Jefferson has often been represented, both by his enemies and friends, as the American exponent of the theories of the French Revolution. The possible influence exerted upon the development of his political philosophy by French thought has been the subject of lengthy discussions and probably will never be determined with any degree of exactness. It is very difficult to see how a man of his character could have remained in Paris for more than five years without participating in some manner in the great battle of theories which preceded the French Revolution. He associated with Lafayette and his group of "republicans", exchanged some correspondence with Condorcet, frequently saw Abbé Morellet, was introduced by Benjamin Franklin to Madame Helvétius and her coterie; he worked with Du Pont de Nemours on commercial questions, subscribed to papers and gazettes and to the "Encyclopédie Méthodique", a continuation and systematization of Diderot's "Encyclopédie." But when all is said, the most careful scrutiny of the letters he wrote during that period fails to reveal any enthusiasm or even any endorsement of the many and somewhat contradictory political doctrines which were preached in France at the time. I do not even see that his prolonged sojourn in France modified to any extent the conclusions he had already reached independently in the "Notes on Virginia." When he arrived in Paris he was over forty and had been in public life for almost fifteen years; he had written not only the Declaration of Independence but many reports on vital questions; he had participated actively and for several years in the deliberations of the Virginia Assembly and of the Congress of the United States and he had been chief executive of his native State. Such a man was not a student coming to Paris to sit at the feet of French masters; he was considered by the French themselves, not only as a master but as the apostle of the religion of liberty.[182] They looked up to him for advice and help, for he had over them the great superiority of having been more than a simple theorizer; he had contributed to a great movement of liberation; he was the promoter of the Bill for Religious Freedom; he had proposed a complete plan of public education and he had proclaimed in a national document the inviolable rights of man. They had much to learn from Jefferson and he was not reluctant to teach them, but he never felt that his French friends could repay him in kind. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that he was very happy to find enunciated in a very clear and logical way some of his favorite ideas; it is equally certain that France was to him a living demonstration and a sort of horrible example of all the evils caused by aristocratic, monarchical, and ecclesiastical oppressions. His sojourn in France had at least the effect of making him more intensely, more proudly American than he was before sailing, and more convinced than ever of the unsurpassed superiority of the