He did not even believe that any real reform could be accomplished beyond fixing periodical meetings of the States-General and giving them the right to participate in the legislation and to decide on taxes. They did not seem to be unanimously in favor of the _habeas corpus_; as for the freedom of the press,--"I hardly think the nation itself ripe to accept it."[212] This was his prophecy at the beginning of 1789, and during the first month of the year he had no occasion to express new views, since everybody was in the provinces "electioneering, choosing or being chosen." With his experience of Assemblies, however, he could not help wondering how any result could be accomplished with a body which was to include some twelve hundred persons and moreover to consist of Frenchmen, among whom are always more speakers than listeners.[213] In a letter to Thomas Paine we find the first intimation that Jefferson began to be influenced by the political thinkers of France or rather to discover in them a certain quality of thought and presentation that make their work of some use for the American people. They were at any rate much preferable to the Englishman, who "slumbering under a kind of half reformation in politics and religion, is not excited by anything he sees or feels, to question the remains of prejudice. The writers of this country, now taking the field freely and unrestrained, or rather involved by prejudice, will rouse us all from the errors in which we have been hitherto rocked."[214] Taken in itself and without the context this sentence would tend to indicate in Jefferson an almost unreserved approval of the doctrines of the radical reformers and of the very spirit of the French Revolution, but as is so often the case with him, the real meaning is hidden in the last part. It was not so much in their theoretical views he was interested as in the fact that "their logical presentation, might be used in America to overcome the last resistance to the establishment of a true republican régime free from any vestige of monarchical order." But that he hoped that such radical reforms could succeed in France is not indicated. His complete thought is far better expressed in the letter written the next day to Humphreys: The writings published on this occasion are, some of them, very valuable; because, unfettered by the prejudices under which Englishmen labor, they give a full scope to reason, and strike out truths, as yet unperceived and unacknowledged on the other side of the channel.... In fine, I believe this nation will, in the course of the present year, have as full a portion of liberality dealt out to them, as the nation can bear at present, considering how uninformed the mass of their people is.[215]