It is interesting that three of Lafayette's most influential American friends, Washington, Jefferson, and Gouverneur Morris, had misgivings from the first about the situation in France, fearing that a revolution could not take place there without grave disorders and that Lafayette could not personally ride such a storm. Morris, who was then in Paris, urged caution upon him and advised him to keep the power in the hands of the nobility. When Lafayette asked him to read and criticize his draft of The Declaration of Rights before it was presented to the Assembly, Morris suggested several changes to make it more moderate; "for," said this American, "revolutions are not won by sonorous phrases." Although keen for reform and liking to dress it in sonorous phrases, Lafayette had no wish to be rid of the king. He did not expect to have a president in France or the exact kind of government that had been adopted in the United States. "Lafayette was neither republican nor royalist, but always held that view half-way between the two which theorists call a constitutional monarchy," says a French writer. "In [Pg 202]all his speeches from 1787 to 1792 he rarely used the word 'liberty' without coupling it with some word expressing law and order." Events proved that he was too thoroughly a believer in order to please either side. One party accused him of favoring the aristocrats, the other of sacrificing everything for the applause of the mob. What he tried to do was to stand firm in the rush of events, which was at first so exhilarating and later changed to such an appalling sweep of the furies. If he had been less scrupulous and more selfish he might have played a greater role in the Revolution--have risen to grander heights or failed more abjectly--but for a time he would have really guided the stormy course of events. As it was, events overtook him, carried him with them, then tossed him aside and passed him by. Yet even so he managed for three years to dominate that tiger mob of Paris "more by persuasion than by force." This proves that he was no weakling. Jefferson called him "the Atlas of the Revolution."