VIDEO: JEFFERSON IN PARIS (I)

AM | @agumack

The John Adams HBO Series [see] includes a long episode on Adams's stay in Paris, where he repeatedly met Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, author of Histoire des deux Indes. This scene, featuring Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, is dated from 1785, shortly before Franklin's return to America. At that time Raynal was back in France, but he was not allowed to stay in Paris. Watch Jefferson steal the show at 0:17 with his well-known tirade about the Earth belonging "exclusively to the living" (*).

There is little doubt in my mind that this idea derives from Diderot's chapter 42 of Book XVIII in Histoire des deux Indes [see]. Indeed, we can be fairly confident that Adams and Jefferson did discuss it while in Europe. In his letter IV to Le politique hollandais (22 January 1782), Adams quotes in French the key passage from Révolution de l'Amérique: "Qu'il n'est nulle forme de gouvernement, dont la prérogative soit d' être immutable. Nulle autorité politique qui créée hier ou il y a mille ans, ne puisse être abrogée dans dix ans ou demain. Nulle puissance, si respectable, si sacrée qu'elle soit, autorisée à regarder l'État comme sa propriété" (pp. 42-43).

More video next time.

(*) Jefferson to Monroe, Paris, September 6, 1789 [see].
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