Every one now sees that this demand was the just and logical
carrying forward of English ideals.

At about the same time, in France, Rousseau, gathering into his
own heart, from many sources, the suggestions and emotions of
Democracy, uttered them with a voice so magical that it roused
millions of other hearts and made the emotions seem intellectual
proofs. As the magician waves his wand and turns common pebbles
into precious stones, so Rousseau turned the dead crater of
Europe into a molten volcano. The ideals of Fraternity and
Equality were joined with that of Liberty and the three were
accepted as indivisible elements of Democracy. In the United
States we set our Democratic principles going. In Europe the
Revolution shattered many of the hateful methods of Despotism,
shattered, but did not destroy them. The amazing genius of
Napoleon intervened to deflect Europe from her march towards
Democracy and to convert her into the servant of his personal
ambition.

Over here, in spite of the hideous contradiction of slavery,
which ate like a black ulcer into a part of our body politic, the
Democratic ideal not only prevailed, but came to be taken for
granted as a heaven-revealed truth, which only fools would
question or dispute. In Europe, the monarchs of the Old Regime
made a desperate rally and put down Napoleon, thinking that by
smashing him they would smash also the tremendous Democratic
forces by which he had gained his supremacy. They put back, so
far as they could, the old feudal bases of privilege and of more
or less disguised tyranny. The Restoration could not slumber
quietly, for the forces of the Revolution burst out from time to