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To his party, the party of man, or the crowd of humanity in Germany, the State builder Karl Heinzen offers the "best republic," the best republic devised by him, "the federal republic with social institutions." Rousseau once sketched the best political world for the Poles and Mably for the Corsicans. The great Genevese citizen has found a still greater successor.
In Paris, young Adams was present at the signing of the treaty of peace in 1783, and was admitted into the society of Franklin, Jefferson, Jay, Barclay, Hartley, the Abbé Mably, and many other eminent statesmen and literary men.
Yet there is no hint in the New Heloïsa of the socialism which Morelly and Mably flung themselves upon, as the remedy for all these desperate horrors.
The Bureaux were disliked and suspected by the excluded public. The electorate, experiencing for the first time the sensation of having deputies at work to do their will, desired to watch them, and insisted on the master's right to look after his man. Representation was new; and to every reader of Rousseau, of Turgot, or of Mably, it was an object of profound distrust.
It is true that there was an unmistakable decay of Greek literary studies in France from the beginning of the eighteenth century, and Rousseau seems to have read Plato only through Ficinus's translation. But his example and its influence, along with that of Mably and others, warrant the historian in saying that at no time did Greek ideas more keenly preoccupy opinion than during this century.
Some were common to all the group; others lie in germ at least in the writings of the Encyclopædists. Even communism was anticipated by Mably, and was held in some tentative form by many of the leading men of the Revolution. It was a revolt not merely against all coercive action by the State, but also against collective action by the citizens.
"What studies," says he, "will the intending historian need to have gone through, what kinds of knowledge ought he to have acquired, in order to begin writing a work with any hope of success?" Before him, Mably, in his Traité de l'étude de l'histoire, had also recognised that "there are preparatory studies with which no historian can dispense."
La conversation s'echauffoit, et M. de Foncemagne la rompit en se levant de table, et en passant dans le salon, ou personne ne fut tente de la renouer." Mably was a lover of virtue and freedom; but his virtue was austere, and his freedom was impatient of an equal.
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