a torrent. The contagion has spread into workshops and cottages." [Footnote: Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, p. 278.] The contagion spread, but the official who wrote these words did not see that it was successful because it was opportune, and that the minds of men were prepared to receive the seed of revolutionary ideas by the unspeakable corruption of the Government and the Church. As Voltaire remarked about the same time, France was becoming Encyclopaedist, and Europe too. 2. The influence of the subversive and rationalistic thinkers in bringing about the events of 1789 has been variously estimated by historians. The truth probably lies in the succinct statement of Acton that "the confluence of French theory with American example caused the Revolution to break out" when it did. The theorists aimed at reform, not at political revolution; and it was the stimulus of the Declaration of Rights of 1774 and the subsequent victory of the Colonies that precipitated the convulsion, at a time when the country had a better prospect of improvement than it ever had before 1774, when Louis XVI. came to the throne. But the theories had prepared France for radical changes, and they guided the phases of the Revolution. The leaders had all the optimism of the Encyclopaedists; yet the most powerful single force was Rousseau, who, though he denied Progress and blasphemed civilisation, had promulgated the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, giving it an attractive appearance of mathematical precision; and to this doctrine the revolutionaries attached their optimistic hopes. [Footnote: It is interesting to observe how Robespierre, to whom the doctrines of Rousseau were oracles, could break out into admiration of the progress of civilised man, as he did in the opening passage of his speech of 7th May 1794. proposing the decree for the worship of the Supreme Being (see the text in Stephen, Orators of the French Revolution, ii. 391-92).] The theory of equality seemed no longer merely speculative; for the American constitution was founded on democratic equality, whereas the English constitution, which before had seemed the nearest approximation to the ideal of freedom, was founded on inequality. The philosophical polemic of the masters was waged with weapons of violence by the disciples. Chaumette and Hebert, the followers of d'Holbach, were destroyed by the disciples of Rousseau. In the name of the creed of the Vicaire Savoyard the Jacobin Club shattered the bust of Helvetius. Mably and Morelly had their disciples in Babeuf and the socialists.