[Sidenote: Republican government encouraged.] A great political principle had been strengthened by the success of the Revolution: republican government had been revived in a fashion unknown since ancient times. The territory claimed by Virginia was larger than the island of Great Britain. The federal republic included an area nearly four times as large as that of France. In 1782 Frederick of Prussia told the English ambassador that the United States could not endure, "since a republican government had never been known to exist for any length of time where the territory was not limited and concentred." The problem was a new one; but in communities without a titled aristocracy, which had set themselves against the power of a monarch, and which had long been accustomed to self-government, the problem was successfully worked out. The suffrage was still limited to the holders of land; but the spirit of the Revolution looked towards abolishing all legal distinctions between man and man; and the foundation of later democracy, with its universal suffrage, was thus already laid. [Sidenote: Influence of rights of man.] The influence of the republican spirit upon the rest of the world was not yet discerned; but the United States had established for themselves two principles which seriously affected other nations. If English colonies could by revolution relieve themselves from the colonial system of England, the French and Spanish colonies might follow that example; and forty years later not one of the Spanish continental colonies acknowledged the authority of the home government. The other principle was that of the rights of man. The Declaration of Independence contained a list of rights such as were familiar to the colonists of England, but were only theories elsewhere. The success of the Revolution was, therefore, a shock to the system of privilege and of class exemptions from the common burdens, which had lasted since feudal times. The French Revolution of 1789 was an attempt to apply upon alien ground the principles of the American Revolution. CHAPTER V. THE CONFEDERATION (1781-1788) 48. REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--Justin Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_, VI. 745, VII. 199-236, 527-543, VIII. 491;, notes to Curtis, Bancroft, McMaster, and Pitkin; W. F. Foster, _References to the Constitution_, 12-14; J. J. Lalor, _Cyclopedia_, I. 577; Channing and Hart, _Guide_, §§ 142, 149-153. HISTORICAL MAPS.--Nos. 1, 3, this volume ( _Epoch Maps_, Nos. 6, 7); Labberton, _Atlas_, lxvi.; Rhode, _Atlas_, No. xxviii.; Johnston, _History of the United States for Schools_, 133; Gordon _American Revolution_, I. frontispiece; B. A. Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, I. 188, 201 (reprinted from MacCoun's _Historical Geography_), also I. frontispiece, and II. 393; Justin Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_, VII. 140; school histories of Channing, Johnston, Scudder Thomas.