Thus spoke the champion of democracy at the beginning of the French Revolution, after spending five years in Paris and supposedly permeating his mind with the wild theories of the French philosophers. And what he said of the people on this occasion did not apply to the French people alone, for he made it clear that it was the political theory applied "in America." It was essentially the theory of government by experts which he already had in mind when he proposed the reorganization of the College of William and Mary. In 1778, as well as in 1789, Jefferson did not hesitate to proclaim that if the source of all power was in the people, the people could not exercise their power in all circumstances, that they had to delegate their authority to men really qualified, retaining only the right to select them. This may not be the common acceptation of the term "Jeffersonian democracy", but I have a strong suspicion that on the whole Jefferson never changed much in this respect. He certainly never stood for mob rule, nor for direct government by the masses, and he knew too much about the delicate and complicated wheels of government to believe that the running of such a tremendous machine could be intrusted to untrained hands. As for the French, he trusted them even less, and never believed, as long as he remained in France, that they were prepared for self-government. He refused to consider that a real revolution had started before his eyes or was even in sight. "Upon the whole," he wrote to Madison shortly before his departure from Paris, "I do not see yet probable that any actual commotion will take place; and if it does take place, I have strong confidence that the patriotic party will hold together, and their party in the nation be what I have ascribed it." Up to the last moment he held the belief that the king, "the substantial people of the whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy, formed a firm phalanx which must prevail."[230] The analysis of the situation sent to Jay just as he was about to leave Paris does not indicate even the possibility of establishing a republic, since the only parties he distinguished were: ... the aristocrats, comprehending the higher members of the clergy, military, nobility, and the parliaments of the whole kingdom; the moderate royalists who wish for a constitution nearly similar to that of England; the republicans who are willing to let their first magistracy be hereditary, but to make it very subordinate to the legislature, and to have that legislature consist of a single chamber.[231]