On June 19 Sotheby's will be holding an auction of “fine books and manuscripts” in New York. Included in the sale, at lot 18, is a fascinating letter from Thomas Jefferson to Dr William Bache. It is dated Philadelphia, January 2, 1800. At that time, Jefferson was Vice-President. Sotheby's estimate is that it will sell for $100,000 to $150,000. This is an historic document of the highest importance.

Jefferson himself is one of those rare historic characters whose influence still remains alive long after their death. Americans, both of liberal and conservative views, tend to regard him as the most original thinker among all the presidents, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. It was Jefferson who drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776; through his work on the Constitution of Virginia, he had considerable influence on the drafting of the US Constitution itself, though in 1787, when it was signed, Jefferson was still in Paris, as the US Ambassador to France.

The main criticism that is now made of Jefferson's career is that he, like Charles James Fox in England, became overcommitted to the extreme development of the French Revolutionary process; Jefferson became more Jacobin than the Jacobins, even expressing approval of the execution of Louis XVI, whom he had previously regarded as a “good” king. So long as there was any hope of the French Revolution following the same course as America's, Jefferson remained on the side of revolution.

The date of this letter is significant. Early February 1800 was the time when the news reached America of Napoleon's coup d'état, best known as the Coup of 18 Brumaire from the French Revolutionary calendar. In Anglo-Saxon terms, it occurred on November 9, 1799.

Jefferson's response to the news of Napoleon's seizure of power was virtually a cry of pain. The event forced him to reconsider his whole position. He wrote to Dr Bache: “You have seen the afflicting details from Paris. On what grounds the revolution has been made, we are not informed, and are still more at a loss to divine what will be its issue; whether we are to have over again the history of Robespierre, of Caesar, or of the new phenomenon of an usurpation of the government for the purpose of making it free.

“Our citizens, however, should derive from this some useful lessons. They should see the necessity to rally firmly and in close bands round their Constitution; never to suffer an iota of it to be infringed; to incubate on minorities the duties of acquiescence in the will of the majority, and in the majority a respect to the will of the minority; to beware of a military force even of citizens; and to be wary of too much confidence in any man.

“The confidence of the French people in Bonaparte has enabled him to kick down their Constitution, and instead of that to leave them dependent on his will and his life. I have never seen so awful a moment as the present.”

Many European politicians have seen the EU as a future United States of Europe, although many of them are reluctant to admit it. The extraordinary thing is that they have not studied the history of the American Constitution. This is like the problem of bishops and Adam Smith. One hardly ever meets a bishop with a student's knowledge of classical economics. They have seldom read Smith's Wealth of Nations; they just assume it must be wrong.

In the same way, there are few Europhiles with a good knowledge of late 18th-century American history. Hardly any of the “experts” on the European constitution seem to have read The Federalist, which was written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, and first published in 1788.

In 1825 Thomas Jefferson himself proposed that The Federalist should be adopted as a required text in the University of Virginia. He described it as: “An authority to which appeal is habitually made by all... as evidence of the general opinion of those who framed, and of those who accepted the Constitution of the United States, on questions as to its genuine meaning.” Perhaps The Federalist should be a required text in Brussels and for the European Court of Justice.

I do not argue that the problems of early 21st-century Europe are identical to those of late 18th-century America. I am not myself a federalist. Yet the Americans did have to face similar problems in trying to reconcile the relationship of the federal government with the individual states - the very questions that confront Europe in the Lisbon treaty.

The American Constitution has succeeded in providing the US with a stable democratic framework that has survived the great changes of the past two centuries, including - in the 20th century - two world wars, a Cold War and a slump. The US Constitution is 221 years old, and still able to produce a presidential election with three highly gifted candidates. The Constitution has repeatedly proved able to regenerate itself.

The original French Constitution was adopted only shortly after the American; within a decade it had been overtaken by the Terror and overthrown by Napoleon. Surely, Europe should be asking this question: why did the US Constitution succeed when the French Constitution has repeatedly failed? There is also the primary question of assent. The articles of the US Constitution were adopted by the Federal Convention in September 1787; the opening words are: “We, the people of the United States...”

Combined with the earlier treaties, Lisbon does form a sort of constitution, though an unsatisfactory one. Yet no one would be entitled to start this European constitution with the words: “We, the people of Europe...” It might have to be: “We, the people of Ireland...”, since the Irish are the only people allowed a vote. Will the Lisbon constitution last as long as the American? The answer is probably not.

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