The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FOREIGN RELATIONS / FRANCE
Your letters give a comfortable view of French affairs, and later
events seem to confirm it. Over the foreign powers I am convinced they
will triumph completely, and I cannot but hope that that triumph, and
the consequent disgrace of the invading tyrants, is destined, in the
order of events, to kindle the wrath of the people of Europe against
those who have dared to embroil them in such wickedness, and to bring
at length, kings, nobles, and priests to the scaffolds which they have
been so long deluging with human blood. I am still warm whenever I
think of these scoundrels, though I do it as seldom as I can,
preferring infinitely to contemplate the tranquil growth of my lucerne
and potatoes. I have so completely withdrawn myself from these
spectacles of usurpation and misrule, that I do not take a single
newspaper, nor read one a month; and I feel myself infinitely the
happier for it.
to Tench Coxe, 1 May 1794
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