There's a vivid expression in Jefferson's letter--"setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order". It makes sense. Anything hovering in the air over a chicken, rabbit, or mouse is instinctively interpreted by the prey-animal as a hawk, and so it runs for a hole.
I noticed Jefferson's letter heading: "Paris, Nov. 13, 1787". He only had a year and a half to leave France before Bastille Day, 1789.
Nobody knows, of course, but I suspect Jefferson would have spoken differently AFTER the massacres of 1792-93, the public guillotinings of populace, the royal family, & of Robespierre himself in '94. One of the first things lost in a revolution is our individual liberty. Revolutions achieve negative goals, granted. But history shows, never positive ones. After they storm the palace, the attackers look around and say, "Now what do we do?"
But I think a lot of us have an eerie feeling that the U.S. & the Western World are creeping toward the edge of a cliff. And that it's being steered that way. Don't look now but the coyote is in charge of the chicken coop.