a half, the doctrines of the Reformation. France had been held for
two centuries and a half in a condition of mediaevalism, and the
principles of the Reformation had little hold among the people. When
the Americans spoke, it was with the calm wisdom of free-men; when the
French spoke, it was with the folly and excess of intellectual and
spiritual slaves who had suddenly emancipated themselves. To the
Americans, to whom government was the expression of the just public
sentiment, government, equally with religion, was a necessary good; to
the French, to whom government was the expression of the will of the
majority, whether just or unjust, government was a necessary evil and
religion an unnecessary evil. The French Revolution made itself felt,
even in America, for a century. Till within recent years, its
principles have obscured, though they have never wholly eclipsed, the
principles of the American Revolution. But now there seems reason to
believe that the French Revolution has spent its force, and that the
influence of the American Revolution is growing daily stronger. Signs
of this are the councils and conferences which are steadily increasing
in number and in power, on the subject of arbitration as the peaceful
means of settling questions growing out of the relations of
communities, of states and of nations. Arbitration, whether between
persons or between communities, states and nations, implies a
universal and common law. Peace conferences can, it would seem, have
no reasonable purpose and can hope to accomplish no permanent result,
except as they attempt to substitute a universal and common law,
supported by the public sentiment of the civilized world, for human