The youthful prophet did not lose his penetrating vision with years. In the same spirit and with immense vigor he wrote to the English philosopher, Josiah Tucker, September 12, 1770:-- “As a citizen of the world, I see with joy the approach of an event which, more than all the books of the philosophers, will dissipate the phantom of commercial jealousy. _I speak of the separation of your colonies from the mother country_, WHICH WILL SOON BE FOLLOWED BY THAT OF ALL AMERICA FROM EUROPE. It is then that the discovery of this part of the world will become truly useful to us. It is then that it will multiply our enjoyments much more abundantly than when we purchased them with torrents of blood. The English, the French, the Spaniards, etc., will use sugar, coffee, indigo, and will sell their products, precisely as the Swiss do to-day; and they will also, like the Swiss people, have the advantage, that this sugar, this coffee, this indigo will no longer serve as a pretext for intriguers to precipitate their nation into ruinous wars and to oppress them with taxes.”[339] It is impossible not to feel in this passage the sure grasp of our American destiny. How clearly and courageously he announces the inevitable future! But the French philosopher-statesman again took the tripod. This was in the discharge of his duties as minister of the Crown, and in reply to a special application. His noble opinion is dated 6th April, 1776. Its character appears in a few sentences:-- “The present war will probably end in the absolute independence of the Colonies, and that event will certainly be _the epoch of the greatest revolution in the commerce and politics, not of England only, but of all Europe_.… When the English themselves shall recognize the independence of their colonies, _every mother country will be forced_ in like manner to exchange its dominion over its colonies for bonds of friendship and fraternity.… When _the total separation of America_ shall have cured the European nations of commercial jealousy, there will exist among men one great cause of war the less; and it is very difficult not to desire an event which is to accomplish this good for the human race.”[340] His letter to the English Dr. Price, on the American Constitutions, abounds in profound observations and in prophecy. It was written just at the time when France openly joined against England in our War of Independence, and is dated March 22, 1778, but did not see the light until 1784, some years after the death of the author, when it was published by Dr. Price.[341] Its criticism of the American Constitutions aroused John Adams to his elaborate work in their “Defence.”[342] Of our Union before the adoption of the National Constitution he writes:--