The aim of this movement is deemed to have been the creation of a more democratic society. By 1770 Rousseau had published his Social Contract and the ideas of the philosophes had been publicised. In 1765 the French Assembly of the Clergy had denounced philosophe literature, which it said would undermine all churches, states and societies. The Americans appealed to historic or natural rights against the sovereign authority of Britain and gathered the merchant and lawyer class into clubs and committees. They exploited mob violence to obtain their ends.
Anarchy is avoided in the political sphere by the stress on equal rights, fraternity and the law.
All these are bound together in the idea of constitutionalism. In economic theory, natural law or natural harmony prevents liberty from degenerating into confusion. There was no international organisation of revolutionaries. Agitators and subversives did exist in many countries but there is little connection between them. The establishment of American independence was followed by the heightened democratic agitation of the 1790s to decide who should rule America.