Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Spirit of Propagandism in the French Revolution, 1789-1793: An Abstract of a Thesis Presented Ed to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pennsylvania
Propagandism began with the Revolution no more than the doctrines which were to be propagated. The ideas of popular sovereignty, personal liberty, and equal ity before the law were familiar to Frenchmen and had been transmitted to various quarters of Europe before the meeting of the States General in 1789. In England they had been practically in effect for a century, but the forms of monarchy surviving there had obscured the fact to all save a few critical observers. The speculative minds of the eighteenth century had been busy with these ideas for nearly fifty years, and among a certain intelligent class they had received a wide circulation and a considerable acceptance before the period when our study begins.
This fact explains whatever success the French had in disseminating their political faith. It explains the appearance in each of the neighboring states, at the out break of the Revolution, of a group of sympathizers who attempted to convert their fellow countrymen to the new régime. The intellectual movement had begun which in time was to revolutionize the political and social structure of all the European nations, a movement which in our day seems to be witnessing its final manifestation in the great empire of Russia.
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