Jefferson, who had once called Louis XVI “a good man,” “an honest man,” observed privately that monarchs were “amenable to punishment like other criminals.” It was the view expressed in a letter in the New York Journal signed “A Republican”: Mankind is now enlightened. They can discover that kings are like other men, especially with respect to the commission of crimes and an inordinate thirst for power. Reason and liberty are over-spreading the world, nor will progress be impeded until the towering crown shall fall, and the spectre of royalty be broken in pieces, in every part of the globe.
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