But humanity, too, was a powerful word. Men could not read Rousseau without being led to think more earnestly, if not always more profoundly, upon the laws of social organization. They could not read Voltaire without a clearer perception of abuses and a more vigorous contempt for the systems which had put the many into the hands of the few to be butchered or butchers at their will. They could not read Montesquieu without feeling that there was a future in store for them for which the long past had been patiently laboring, and longing, as they read, to hasten its coming. In that future, mankind were to rise higher than they had ever risen before; rulers and ruled were to act in fruitful harmony for their common good; the brightest virtues of Greece, the purest virtues of Rome, were to revive in some new form of society, not very definitely conceived by the understanding, but which floated in magnificent visions before the glowing imagination.
I hasten reluctantly over this part of my subject; for the formation of public opinion in France and its action upon Government, even while all the forms of an almost absolute monarchy were preserved, is an important chapter in the history of European civilization. But hasten I must, merely calling attention to the existence of this element, and reminding my reader, that, chronologically, of the two parts which composed this opinion, hatred for England had been at work ever since 1763, while sympathy with the Colonists was rather an individual than a public feeling till late in 1776.
It was at Versailles, and not at Paris, that action began. Vergennes's first step was to send another agent, no longer merely to observe and report, but to ascertain, though without compromising the French Government, how far the Americans were prepared for French intervention. English suspicions were already awakened. Already the English Minister had informed the French Ambassador, upon the authority of a private letter of General Lee to General Burgoyne, that the Americans were sure of French aid. It was not without great difficulty that the new agent, De Bonvouloir, could find a safe conveyance. But by December he was already in Philadelphia, and, though still pretending to be a mere traveller, soon in full communication with the Committee of Secret Correspondence.