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 The original of tliis book is in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024291514 
 
[Price Two Shillmgs.] 
 
 TUEGOT: 
 
 HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND OPINIONS. 
 
 ®foo lettuug, 
 
 W. B. HODGSON, LL.D. 
 
 *'Bonuiii virum facile crederes, magnum libenter. Quanquam medio in spatio 
 setatis ereptus, quotum ad gloi^am, longiBBimum aevum peregit. Quippe vera 
 bona, quae in viitutibus sita sunt, impleTerat." — Tacitus. 
 
 LONDON: TEUBNEE, & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 MANCHESTER: ALEX. IRELAND & CO. 
 EDINBURGH : WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 1870, 
 
A. IBEtAND AND 00., PEINTEES, MANCHESTER 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 OP 
 
 SAMUEL BAILEY, 
 
 WHO RESEMBLED TDEfiOT IN HIS CONVICTIONS, 
 
 IN HIS CHAHACTEB, 
 
 AND ALSO 
 
 IN HIS LACK OP APPRECIATION 
 
 BY AN AGE THAT WAS NOT WORTHY OP HIM, 
 
 ^f)tit Uectut-eg 
 
 ARE GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 BY 
 
 HIS FRIEND, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These lectures were delivered, during February, 1868, 
 at Bradford, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and more recently 
 at Birmingham and in London. After they had been 
 delivered at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, for 
 which they were written, — I would have published them, 
 as I was requested to do, had I not intended to make them 
 the groundwork of a more elaborate history of Turgot's 
 times, and a much more complete analysis of his writings. 
 Having, however, been lately informed by my friend Mr. 
 John Morley that he has been for some time engaged in 
 preparing a life of Turgot, which is to appear, by instal- 
 ments, in the Fortnightly Review, I have abandoned 
 this intention for the present, and it may be altogether, 
 in the belief that the work is in very able hands, and that, 
 when finished, it will leave little to be added or desired. 
 I content myself, accordingly, with publishing now these 
 
Vl PREFACE. 
 
 lectures, as delivered, lest I should hereafter seem to have 
 only followed as the gleaner follows the strong reaper after 
 an ample and well-gathered harvest. So great is the 
 value, even in our more advanced time, of Target's 
 history, and especially of his writings, that there is room, 
 if not need, for more than one attempt to redeem them 
 from unmerited and almost unaccountable neglect. 
 
 I regret that want of access to books where I write 
 compels me to withhold many illustrative notes, and more 
 precise references, which, otherwise, I should have been 
 glad to append. 
 
 W. B. H. 
 
 July, 1S70. 
 
 Seamoor House, 
 
 boubnemouth. 
 
ERRATUM. 
 Page 60, last line, for "Publico" read "Pablica." 
 
TURGOT. 
 
 Lecture I. 
 
 HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 
 
 SHAKSPERE makes Griffith say of Wolsey : " Men's 
 evil manners live in brass : their virtues we write in 
 water;'' and he has put into the mouth of Antony these 
 well-known words : " The evil that men do lives after 
 them ; the good is oft interred with thsir bones." What 
 is thus said of the evil and the good in the deeds of an 
 individual man, one is sometimes tempted to say of men 
 whose deeds are pre-eminently evil, in comparison with 
 others whose deeds are pre-eminently good. The latter 
 are too rapidly and too commonly forgotten ; the former 
 are tenaciously »remembered. The Catilines and the 
 Borgias hold a disproportionate place in history ; and for 
 ten thousand who are well informed about Marat or 
 Robespierre, there is perhaps one to whom the name of 
 Turgot suggests a clear and definite idea. Yet it would 
 be difficult to name many men of either ancient or modern 
 times who deserve better than Turgot to be held in loving 
 and reverent remembrance, not merely in his own country, 
 but in every country that professes to admire great powers 
 steadily applied to great purposes, and intellectual emi- 
 nence ennobled by benevolence of heart and purity of life. 
 
TUEGOT. 
 
 That he signally failed to accomplish much of the good 
 at which he aimed so earnestly reflects dishonour on 
 others rather than on him. If it is true that men are 
 responsible for their conduct rather than for its results,* 
 there is no reason why we should disparage or forget 
 one who, so long as he could toil or suffer for the sake of 
 others, "bated no jot of heart or hope." If he seems to 
 have done but little, it is because his achievement, though 
 absolutely great, was small relatively to the grandeur of 
 his design. " Magnis tamen excidit ausis." " In great 
 attempts 'tis glorious e'en to fail," and in a righteous 
 cause the failure of one often heralds the general triumph ; 
 the defeat of to-day prepares the victory of many morrows. 
 Condorcet, who wrote a memoir of his friend Turgot, 
 says of him with equal eloquence and justice : " Some men 
 have exhibited great virtue with more display, have had 
 more brilliant qualities, have shown in certain respects a 
 greater genius ; but perhaps never did any man present to 
 geaeral admiration an entire character more perfect and 
 more impressive. It seemed that his wisdom and his 
 strength of mind, seconding the gifts of nature, had left 
 him no more ignorance, weakness and d^ect than are the 
 inevitable heritage of a being with limited powers. It is 
 in this extraordinary union of qualities that we must seek 
 the cause of the little justice awarded to him and of the 
 hatred which he excited. Envy seems to fasten rather on 
 what approaches perfection, than on that which, while its 
 greatness astonishes, offers, in a mixture of defects and 
 vices, the consolation which envy needs. One may hope 
 to dazzle the eyes of men, and to obtain the title of a man 
 
 * "Let a man do hia work; the fruit of it is the care of another than 
 he." — CwrlyU. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 
 
 of genius by dexterously flattering or even by resisting 
 popular prejudices ; one may hope to disguise conduct 
 with the mask of exaggerated virtues ; but the constant 
 practice of simple and unostentatious excellence, reason 
 ever on its guard, ever indefatigable in the path of truth, — 
 this is -what hypocrisy and quackery will ever despair of imi- 
 tating ; this is what they are bound to stifle and destroy." 
 
 Whether this eulogium be too highly coloured, I trust 
 to enable you, in some measure, for yourselves to judge. 
 
 Anne Eobert Jacques Turgot was the youngest of the 
 three sons of Michael Etienne Turgot, Provost of the 
 Merchants of Paris under Louis XV., and was born at 
 Paris in the year 1727, about four years after the birth of 
 Adam Smith, with whose name his will ever be honourably 
 associated in the history of Economic Science. The 
 Turgot family, which appeared in Normandy during the 
 Crusades, is in France believed to have been of Scottish 
 origin, though it is also said to have been founded by 
 Togut, a Danish prince ; ai^ one of Turgot's ancestors is 
 reported to have been first minister of the Scottish King 
 Malcolm III. 
 
 His father, as Provost of the Merchants of Paris in 
 1729 and ten following years, earned a fair repute by his 
 public spirit, courage, uprightness, and benevolence.- In 
 times of scarcity, then so much more frequent and serious 
 than now, he ministered largely to the necessities of;ihe 
 poor. He constructed the great sewer of the city on 
 the right bank of the Seine ; he enlarged the Quai de 
 I'Horloge, prolonged it and united it by a bridge with the 
 opposite bank ; and he caused to be erected the beautiful 
 fountain which still exists in the Eue de Grenelle de St. 
 Germain. He is further recorded to have quelled by his 
 
TUEGOT. 
 
 courage in rushing between the combatants, a fierce party 
 fight in which the Swiss guards had one day engaged 
 with some French troops. 
 
 The youngest of three sons, Turgot, as was then the 
 custom, was destined to the Church. From the College of 
 Louis le Grand and the College de Plessis he advanced 
 to the seminary of St. Sulpice, and thence, as bachelor of 
 theology, to the Sorbonne, in order to be licensed. Of 
 his two brothers, one was designed for the magistracy, the 
 other for the army. As in the case of many other eminent 
 men, his contemporaries loved afterwards to recall the 
 incidents of his youth, and to trace in them indications of 
 the character then in embryo, and of the destiny yet 
 unrevealed. Thus, one of his fellow-pupils at the Sor- 
 bonne, the Abb^ Morellet,* has recorded of him some 
 interesting particulars. He says in his Memoirs: "This 
 man who has risen so high above the common level, who 
 has left a name dear to all the friends of humanity, and a 
 memory which all who knev/ him fondly cherish, even 
 then showed in part the sagacity, penetration, and depth 
 of thought which one day he was fully to display. To the 
 simplicity of a child he joined a sort of dignity, which 
 made him respected by all his comrades, even those much 
 older than himself He had an almost girlish modesty 
 and reserve. The slightest double entendre made him 
 blush to the eyes, and threw him into great embarrassment. 
 But this reserve was quite compatible with the frank, un- 
 restrained gaiety of a child. His memory was prodigious. 
 
 * Morellet has been styled "the link between two generations and two 
 literatures ; " lie devoted himself greatly to economic studies ; he in early 
 life projected a Dictionary of Commerce, and he published a' translation 
 of Smith's " Wealth of Nations." 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 
 
 and I have seen him repeat as many as a hundred and 
 twenty verses, after he had heard them only twice or even 
 once. He knew by heart the most of Voltaire's fugitive 
 pieces, and many passages from his poems and tragedies. 
 The dominant features of his mind were penetration, which 
 enabled him to detect just relations among ideas seemingly 
 unconnected, and a range of view which took them all in 
 systematic order." 
 
 His extreme bashfulness was probably due in no small 
 measure to injudicious treatment by his mother, who, in 
 presence of others, often ridiculed his shy and awkward 
 reserve. From the same Morellet we learn that he would 
 at times hide himself from visitors by retiring behind a 
 screen or below a sofa. The feeling thus, unfortunately, 
 confirmed remained with him through life, and gave in 
 later years, and in his official position, an appearance of 
 pride and coldness to manners which were in truth the 
 result of diffidence verging upon timidity. 
 
 Selfishness was as far from his nature as was self-asser- 
 tion. At the College of Louis le Grand his parents, observ- 
 ing that his pocket-money was very rapidly expended, set 
 the Principal upon the watch, and so discovered that he 
 distributed it among the poorer of his companions, to 
 enable them to buy books. 
 
 He was n;iore fortunate in some of his teachers, as well 
 as of his comrades, than he was in his mother. At the 
 College of Plessis, his master in philosophy was the Abb^ 
 Sigorgne, who first in the University displaced the Vortices 
 of Des Cartes by the Physics of Newton. Of others, now 
 unknown to fame, I need not speak, though their influence 
 was great in developing those mental qualities that fostered 
 between the teachers and the taught a lasting friendship, 
 
TUKGOT, 
 
 in which respect mingled, not solely on the pupil's side. 
 
 At the Sorbonne Turgot spent two years, devoted by no 
 means mainly to theology. His studies were very various, 
 and included ancient and modern languages, literature, 
 law, geography, and mathematics. 
 
 Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu — treatises on economics, 
 politics, and finance — all were eagerly read and discussed 
 by him and his companions. The events of the time did 
 not escape attention, and led to animated debates. The 
 question of religious toleration excited in them peculiar 
 interest. With youthful ardour and generosity many, if 
 not most, espoused what we now call the liberal side. 
 " We maintained," says Morellet, "that indifference or 
 hostility to religion could not be justly predicated of a 
 government which, putting aside the verity or the falsity 
 of differing creeds, allows their adherents to teach in free- 
 dom their several dogmas, and to practise their worship in 
 all things not contrary to public morals and social peace ; 
 that the sovereign and all the magistrates may be perfectly 
 convinced that the Christian and Catholic is the only true 
 religion, that out of the church there is no salvation — and 
 yet tolerate in civil life all possible sects, leave them to 
 worship in public, admit them even to magistracies and 
 other oflSces, in a word make no difference between a 
 Jansenist, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, even a Jew and a 
 Catholic, in all the emoluments and duties, charges and 
 powers purely civil of society. We did not conceal this 
 reasonable doctrine, for we defended it even in our college 
 theses, not without some resistance and censure on the part 
 of the old doctors, but without inconvenience to ourselves." 
 
 Of Turgot's very early writings, during and even before 
 his residence at the Sorbonne, several have been preserved. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 
 
 The earliest, written at the seminary of St. Sulpice, is of 
 date 1748. It is a reply to Buffon's theory of cosmic and 
 geologic changes. It was anonymously addressed to 
 Buffon himself, and was based on reasons drawn from 
 the teachings of Newton. The next, dated 1749, was a 
 letter, of which only a fragment now remains, addressed 
 to Abb^ Gic6, on paper-money. Of this, as we shall 
 have to speak of it hereafter, it may suffice now to say 
 that seldom indeed has so thoughtful and sound a treatise 
 been written by one so young. He was then only twenty-two 
 years old. 
 
 In 1750 it was, as appears, that Turgot wrote critical 
 remarks on a paper by Maupertuis.* This was entitled 
 " Reflexions on the Origin of Language and the Significa- 
 tion of Words." In the same year he wrote "Two Letters 
 on the System of Berkeley." Our present concern, it is 
 true, is mainly with his life ; but of that his writings are, 
 at this stage, the chief landmarks. 
 
 In 1748, the Academy of Soissons offered a prize for 
 the best essay on the question, "What, in all times, are 
 the possible causes of the decline of arts and sciences ?" 
 Turgot resolved to compete, but, having learned that his 
 instructor at the College of Plessis — the Abb^ Bon — had 
 the same intention, he gave up the thought, and made 
 over to his friend the sketch of his plan, and the portions 
 which he had already written. 
 
 Haviag been elected, in 1749, Prior of the Sorbonne, 
 he was required, as a consequence of this nominal dignity, 
 
 * Maupertuis was the friend and correspondent of Frederick the Great. 
 It is to him that the Prussian monarch inscribed the poem which begins : 
 " 0, Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, 
 Que nStre vie est peu de chose ! " 
 
TUflGOT, 
 
 which was conferred by the doctors on the bachelor of 
 the most distinguished family, to deliver two Latin dis- 
 courses, one at the opening, the other at the close, of the 
 theological theses. , He chose as the subject of the first, 
 " The benefits which the establishment of Christianity 
 has conferred upon mankind ;'' and for the second, " The 
 successive development of the human intelligence." Of 
 the latter it may be remarked, in passing, that it contains 
 one memorable passage : " Colonies are like fruits, which 
 cling to the jDarent tree only till they are ripe ; when the 
 Greek colonies became sufficient for themselves, they did 
 what Cartilage did, and what one day America will do." 
 This was written twenty-six years before the declaration 
 of American independence. 
 
 Of the two addresses just mentioned Dupont de 
 Nemours* has preserved a French translation ; but many 
 of these early writings have been more or less completely 
 lost, and among them a treatise on the existence of God, 
 and several theological dissertations. 
 
 He undertook a Latin Dictionary, chiefly etymological, 
 tracing the origin of words and their combinations. In a 
 list written by his own hand appear many subjects on 
 which he designed and was preparing himself to write, — 
 metaphysics, languages, sciences, history, morals, politics, 
 legislation, administration. He made translations from 
 Ossian, Gessner, and Klopstock. He had sketched out 
 two poems, one on the seasons, one on natural law ; and 
 of all these contemplated works, it appears that he began, 
 if not completed, fifteen. 
 
 * Dupont haa been said to be to Turgot in some measure what Ecker- 
 mann was to Giithe. Dupont waa as little like Boswell as Turgot was lilie 
 Johnson. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 
 
 But now came the inevitable hour — that solemn crisis 
 in the life of every man, — the choice of a life-vocation. 
 Vocation means calling; but by whom, or by what shall a 
 youth be called to make this solemn choice ? By the ambi- 
 tion of parents, their prejudiced affection, their perhaps 
 erroneous judgment, the caprice of the youth himself, or the 
 promptings wi thin him of a strong and abiding impulse, which 
 past reflection, present tendencj^, and future experience 
 shall concur to justify ? Turgot shrank with an invincible 
 repugnance from the clerical profession. In our country, 
 and in our time, if a young man who has been led from 
 his early years to look forward to the church, recoils from 
 the final plunge, we suspect some doubt of one or other of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles — some misgiving as to his ability 
 to bear the restraints or to discharge the duties, some 
 stirrmgs of secular ambition ; but in France, at the time 
 we speak of, other causes also were at work. The clerical 
 office was tainted with hypocrisy, licentiousness, unscru- 
 pulous and unblushing worldliness. Atheism itself was 
 no bar to the assumption or retentioa of the priestly 
 character; open vice was not reckoned incompatible with 
 its obligations, and the highest positions in the state were 
 not only open, but open by preference to the dignitaries 
 of the church. Such men as Talleyrand and Lomdnie de 
 Brienne were typical.* 
 
 * When the latter was proposed for the Archbishopric of Paris, the King 
 remarked : " The Archbishop of Paris ought, at least, to believe in a God." 
 Souvenirs et Portraits, par M. de Lavis. Paris. 1813. p. 103. "Le 
 Cardinal de Luminie." "At a table where Talleyrand was i)resent, the 
 Eev. Sidney Smith expressed a wish that, when his brother 'Bobus' was 
 Lord Chancellor, he would make him a bishop. ' I wiU,' said Bobus, ' after 
 I have made you commit every baseness of which a priest is capable. ' The 
 ex-bishop only observed, 'mais quelle latitude enorme.'" — Athenceum, 9th 
 July, 1870, p. 40. 
 
lO TUEGOT. 
 
 No wonder that to Turgot the ecclesiastical life was 
 utterly distasteful. It must have been so even had he_ 
 held all the tenets of the church. It was well that his 
 father refused to thwart his wishes. But his companions 
 addressed to him remonstrances, such as have often since 
 been addressed to youth struggling with doubts ; such as 
 have often since been effectual in stifling the voice of con- 
 science. The Abbd Cic4 speaking in the name of all, 
 addressed him in words reported by Dupont de Nemours : 
 "We think unanimously that you are about to act in a 
 way quite at variance with your interest, and with your 
 remarkable good sense. You are the youngest son of a 
 Norman house, and you are, consequently, poor. The 
 magistracy requires a considerable fortune, without which 
 there is loss of consideration with no hope of advance- 
 ment. Your father has a high reputation ; your relatives 
 have influence. If you do not quit the career that they 
 have assigned you, you are certain to obtain excellent 
 livings, and to be early in life a bishop. Your famUy wiU 
 easily secure for you a bishopric of Languedoc, Provence, 
 or Brittany. Then your fine dreams of administrative 
 power may be realised, and, without ceasing to be a 
 Churchman, you may be a statesman at your leisure ; you 
 may do good in every way to those committed to your 
 charge. Consider this prospect ; see that it depends 
 wholly on yourself to become very useful to your country, 
 to acquire high renown, perhaps to gain an entrance into 
 the ministry itself If, however, you shut the door against 
 yourself, if you break the plank under your feet, you will 
 be doomed to try cases at law ; you wiU fritter away and 
 waste in petty private business a genius fit to deal with 
 public affairs of the highest moment." A skilful appeal, 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 1 1 
 
 frankly and decisively answered ! " My dear friends," said 
 -Turgot, " I am deeply touched by your zeal on my behalf, 
 and I feel more than I can express. In what you say 
 there is much truth. Take to yourselves the counsel you 
 offer to me, since you can follow it. Though I love you, 
 1 cannot fully understand your yiew of this question. As 
 for me, I cannot possibly resign myself to wear through 
 life a mask over my face." 
 
 Adam Smith, likewise, was intended for the church ; 
 but, no more than Turgot, could he bind himself to the 
 life-long profession of what he did not thoroughly believe, 
 or even what he might thereafter see reason to reject.* 
 
 Turgot was now free to pursue more closely his legal 
 studies. In 1753 he obtained the title of Master of 
 Requests, having in the previous year held successively 
 two offices preliminary to this. As Master of Requests, it 
 is recorded by Condorcet that, having been instructed to 
 inquire into a serious charge against one employed in the 
 department of finance, he delayed to institute proceedings, 
 being impressed vrith the notion that the accused was 
 guilty. When, however, his innocence was established by 
 examination, Turgot restored to him from his own purse 
 
 * It is interesting, however, to observe that to the ranks of economists 
 no profession, perhaps, has made larger contributions than the clerical. 
 The names of Malthus, Whately, Chalmers, Wayland, Pox, Mastrolini, 
 Maury, Townsend, Tucker, St. Pierre, Rogers Ending, and Thorold 
 Rogers may be cited in illustration. Cobbett, indeed, with his usual 
 brutality of invective, said to Malthus : " I call you by the only name 
 which expresses the full infamy of your character, when I say — Pwrson." 
 But now-a-days such a sentiment finds no sympathy except perhaps in some 
 college of pretentious but spurious liberalism, which interprets equality of 
 religions to mean the negation of religion, which reckons two persecutions 
 as equal to one tolerance, and, casting out Satan by Beelzebub, tries to 
 avenge the religious exolusiveness of the past by excluding for ever from 
 even secular teaching all ministers of religion of every name. 
 
1 2 TUEGOT. 
 
 the amount of salary of which during the inquiry he had 
 been deprived, declaring at the same time that this was 
 an act not of generosity but of justice* 
 
 His spare time he still devoted to science, literature, 
 and philosophy. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, meta- 
 physics, and history, as well as philosophy, he continued 
 to study ; and to his knowledge of Greek and of Latin he 
 added that of Hebrew. Among the writings that mark 
 this period of his life, I can only mention his plan of a 
 Political Geography, two Discourses on Universal History 
 (1750 and 1751), two Letters on Toleration (1753, 1754), 
 the "Conciliator, or Letters of an Ecclesiastic to a 
 Magistrate on Civil Toleration," his translation of Josiah 
 Tucker's "Important Questions about Commerce" (1753), 
 his articles in the EncyclopMie (1756) on Existence, 
 Etymology, Expansibility, Fairs and Markets, and Founda- 
 tions, and lastly, his eulogium on Gournay, ' author of 
 the famous, but often mis-understood, saying, "Laissez 
 faire, laissez passer" (1759). The range of subjects here 
 mentioned indicates at least the versatility and compre- 
 hensiveness of Turgot's mind. To these he proposed to 
 add other articles on Metaphor, the Origin of Language, 
 Signs, Identity, Immaterialism, Memory, Sensation, Sub- 
 stance, Mode, Individual, Humanity, Hospitals, Mendicity. 
 The suspension, however, and subsequent prohibition, of 
 the EncyclopMie prevented the completion of these articles. 
 
 •A parallel to this conduct is recorded of Sir William Nairne, afterwards 
 Lord Dunsinnan : 'MVhen Sheriff-depute of Perthshire, he found, upon 
 reflection, that he had decided a poor man's case erroneously, and as the 
 only remedy, supplied the litigant privately with money to carry the suit to 
 the supreme court, where his judgment was reversed."— iVbte bj/ Sir Walter 
 Scott to BoswelVs Life of Johnson. Quoted in '" Quarterly Recicw" vol. 46; 
 1832. p. 39. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 1 3 
 
 The name of Gournay leads us to note an epoch in the 
 mental career of Turgot; and the name of Gournay is 
 for ever associated with one still greater, that of his 
 master, Quesnay, to whom, if to any one man, rightfully 
 belongs, in spite of errors, the title of founder of Economic 
 Science. Both Quesnay and his friend, Vincent de Gournay, 
 with whom Targot became acquainted about 1754, did 
 much to influence his subsequent life, as well as to give 
 definiteness and completeness to his economic creed. 
 Gournay was the son of a merchant, and for a time was 
 himself a merchant. Like Quesnay, if by a different 
 process, he had come to the conclusion that freedom of 
 industry and of trade, and the abolition of taxes on con- 
 sumption, were the grfeat means of developing a nation's 
 wealth. From 1755 to 1759, when Gournaydied, Turgot was 
 his almost constant companion, and accompanied him for 
 several successive years in his official visits as " Intendant 
 of Commerce," to Guienne, Anjou, Maine, and Brittany. 
 
 In 1760, Turgot made a long journey in Switzerland 
 and the Alps, collecting notes on the geology, industry, 
 and commerce of the places he visited. At Lausanne he 
 was first attacked by the disease which, years after, caused 
 his still untimely death. At Geneva he visited Voltaire, 
 on the introduction of D' Alembert. Voltaire was much 
 pleased with his visitor. He wrote to D' Argental : " We 
 have here just now M. Turgot, who is worth more than 
 the whole bar. He has no need of my instructions ; be is 
 fitter to instruct me. He is a most loveable philosopher." 
 And again to D' Alembert: "I am still quite full of M. 
 Turgot. I did not know that he had written the article 
 on Existence. He is still better than his article. I have 
 scarcely ever seen a man more loveable or better informed ; 
 
14 TUEGOT. 
 
 and, what is rare among metaphysicians, his taste is most 
 /delicate and sound." 
 
 In 1761, shortly after his return to Paris, he was named 
 Intendant of the " generality" of Limoges. There he was 
 to spend the next thirteen years of his life in efforts, 
 much less successful than laborious, to improve a state of 
 things that had gone far beyond the possibility of peaceful 
 improvement or of gradual change. Voltaire, on hearing 
 of his appointment, wrote to him thus: "One of your 
 colleagues has told me that an intendant is fit only to do 
 mischief. I hope you will prove that he can do much 
 good." ^Assuredly, will was not wanting, or wisdom ; but, 
 as it has been well said, "in the heart of a poor province 
 he consumed the most valuable portion of a man's Ufe in 
 struggling with a prodigious expenditure of intelligence 
 and energy against the prejudices of the very people 
 whom he wished to aid, against the avidity of a grasping 
 government, in the hope of slightly bettering the condition 
 of poor peasants. We ought not, however, to regret this 
 long sacrifice, seemingly barren as it was. His adminis- 
 tration prepared the way for his ministry, and his ministry 
 smoothed the way for the Kevolution." 
 
 It is difficult to comprehend or to believe the terrible 
 complication of oppression and injustice that then weighed 
 upon France, especially in the rural and in the poorest 
 districts, of which Limoges was one. Taxation was at 
 once most burdensome in amount, most arbitrary and 
 iniquitous in its apportionment, and as if ingeniously con- 
 contrived to dry up the very sources from whicli it was 
 expected to flow, j ( Bois-Guillebert, in a dialogue* published 
 
 * This dialogue is quoted by Dr. J. H. Bridges in his very admirable 
 lectures on " France under Eichelieu and Colbert," pp. 92—94. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 1 5 
 
 in 1697, gives a humorous but quite truthful sketch 
 of the working of a system which remained almost 
 unchanged up to the time of the Kevolution. A 
 Norman farmer is supposed to bargain with the King 
 for a lease of some Crown lands, and the King thus 
 explains the conditions to which the lessee would be 
 subject: 
 
 " When you wish to purchase a cask of wine, you will 
 have to pay seventeen dues at seven or eight different 
 offices, which are only open at certain hours of certain 
 days. If you fail in any one of these, whatever delay it 
 may cost you, the wine and the carriage which conveys it 
 will all be' confiscated for the benefit of the officials. And 
 I may observe that their word in the matter will always 
 be taken against yours. Again, when you want to sell 
 your goods at a reasonable price, I shall put such a heavy 
 tax upon them that your customers will prefer buying 
 elsewhere. I shall derive little good from all this, 
 and you will lose the whole value of your labour ; but 
 such is our system. Often you will find it impossible to 
 sell your liquors, though a day's journey off they may be 
 selling at an extravagant price. But if you should be 
 induced by this price to take your goods there, you will 
 probably find it of little use, for there are various tolls on 
 the way which I have farmed out, the formalities of which 
 are extremely difficult to observe. The loss to you in this 
 is ten times as great as the gain to me, but I am told 
 that it is for my advantage to have things managed thus. 
 Besides this, you will have to pay me yearly a sum bearing 
 no fixed relation to your property, varying indeed from 
 one parish to another, so that it will be most desirable for 
 you to curry favour with the officials who assess this tax. 
 
l6 TUEGOT. 
 
 I should advise you not to be too regular about the pay- 
 ment of your taxes. The assessors find it thoroughly 
 answers to engage in a good deal of litigation. And, 
 indeed, if I found that they gathered in their taxes too 
 easily, I should certainly not farm the taxes to them on 
 such favourable terms. It will be desirable for you to live 
 as meanly and poorly as possible, or you will assuredly 
 be assessed at a higher rate. Hide up your savings in 
 any odd corner ; beware of investing theroT^ Avoid for the 
 same reason putting any cattle on your land to manure 
 it^) ... I may mention, also, that the business of 
 collection, which is extremely onerous, will fall on you 
 every three or four years; the tax-farmer will hold you 
 responsible for the amount, and will distrain and im- 
 prison you if it is not forthcoming. To which the farmer 
 replies: 'Sire, I presume that all you wish is to receive 
 a certain amount of money. Now, the plan you have 
 been describing seems expressly invented for the purpose 
 of ruining yourself and me at the same time. Your 
 wealth and mine can only come from the sale of the 
 produce of our land, and this plan makes it impossible 
 or difficult to grow any produce. Now, I offer to pay 
 your Majesty exactly double the sum you ask for, pro- 
 vided only that you will allow me to consume what I 
 please, to grow what I please, and to sell where and how 
 I please. The bargain will be an excellent one for me, 
 for I shall make ten times my present profits.' " It 
 needs scarcely be added that the poor farmer's offer is 
 not accepted. 
 
 ^ But taxes levied by the Government were not all, or the 
 worst. There were dues to the nobles, and dues to the 
 clergy. V M. Moreau de Jonnes, in his most valuable work, 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. ' 1 7 
 
 published a few years ago, on the EoonQmic and Social 
 State of France, gives a long list of facts, which, taken 
 together, go far to enable us to picture to ourselves the 
 awful misery to which the people were reduced, as well 
 as to understand its causes. He says : — " Up to the Revo- 
 lution, in spite of the crafty tyranny of Louis XL, the 
 sanguinary dominion of Richelieu, and the haughty sway 
 of Louis XIV., the masters of the country were feudality 
 and the priesthood, one represented by the high noblesse, 
 the other by the high clergy. The land, which was the 
 only wealth of the time, belonged to them almost entirely. 
 The labour which fertilised it belonged to them in like 
 manner under various titles. There was nothing in civil 
 life of which they had not the power to demand a portion, 
 if not the whole. Every thing, every action, every need, 
 every faculty was subjected to a tax, which the peasant, 
 the plebeian, the townsman, was bound respectfully to 
 pay, accompanying the payment with a display of servitude 
 and humiliation. No one, so far as we know, has been 
 able to tell the full number of these dues, and the amount 
 they yielded. We, who have only skimmed this vast 
 subject, have enumerated more than three hundred sorts 
 of feudal dues. In a single cartulary, that of the 
 Abbaye of St. Pierre, at Chartres, M. Guerard reckons 
 seventy of these to which the vassals were subjected." — 
 (C. 7 ; p. 388.) 
 
 M. Moreau de Jonnfes then proceeds to give a catalogue, 
 occupying several pages, first of the feudal, and then of 
 the clerical droits, or dues, appending here and there 
 details equally curious and instructive, to which, however, 
 I can here do no more than refer. Some of these dues, 
 odious as in themselves they were, were only modified and 
 
1 8 TUEGOT. 
 
 milder forms of exactions too disgusting or too terrible to 
 be recounted or almost believed.* 
 
 < While the wealth of the nohlesse and of the clergy was 
 enormous, the burden of taxation fell almost exclusively 
 on the toiling poor. " In his official report, in 1790, to 
 the Constituent Assembly, M. Talleyrand, Bishop of 
 Autun, estimated the tithes of the clergy at eighty mil- 
 lions of francs; they were worth double that sum. In 
 like manner their other revenues were understated. The 
 number of ecclesiastics he stated at seventy-five thousand ; 
 there were, at least, three times that number. Thus, in 
 defiance of the truth, which, as agent-general of the clergy, 
 he must have known, he reduced the wealth by half, and 
 the number of its possessors by two-thirds." (Id. Ibid.)* 
 Instead, however, of dwelling further on the sad array 
 of facts and figures drawn up by M. Moreau, in illustration 
 of feudal and clerical rapacity, let me adduce one striking 
 example of the social and fiscal disorders of the time. In 
 " Le Livre Rouge," or History of the ScafPold in France 
 (1 863), there is a memoir of a certain Mandrin, who, in 
 1755, was broken on the wheel for smuggling. Of him 
 Voltaire says : "Mandrin, the most magnanimous of con- 
 trabandists, might have been sent into the heart of 
 Canada to fight the savages, while his country still pos- 
 sessed Canada ;" and the author of " The Dictionary of 
 Conversation" says : " Mandrin, who needed an army of 
 
 • Thus the right of main-morte, or dead hand, abolished at the Eevolu- 
 tion, had its origin, according to the elder Mirabeau, in this manner : "The 
 seigneur was entitled, after the death of the head of a family of serfs, to 
 take possession of the most valuable article belonging to the house, and, if 
 the deceased left nothing, his right hand was out off, and with it homage 
 wa» paid to the seigneur, as with an instrument that had been devoted to 
 him, but from which nothing more could be expected." — ATemoires de 
 Bivwrol, par M. Berville. 1824. p. 141. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 1 9 
 
 six thousand men to defeat him, was certainly not an 
 ordinary man. The most of the Spanish chiefs, who, in. 
 the war of independence, maintained their country's, 
 cause, had no other antecedents than he." This Mandrin, 
 a horse jockey, untrained to arms, for two years resisted 
 the whole armed force of forty of the present departments 
 of France, including six regiments of infantry, and two of 
 dragoons, commanded by a lieutenant-general, and, after 
 a valiant fight, yielded only because all his men were on 
 horseback, and he had not a single piece of artillery. 
 He took refuge in Savoy, in the Sardinian territory. By a 
 violation of international right, he was seized, and, while 
 the Duke de Noailles was sent to Turin, to make excuses, 
 in order to evade a war, threatened by the King of Sardi- 
 nia, to whom smuggling was advantageous, Mandrin was, 
 in ten days, tried, sentenced, and executed. What is the 
 explanation of a career so strange? Not having been 
 paid for horses furnished to the Government, he threw 
 himself heartily into the contraband trade both between 
 Switzerland or Savoy and France, and between the 
 different provinces of France itself. He gathered about 
 him many outlaws like himself; but, smuggling apart, 
 he does not seem to have been at all a criminal. Like 
 our own Robin Hood, he excited the warmest sympathy 
 and admiration of the people at large; he robbed no 
 one, and was cruel to none but the agents of the customs. 
 To this day, his name is highly esteemed among the 
 peasants of Dauphiny. A feigned analysis of his last will 
 and testament was dedicated, in 1789, to the Assembly of 
 the States General ; and, as a vindicator of the right of 
 free trade against fiscal exactions, he was not long ago 
 styled " a Cobden on horseback." It is to be remembered 
 
20 TUEGOT. 
 
 that there were, at this time, custom-houses, not only at 
 the frontiers of the kingdom, but between province and 
 province, town and town. A bridge, a brook, a post 
 divided a place where salt was sold at two farthings a 
 pound, from another in which it was sold for seven or 
 even ten pence. These odious imposts, besides, could not 
 be evaded by disuse of the articles on which they were 
 levied. The law provided against this. Every citizen 
 was marked down for a certain quantity, and for that he 
 was forced to pay, whether he consumed it or not. That 
 is just as if the State, not content with selling us tobacco 
 at twenty shillings a pound, forced even those who cannot 
 bear the smell of it to pay for two or three pounds a year. 
 The existence of one such case as that of Mandrin reveals, 
 as by a single flash, a whole world of darkness. 
 
 On assuming office, Turgot's first, as it was his constant, 
 endeavour was to lighten the load of taxation, and to 
 distribute it more justly. It was inevitable that there 
 should be large arrears of taxes that could not be paid. 
 Limoges was a million of francs (£40,000) behindhand, 
 and three years were needed to raise even the annual 
 contribution. The taille was raised not only with exemp- 
 tion of the lands of nobles, but, in at least a third of the 
 districts, on the utterly untrustworthy declarations of those 
 taxed, and, in the other two-thirds, on a survey made 
 twenty-two years before, hurriedly, by one surveyor, often 
 4 stranger to the country, without discussion, without 
 appeal, without note of changes by death, or sale, or 
 sjiccession during all the years that followed. For five 
 years Turgot devoted himself to the task of obtaining an 
 E^ccurate survey and census, or cadastre. In 1762, he 
 wrote to the Controller-General : — " The work which I 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 2 1 
 
 have done is already vast, and almost beyond my strength. 
 I look forward with fear, but not wholly without hope, 
 to -what of my task remains." When offered the more 
 lucrative post of Intendant of Lyons, he declined the 
 promotion, in the hope that he might succeed in estab- 
 lishing the taille on a more equitable basis within the 
 district of Limoges. Unaided by the Government, how- 
 ever, he could not complete the work ; and the abuses 
 continued, abated only in individual cases by the Inten- 
 dant's decisions, which, of necessity, were often given 
 without due knowledge of the facts. 
 
 In the corve4, or compulsory work upon the roads, from 
 which, as usual, both clergy and nobility were exempt, a 
 beneficial change was made by the substitution of a pay-l 
 ment in money for the actual labour, and by the extension 
 pf the tax to all the peasants of the district, instead of 
 merely those in the parishes bordering on the roads. 
 
 Still more oppressive was the corve^ ior the transport of 
 military equipages, the peasants who lived near the highl 
 roads being forced to furnish lodging to the soldiers, and 
 cattle to draw the wagons. Turgot himself describes some 
 of the scenes that resulted from this exaction. " Often,''' 
 he says, '' on the road, soldiers mount upon the vehicle? 
 already overloaded; impatient of the slowness of th^ 
 oxen, they goad them with their swords, and, if the pea*- 
 sant remonstrates, he invariably gets the worst, and 
 returns soundly beaten." This, too, was replaced by a 
 money-tax, spread over a wider area ; and the whole pro^ 
 vince paid an oflScial to take entire charge of the military! 
 transport. 
 
 The raising of the militia was another grievance. Some 
 evaded the decision of the ballot, and fled into the woods ; 
 
22 TUEGOT. 
 
 while others, in arms, pursued them to compel them to 
 share the common hardship. Fighting ensued. Substitutes 
 had been forbidden by law, but in Limoges, as elsewhere, 
 breaches of the law had been connived at, and Turgot 
 established peace by venturing to authorise the practice 
 of substitution. 
 
 Turgot encouraged, and personally aided, the construc- 
 tion of roads ; he built barracks in towns for the soldiers 
 who had been before quartered on the peasants. He pro- 
 moted agriculture, and became the president of a society, 
 to the prizes given by which he contributed ; he encouraged 
 the growth of the potato, and estabhshed a veterinary 
 college. 
 
 In 1770 and 1771, a terrible famine laid waste the 
 province. "One cannot think without a shudder," he 
 writes, "of the fate which threatens the inhabitants. On 
 what can the people live who have sold their furniture, 
 their cattle, their clothes, for food ? What help can they 
 get from proprietors who have reaped no crop, who have 
 no funds to buy seed, and who last year spent more than 
 their income in support of their children and dependants ? 
 How are the proprietors themselves to live ? Large tracts 
 of country have not been sown from want of means. How 
 can the inhabitants pay taxes ? How can they avoid death 
 by hunger ? " 
 
 At such a crisis it was not enough to insist on freedom 
 of trade, which, as we have seen, did not exist even between 
 province and province. Energetic means of various kinds 
 were adopted. The parliament of Bordeaux empowered 
 him to levy a contribution on all the richer persons with- 
 out distinction, in aid of the sufferers ; temporary employ- 
 ment was provided, and, by these and other devices, the 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 23 
 
 worst of the afifliction was avoided ; but a debt of 20,000 
 livres had been contracted. After these two years of 
 scarcity, the arrears of taxation rose in 1773 to four mil- 
 lions of francs, as was natural when the government 
 claimed, in one or other form, more than half, and nearly ; 
 two-thirds, of the net revenue. Well rpight Turgot tell 
 the Controller-General, the Abb^ Terray (to whom after- 
 wards he succeeded in his office): "It is physically impossible f 
 to extort the current taxes and the enormous arrears with- 
 out — aye, even with — ruin to the taxed." No redress, 
 however, no alleviation, was to be obtained ; the claim for 
 money that could not be raised could not be abandoned. 
 
 If Turgot left his province worse than he found it, the 
 reason was the same as that which made the Eevolution 
 an inevitable necessity. The grand evil in the small scale, \ 
 as on the large, was, it has been truly said, "the existence ^'' 
 of classes iniquitously privileged, who not only threw on 
 the plebeians, that is, the people, all the burdens of the ; 
 state, but devoured the national substance by their exac- 
 tions ; and, further, the numerous trammels which crippled 
 trade and industry, loaded production with useless and ' 
 injurious costs, isolated the consumer, paralysed intelli- 
 gence by robbing it of its rightful reward, and doomed 
 labour to sterility. To restore to France its natural fer- ' 
 tility, it was indispensable to clear the soil of that parasitic 
 vegetation." * 
 
 * "The Eevolution broke out because life was dear, tlie press was gagged^ / 
 society was corrupt, the nobles were ignoble, bankruptcy impended, and the 
 government was insufficient." — Athenmum, 23rd May, 1868. p. 724. 
 
 Much simpler are the explanations sometimes offere.d : " There was such • 
 an event as the French Revolution, and that Kevolution was caused by the 
 purchase of a diamond necklace by Marie Antoinette !" — James Harvey, 
 " Uswry the Scourge of Natiom." 1870. p. 16. (See Appendix. ) 
 
24 TTJEGOT. 
 
 Turgot himself wrote to Condorcet : " I believe the 
 satisfaction resulting from study siiperior to all other 
 satisfactions. I am firmly convinced that one can thus 
 be a thousand times more useful to mankind than in any 
 subordinate ofiSce, in which one torments one's self, and 
 often without success, in order to do some little good, while 
 one is the compulsory instrument of doing great evil" 
 
 His ardent zeal in his official duties did not prevent his 
 writing, from time to time, various papers, of which we 
 shall speak hereafter, as they are among the most valuable 
 of his productions. During his term of office he occa- 
 sionally visited Paris, and it is very memorable that on 
 one of those occasions he took part in the judgment that 
 reversed the sentence of Galas, the well-known Protestant 
 martyr of Toulouse. * It is recorded, and it is very 
 characteristic, that on this subject he spoke with a 
 vehemence in him unusual. He maintained a constant 
 correspondence with the economists and philosophers at 
 Paris, especially with Dupont, Morellet, Condorcet, and 
 D'Alembert. As a relief from his graver studies, he 
 wrote satires, some of which were attributed to Voltaire ; 
 and translated into French hexameters and pentameters 
 the Fourth Book of Virgil's iEneid.t 
 
 * It is impossible to make eyen this passing reference to Galas without a 
 tribute of respect and admiration to Voltaire, who, during at least three 
 years, laboured with the most indefatigable pertinacity, until he succeeded 
 in cancelling, so far as was possible, an infamous injustice. Those who 
 have not time to read the elaborate monograph by M. Athanase Coquerel 
 {"Calas et la FamUle." 2nd edition. Paris) will find the story in Murray's 
 Handbook to the South of France, and, still better, in the Theological 
 Beview for July, 1870. The Eev. 0. Kegan Paul has there admirably 
 condensed the chief facts in this still controverted case. Coquerel makes 
 no mention of Turgot. 
 
 t On this startling innovation he was very anxious to learn Voltaire's 
 opinion, and tmder the pseudonym of the Abbe I'Aage des Bonmais, he 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 25 
 
 He was now to enter on a wider field of action, and it 
 is the less to be regretted that want of time compels us to 
 hurry over his subsequent career, because, while not more 
 illustrative of his character than the earlier and less known 
 portion of his life, it forms part of the general history of 
 France, and is more or less familiar to many, if not most. 
 In 1774, the year of the death, of Louis XV. and of 
 Quesnay, he was named Secretary of State in the De- 
 partment of the Marine. It is very significant of the 
 time that he owed his appointment not to his rare merit, 
 or to his past services, or even to his family connections, 
 but to a sort of backstairs influence. The Abb^ Cic4 
 one of his fellow-pupils at the Sorbonne, who, like many 
 others, had retained all the early admiration with which 
 he had regarded Turgot, made his name known to Madame 
 Maurepas, the wife of the prime minister, and Maurepas 
 gave him the ofSce, little reckoning, as it seems, with how 
 upright and energetic a spirit he had to deal. Turgot 
 held this ofl&ce for only five weeks, but in that short time 
 he caused the workmen at the port of Brest to be paid 
 eighteen months' arrears of wages, and, as is recorded by 
 Dupont. his secretary and friend, he formed many plans 
 for the extension of commerce and the improvement of 
 the colonies. His views on colonial questions nearly 
 resembled those now most prevalent. He wished color j^" 
 to be free and to be justly treated, no taxation being 
 imposed beyond the cost of their administration. He 
 was resolutely opposed to slavery, though not an advocate 
 for its instantaneous abolition. He would have destroyed 
 
 extracted from him a Tery eulogistic comment, without, however, in epite 
 of repeated inquiry, obtaining any judgment regarding the gravest question 
 of all, the peculiar versification. 
 
26 TUEGOT. 
 
 slavery by briDging free labour face to face with it. He 
 intended to make Bourbo n and the I sle of France abso- 
 lutely free por ts ; but before this, and other good purposes 
 could be effected, he was raised to the Controller-General- 
 ship, in the autumn of 1774. 
 
 The mental contrasts between Turgot and his prede- 
 cessor, the Abb^ Terray, were typified by the contrasts 
 between their respective physiognomies. M. de Monthyo 
 says that the stubbornness and insensibility of- Terray 
 were indicated by his gloomy and repulsive countenance, 
 while the face of Turgot was handsome and majestic, with 
 something of that dignity so remarkable in the antique 
 busts. 
 
 A few hours after his appointment, he wrote a long and 
 admirable letter to the young king, Louis XVI., then in 
 his twentieth year, recounting the projected reforms which 
 he had sketched out fifteen years before, when master of 
 requests. No bankruptcy, no increase of taxation, no 
 borrowing, — the need for any of these measures being 
 prevented by increased economy. One might fancy Coh- 
 ■ den uttering these words : " Every official in his own 
 department will maintain that every expenditure is indis- 
 pensable. The reasons given may be good, but, as what 
 is impossible, cannot be done, all those reasons must give 
 way to the absolute necessity of economy." He goes on 
 to show that the King's own generosity was a source of 
 danger. He charges him to arm himself with his very 
 goodness against his goodness ; to remember whence comes 
 the money he might distribute to his courtiers, and to 
 compare the misery of those from whom rigorous exac- 
 tions are made with the condition of those who have 
 even the strongest claim on his liberality. All privileges, 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 27 
 
 all exemptions, all bribes, he denounces. He urges greater 
 equality in the imposition and better modes of collection 
 of the taxes. One is grieved to suppress a single word of 
 this most noble letter, but we must hasten to its conclu- 
 sion : "Your Majesty will remember that, if I assume a 
 burden perhaps above my strength, it is to you personally, 
 it is to the just and good ifnan, rather than to the King, 
 that I devote myself." It is evident that he did not 
 under-estimate the difficulty of the task that lay before him^ 
 
 The short period of his ministry was marked by four 
 important measures : 1. The decree in 1774, restoring frge 
 tr ade in grain within the bounds of France ; 2. An edict \ 
 \ a 1776, in favour of free__trade^in! wine; 3. An edic t, in 
 1776 , for the suppression of corve^s ; 4. An edict, in th0 
 same year and month, for the abo lition of jurandes, or 
 gu ilds. _ ; 
 
 When Voltaire read the preamble of the first decree hfe 
 wrote to D'Alembert : " I have just read Turgot's maste:^'-^ 
 piece. Methinks I behold new heavens and a new earthl" 
 Almost incredible in number and complexity were the 
 restrictions with which even the home-trade in com wSis 
 obstructed. It is obvious that Yorkshire is not more 
 affected (if the quantity be the same) by the importation 
 of corn from America than by that of corn from Norfolk ; 
 and in this spirit it was that the restrictive acts were con- 
 ceived. Each province was expected to gain by the ex- 
 clusion, more or less complete, of the produce of every 
 other. Turgot stood almost alone in his conviction that>' 
 such restrictions, however good in purpose, could do only 
 evil to all parties concerned, and some local sc arci ty, which 
 led to clamour against the removal of grain, swelled the' 
 tide of his unpopularity. 
 
28 TUEGOT. 
 
 As regards the corve^, it is noteworthy that, in substitut- 
 ing a tax equitably imposed, Turgot felt himself compelled 
 to exempt the clergy, in order, as he said, that he might 
 not have two quarrels on hand at once. 
 
 In like manner, in the abolition of the jurandes, certain 
 temporary and partial exceptions were made regarding 
 pharmacy, goldsmith work, printing and bookselling, occu- 
 pations over which it was believed that the state should 
 exercise peculiar surveillance, or maintain certain restric- 
 tions, of course, in the interest of the public. 
 
 All these, and other measures, Turgot sought not merely 
 to impose by decree, but to justify, by long and able exposi- 
 tion of the reasons in their favour. It is impossible here 
 even to enumerate the many useful reforms that he had 
 in view, the many useful enterprises that he endeavoured 
 to promote. He introduced something like order into 
 the finances ; he caused creditors of long standing to be 
 paid. What is especially to be noted, he refused to accept 
 a gift called pot de vin (Anglice a bribe\ of 50,000 livres, 
 which the farmers-general made annually to the Controller- 
 General, and forbade every such present for the future. 
 Interest fell from 5| in 1774 to 4 per cent, and his nego- 
 tiations for a loan from Holland of 60 millions of francs at 
 5 per cent were broken off only by his retirement from office. 
 
 What he accomplished in whole or in part was not equal 
 in importance to what he planned for the future — a future 
 not to him reserved. But of all this, not excepting his 
 great projects of a political constitution, and of a truly 
 national system of education, I cannot now speak. Much 
 of what Turgot strove or hoped to effect in peace and order 
 was in part accomplished as the result of the Revolution, 
 which was now approaching with rapid strides. 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 29 
 
 Everything, within and without, was against him. Of 
 the twenty months that his ministry lasted, seven were 
 spent in severe pain from gout, which endangered his 
 life, and rendered work impossible. A terrible epidemic* 
 among the cattle ravaged the South of France. A bad 
 harvest called into action popular prejudice and popular 
 violence against the decree of September 1774, pro- 
 claiming the freedom of trade in grain. Encouraged, it 
 is not improbable, by the intrigues of Turgot's political 
 rivals, brigand troops appeared not only in the provinces 
 but in Paris itself, forcing sales below the market price, 
 seizing and then destroying grain, burning bams and 
 farm-houses, sinking boats laden with grain, or obstruct- 
 ing their passage to the capital. A mob marched upon 
 Versailles — the precursor of one still more formidable at 
 no great distance of time — and the poor young king, with 
 the best intentions, no doubt, but as ignorant of the laws 
 of trade as most collegians of his years are even at this 
 day, ordered the price of bread to be fixed at two sous 
 the pound. Cheapness was to be proportioned to 
 scarcity and not to abundance ! The miaister, Maurepas, 
 who disliked and dreaded Turgot, took no measures re- 
 pressive or preventive, and sought in the amusement 
 of the opera a relief, which he little needed, from the cares 
 of state. Turgot,' however, was equal to the occasion, and 
 put down the disorder with the strong hand. But all, as 
 I have said, was against him. The nobility, thd clergy, 
 the court, the moneyed interest, the monopolists, and the 
 privileged of every kidd, had too good reasons for hating 
 
 * I am quite aware of the etymological objection to the application of 
 this word to cattle ; but the less specific French word "epizootic" is scarcely 
 as yet naturahaed in England. 
 
30 TUKGOT. 
 
 him and his measures, while among the people whose good 
 he sought throughout there was no intelligence on which 
 he could rely for aid. With the exception of Malesherbes, 
 his staunch friend, who retired in despair, all the ministryk- 
 were hostile, and Maurepas saw that the time had come 
 for driving him from office. The parliament refused to 
 sustain the decrees in the direction of freedom of industry 
 and trade, and appealed to the King. A war of pamphlets 
 broke out, but the battle was not to the strong in argu- 
 ment. Morellet, Condorcet, and even Voltaire, wrote and 
 spoke in vain. The King himself, Turgot's sole remaining 
 stay, began to fail him. He trusted and loved Turgot, it 
 cannot be doubted ; and as little can it be doubted that 
 he had the national welfare deeply at heart. When he 
 made him controller-general, he had been told, in words 
 and in a spirit not yet out of date, that Turgot was an 
 infidel. " What matter," he replied, " if he is an honest 
 man." He had, on trying occasions, told Turgot, "Fear 
 nothing. You shall always have my support." At a later 
 time, he said: "There are only M. Turgot and myself 
 who love the people." In the same year, 1776, Condorcet 
 wrote to Voltaire : " The King has shown, as regards the 
 edict, a steady industry, a spirit of justice, a desire for his 
 people's good, and a courage, which may well console those 
 interested in the public welfare." But to the distrust 
 inspired on public grounds was added the effect of an 
 1 infamous intrigue. Forged letters were sent from Paris 
 to Vienna, and there posted to Turgot, as if from an 
 intimate friend; replies, too, were forged, and the post- 
 master, D'Ogni, intercepted all, and forwarded them to 
 the King. Dupont de Nemours vouches for this story, 
 which he says he derived from the Marquis d' Angiviller, 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 3 I 
 
 whom the King made his confidant. These letters con- 
 tained offensive expressions against not only the Ministers, 
 but the Queen and the King himself. Maurepas, to whom i 
 they were shown, was not likely to suggest doubts of their/ 
 genuineness. The King, instead of laying them beford 
 Turgot, treated him with increasing coldness. Turgot, firra 
 in his consciousness of integrity, resented this, and wroto 
 stern letters to the King, in one of these reminding him 
 of Charles I. of England and Charles IX. of France. Thip 
 the King returned in a sealed envelope, inscribed, "Lettel 
 from M. Turgot." 
 
 Turgot would accept no hint to resign. He would not 
 retire ; he preferred to be dismissed. One day, as he was 
 reading some papers to the King, his Majesty asked "Will 
 it soon be finished T " Yes, sire," said Turgot. " So 
 much the better," said the King. And so they parted, 
 never again to meet ! A truly memorable parting, of which 
 the King, in after years, had doubtless bitter thoughts. 
 On the 12th of May, 1776, Turgot received his dismissal. 
 It was handed to him as he was drawing up an edict. 
 He laid down his pen, saying : " My successor will finish 
 it." Well has it been remarked that " the true successor 
 of Turgot, that was to resume and carry on his work, not 
 with the precarious help of a vacillating King, but with 
 the backing of an insurgent nation, was the great Con- 
 stituent Assembly." 
 
 ' Very touching are the words which Turgot addressed to 
 the King : " I have done what I believed to be my duty, 
 by showing you, with a frankness unreserved and unex- 
 ampled, the difficulties of my position, and what I thought 
 of yours. If I had not done so, I would have held myself 
 guilty towards you. You, doubtless, have judged other- 
 
32 TUEGOT. 
 
 wise, since you have withdrawn your confidence from me ; 
 but, even if I should have been in error, you cannot but, 
 do justice to the feeling that has actuated me. My whole 
 desire is that you may always be able to believe that I 
 was in error, and that the dangers which I showed you 
 were chimeras. I wish that time may not justify my 
 forebodings, and that your reign may be as happy and as 
 tranquil, both for you and for your people, as they hoped 
 it would be, in accordance with your principles of justice 
 and beneficence." 
 
 Great was the rejoicing of both high and low at the 
 
 f news of Turgot's fall. Voltaire, however, whose testimony 
 outweighs '' a theatre of others," wrote to D'Alembert : 
 "Ah! what do I hear? France would have been too 
 happy. What will become of us ? I am struck to the 
 earth. I see only death before me since M. Turgot is 
 dismissed. This thunder-stroke has fallen on my brain 
 and on my heart." Soon after he addressed to Turgot his 
 "Epistle to a Man," and, on occasion of his triumphal 
 reception in Paris, in 1778, he openly embraced Turgot, 
 
 k and said " Suffer me to kiss the hand that has signed the 
 
 1 redemption of the people." 
 
 Turgot quietly resumed his studies and his corre- 
 spondence with eminent men. Science and literature 
 divided his time and thoughts. The thermometer and 
 the Fourth Book of the ^Eneid combined to relieve the 
 tediousness of his sleepless and painful nights. Much 
 of what he wrote is lost, not excepting, alas ! his corre- 
 spondence with Adam Smith, whose great work he lived 
 long enough to read and to criticise. It does not ap- 
 pear, however, to have modified in any important respect 
 his economic creed, any more than it affected that of 
 
HIS LIFE AJ^TD TIMES. 33 
 
 Morellet, who translated it, or of Dupont de Nemours, 
 who discussed it with Jean Baptiste Say. Turgot was 
 the author of the Latin line, for ever famous, on 
 Franklin's portrait : 
 
 Bripuit coelo fulmen, soeptrumque tyrannis. 
 He wrested the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants. 
 
 One indication of his thoughtful and wise benevolence 
 I am sure you will thank me for quoting. When the war 
 broke out between France and England, after the declara- 
 tion of American independence, M. Sartine, the Minister 
 of Marine, received, from a hand to him unknown, a 
 note proposing that the ship of Captain Cook, then on a 
 scientific expedition, should be respected by the French 
 navy. To this suggestion the Government assented. After 
 Turgot's death the original was found among his papers. 
 It runs thus : — " Captain Cook, one of the most skilful 
 officers of the English Royal Navy, after having twice 
 circumnavigated the globe, after having, in the course of 
 those two voyages, been the first to give to Europe an 
 exact knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere, greatly 
 improved navigation, enriched geography and natural 
 history with a multitude of useful discoveries, has under- 
 taken a third voyage, in order to survey and to describe 
 the coasts, the islands, and the seas at the north of 
 Japan and of California. He sailed from Plymouth in 
 July, 1776, in the ship 'Resolution,' the same that he 
 commanded in his second voyage. This vessel of four 
 to five hundred tons, and with a crew of little more 
 than a hundred men, is not fitted for warlike opera- 
 tions : it was originally built as a collier. Captain 
 Cook is probably now on his way back to Europe. His 
 
 c 
 
34 TURGOT. 
 
 expedition having for its sole object the extension of 
 human knowledge, interesting, consequently, every nation, 
 it is worthy of the magnanimity of the King not to allow 
 its success to be thwarted by the hazards of war. In the 
 case of rupture between the two crowns, it is proposed 
 that His Majesty should order all the officers of his navy, 
 or privateers, who may encounter Captain Cook, to abstain 
 from all hostility towards him or his vessel, to allow him 
 freely to continue his voyage, and to treat him in all 
 respects as it is customary to treat' the officers and the 
 ships of neutral and friendly nations, — informing him of 
 this mslrk of the King's esteem for his person, and 
 warning him that His Majesty expects him, on his 
 part, to abstain from any hostile act. It seems expedi- 
 ent to report this order to the ministers of his Britannic 
 Majesty." 
 
 To my mind, and, I doubt not, to yours, there is some- 
 thing truly noble and deeply affecting in this spectacle of 
 a great statesman, though disgraced and worn by disease, 
 turning his thoughts, in mingled wisdom and kindliness, 
 to the promotion by the same act of human knowledge 
 and international courtesy. 
 
 Here let us leave Turgot ! On the 21st of'Marcb, 1781, 
 unmarried, in his 54!th year, three years after Voltaire and 
 Rousseau, he died calmly and firmly as he had lived. A 
 few hours before his death, he had discussed with his 
 friends some new experiments in electricity. 
 
 Of him, as of some others, it may be said that he lived 
 long enough for fame, such as good men value, but not 
 long enough for his country or for the world. If any 
 think that his life, as regards its great objects, was a 
 failure, let them pause a moment, and consider what it is 
 
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 35 
 
 really to fail ; what it is really to succeed* Within what 
 lapse of time shall we pronounce the sentence of failure- 
 or of success? Nothing evil can permanently prevail, 
 nothing good is capable of permanent failure. Individual 
 human success, compared with man's capacities and desires, 
 is ever partial and chequered. Individual action is but a 
 link in a long, long chain, stretching far back into the 
 past, and farther into the future. To himself it was pro- 
 bably a blessing that he lived not to see the- Revolution 
 which he vainly strove to prevent by anticipating what of 
 its work was beneficent, and which, had he lived, he might 
 still have been powerless to arrest. But he indicated the 
 course to be taken to render force either needless or bene- 
 ficial. As it has been well said : " Justice and reason 
 finally triumphed eleven years later with the Revolution, 
 as far as circumstances permitted. Turgot wished the 
 triumph to be pure and peaceful, through the power of a 
 royal legislator. There was the dream; but it was the 
 dream of a great soul." 
 
 So much of Turgot's life. In the next lecture I shall 
 speak of his writings. 
 
 * Many years ago, in the " Salon" at Paris, I saw what struck me as 
 an instructive comment on vulgar notions of success and failure. Side by 
 side, almost touching each other, stood two marble busts ; one was Jesus 
 Christ crowned with thorns, the other was Louis Napoleon crowned with 
 laurels ! The juxtaposition is infinitely suggestive. 
 
Lecture II. 
 
 TURGOT'S WEITINGS AND OPINIONS. 
 
 Op Turgot's life, whicli in the former lecture we reviewed, 
 the leading incidents may be very briefly recapitulated. 
 Born in 1727, — educated, as the phrase is, first at the 
 college of Louis le Grand, then at the college of Plessis, 
 then at the Sorbonne, — abandoning the clerical for the 
 legal profession, with a view to employment in the civic 
 administration, — in 1753 nominated Master of Requests; 
 in 1761 appointed Intendant of the "generality'' of Limo- 
 ges — holding that office for thirteen years; in 1774 
 appointed Secretary of State for the Department of the 
 Marine; and, five weeks later, Controller-General, — 
 dismissed after twenty months of service, — retiring into 
 private life, — he died in 1781, aged 54 years, about three 
 years after the birth of our own Lord Brougham, who till 
 very lately survived to link our time to that pre-revolu- 
 tionary period now seemingly so distant. 
 
 The casual notice in the former lecture of Turgot's 
 various writings must have sufficed to show that within 
 the time at our disposal it is impossible to review them 
 seriatim,, or even fitly to discuss them when arranged in 
 groups according to the subjects of which, they treat. 
 Physical Science — including Chemistry, Geology, Geo- 
 graphy, Astronomy ; Metaphysics, Philology, Theology ; 
 Economics — ;including Taxation and Finance ; Politics 
 and general Literature, — all occupied by turn, and alqiost 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 37 
 
 simultaneously, his incessantly active mind. Had he been 
 solely and professedly an author, his writings would in 
 mere extent have done honour to his industry^^ To him, 
 as to Sir Wilham Jones, change of occupation was the 
 only rest needed or desired. Choice, then, not only of 
 works, but of subjects, is necessary, and I think it best 
 to direct your attention chiefly to those subjects which 
 are most closely connected with the great business of 
 his life as statesman and administrator. In this way, 
 I am aware, it is inevitable that Turgot should suffer 
 in our estimate of him as a comprehensive and sys- 
 tematic thinker. By him, more than by most even 
 eminent men, all subjects were regarded from the same 
 points of view, and were linked together by common 
 principles ; while in few men indeed could we find a more 
 constant blending of the moral element with the intel- 
 lectual. Those of his writings, however, which bear on 
 human conduct, on the relations of individuals to each 
 other, of individuals to the state, of the state to individuals, 
 of rights to duties, of material progress to moral condi- 
 tion, — best exemplify (as far as they go) this mental 
 harmony and completeness. At the same time, they 
 serve better than any others to illustrate at once the early 
 maturity of his intelligence, the essential consistency of 
 his convictions throughout his life, and the sagacity and 
 firmness with which he held fast by principles still imper- 
 fectly recognised among even the most forward nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 In these writings there is very much that was at the 
 time new, and that is true for all time ; much that subse- 
 quent experience and inquiry and discussion have only 
 confirmed, — so that, at times, one knows not whether 
 
38 TURGOT. 
 
 most to admire the originality of his doctrine, and its 
 soundness, especially when compared with notions then 
 almost everywhere prevailing, or to wonder at the slow- 
 ness with which truths^ so clearly and eloquently taught 
 have made their way to popular acceptance since his time. 
 But his economic and political writings do something 
 more than illustrate the continual co-operation of the moral 
 and intellectual faculties in his finely-balanced nature. 
 Two classes of thinkers in political and social philosophy 
 may here be hastily distinguished, without attempting to 
 assign the higher place to either. The one sets out with 
 the notion of justice, whencesoever derived, and howsoever 
 reached, intuitively or otherwise, and, having determined 
 what is just, concludes that the interests, whether of indi- 
 viduals or of nations, must be in conformity with that, 
 and with nothing other or less. The other sets out with 
 an inquiry into the operation of various courses of conduct 
 or policy on the general welfare, and having determined 
 which course promotes, and which obstructs, the general 
 welfare, pronounces the former right and the latter wrong. 
 Both schools may, and commonly, perhaps, do agree in 
 approving and in disapproving the same sets of things, 
 and by both the just and the widely expedient are held 
 to be identical. The difference is less in the goal than 
 in the starting-point. To the former the just is the 
 expedient ; to the latter, the expedient is the just. Of 
 the latter school, Bentham may be taken as the type ; of 
 the former, Turgot is a representative. We shall see 
 throughout that his first question commonly, if not always, 
 is — What is just, what is right? and that then only does 
 he investigate its practical result. It is not for us here 
 to balance the respective merits of the utilitarian ^.nd 
 
WEITIKGS AND OPINIONS. 39 
 
 what may be called the intuitive, or a priori schools of 
 morals. It is of more importance that we should repeat 
 that this great theoretical difference does not seem to 
 affect the practical result. It would be a libel to charge 
 the utilitarian with indifference to justice; and an equal 
 libel to charge the a priori moralist with indifference to 
 the public weal. Of the same grand unity one phase 
 more attracts one set of natures ; the other phase more 
 attracts another. Turgot says, at the end of his Memoir 
 on " Mines and Quarries" : — " It may confidently be pre- 
 dicted, in any matter whatsoever, that the profound study 
 of the true principles of legislation, and that of the public 
 interest rightly understood, will lead precisely to the same 
 result." Bentham would have said that the profound 
 study of the public interest rightly understood will lead, 
 as nothing else can, to the discovery of the true principles 
 of legislation. 
 
 In like manner, Turgot always^argues .frfijn Jhe„indi; 
 vidual to the _comnumHyor_the^ state, and not from__the 
 state or_Jhe_community_tg._tiig. individual. No seeming 
 gain, or advantage to the community can, in his view, 
 compensate for the slightest injustice to the individual. 
 How far this doctrine differs from that of the great philo- 
 sophers, as well as from the practice, of antiquity, I need 
 not say. In ancient practice, however, the evil results of 
 making the interest of the community paramount over 
 that of the individual were intensified by a false estimate 
 of the interest of the community itself On this side 
 error is much more easy, and likely, than on the other, for 
 what, it may well be asked, can the interests of the com- 
 munity be but those of — I do not say an individual, but — 
 the individual ? 
 
40 TUEGOT. 
 
 It is time, however, that I should allow Turgot to be 
 beard in his own person, and in bis own words, so far as I 
 can render them into a language not his own. Most truly 
 does M'. Daire remark : " The thousand indications of that 
 profound morality which inspired all bis acts,- and the 
 secret of that active philanthropy which never lost its way 
 in the fields of the ideal, must be sought in the original 
 documents themselves, because nowhere does the aspect of 
 this good man seem more striking than in his own writings.'' 
 
 In various parts of bis works, Turgot protests eloquently 
 against the notion that self-interest is the spring of all 
 human actions, and nowhere more eloquently than in bis 
 letters to Gondorcet upon Helvetius, whose teaching 
 exercised no small influence at that time. Of the well- 
 known work " Sur I'Esprit," he says : — " In no place does 
 be show a profound knowledge of the human heart ; no- 
 where does be analyse the true needs of man ; nowhere 
 does be seem to suspect that man is under a necessity to 
 love. One who bad ever felt this need would not have 
 said that self-interest is the only principle that makes 
 men act. He would have understood that, in the sense 
 in which this proposition is true, it is a puerility, or a 
 metaphysical abstraction, from which no practical conse- 
 quence can be drawn, since it is, in fact, equivalent to 
 saying that man desires only what be desires." 
 
 In bis earlier essay, on the benefits which Christianity 
 has conferred on mankind, he says further : — " Man finds 
 iu his heart that tenderness towards all men which Provi- 
 dence has planted there, but of which the intensity, pro- 
 portioned to their mutual needs, stronger in nearness, 
 seems to vanish as it spreads over a vaster circumference. 
 Near to us, men have more need of us, and our heart 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 4 1 
 
 tends more swiftly towards them. Beyond the reach of 
 our aid — what need have they of our tenderness ? They 
 escape from our affection and our benefits only by escaping 
 from our sight. Hence that vivacity of feeling graduated 
 according to the distance of objects from us ; hence the 
 love of our relatives and our friends so lively and so 
 tender ; that of our country, and of the state that protects 
 us, a love, perhaps, more active than keen ; lastly, that 
 more extended love of humanity which seems feebler, but 
 of which all the scattered forces unite to subdue our souls 
 at the sight of one who suffers: — degrees all just though 
 unequal, all weighed in the equitable balance of the 
 goodness of God." 
 
 " It is false," be writes to Condorcet, " that the moral 
 sentiments do not influence men's judgments, men's 
 actions, men's affections. Tbe proof is that men need an 
 effort to overcome their sentiment, when it is opposed to 
 their interest. The proof is that they feel remorse. The 
 proof is that the very interest which they pursue at the 
 cost of honesty is often founded on a sentiment in itself 
 honest and only ill-regulated. The proof is that they are 
 moved by romances and by tragedies, and that a romance 
 in which the hero should act in conformity with the prin- 
 ciples of Helvetius would displease them greatly."* 
 
 * It is a grievous necessity to distinguisli here between two things which 
 only the greatest confusion or the greatest perversity of mind could ever 
 have confounded, viz., the selfish system thus assailed, and the utilitarian, 
 or, in the language of Comte, the altruistic system of morals. The pursuit 
 of "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" cannot, surely, be called 
 selfish, — unless, indeed, the greatest number be held to be number one. 
 These two theories Miss Cobbe, in her eloquent treatise on "Intuitive 
 Morals," is careful to distinguish, ttfough she is opposed to both. Adopting 
 a term used by Kant, she calls the former Private, and the latter Public, 
 Eudaimonism.. 
 
42 TURGOT. 
 
 But while he thus pleads for the recognition of what are 
 called the unselfish sentiments, of sympathy and benevo- 
 lence, as powerful springs of human action, he does not 
 regard them as above the need of guidance, and even 
 restraint, by that which he holds to be the true law of 
 conduct — Justice. Justice is the rule of these virtues, 
 as of all else. " No virtue," he says, " in whatever sense 
 we take the word, can dispense with justice ; and I no 
 more value those who do great deeds, at the expense of 
 justice than I do poets who fancy that they can produce 
 great beauties by imagination without being true to 
 nature.* What, then, is the foundation, what, then, is the 
 essence of justice ? On this point I cannot see, as has 
 been attempted to show, that Turgot's view ever materially 
 changed. To Condorcet he writes: — "I do not believe 
 that morality in itself can ever be local. Its principles 
 are everywhere founded on the nature of man and on his 
 relations with his fellows, which do not vary except in 
 very extraordinary circumstances. But the judgment to 
 be pronounced on the actions of individuals is a problem 
 much more complicated, and infinitely variable, taking 
 into account local opinions and the prejudices of education. 
 In morals, I am a great enemy to indifference, and a great 
 friend to indulgence, of which I have often as great need 
 as any other man. It is, I believe, from confounding these 
 two so different points of view, in judging of the morality 
 of actions, that some fall into excessive rigour in testing 
 individual actions according to general ideas of morality, 
 without regard to circumstances which excuse the indi- 
 vidual ; and that others regard all actions as indifferent, 
 
 *The antithesis in the original of justice and justesse it is not easy in 
 English to render closely. Justness fails to express the meaning. 
 
WEITINGS AND OPINIONS. 43 
 
 and see in them only physical facts, because there are 
 few that may not admit excuse in some given circum- 
 stances." I do not see that this basing of morality, 
 equity, justice, on " the nature of man and on his relations 
 with his fellows,'' is at all at variance with his earlier 
 writings, in which he declares that equity is "the very 
 order of the plans of Providence for the happiness of all 
 individual men." Surely, if a Providence exists, the 
 nature of man and his relations with his fellows must be 
 in conformity therewith. 
 
 Condorcet indeed affirms that Turgot held the truths of 
 morals to be independent of all speculative opinions — 
 that is, I suppose in Theology (to which, by the way, 
 some of our scientific friends speak as if all speculation 
 were confined). This is a great truth ; it would be a 
 blessing if it were generally understood, and more con- 
 stantly kept in view. It would be well if we learned the 
 nature of man and of society from the study of the facts 
 around us, and within ns, instead of forcing the facts into 
 a cramped accordance with some preconceived theological 
 system. But in the recognition of human nature, so 
 studied, as of divine creation, and of the social order, so 
 studied, as of divine appointment, I see no inconsistency, 
 no contradiction. It is probable enough that Turgot, as 
 his experience of affairs increased, and as the impressions 
 of his early theological training grew faint, was less dis- 
 posed in later life to give prominence to the theological 
 aspect of these questions, and to argue from a 'priori 
 assumptions of Providential design ; but I find no reason 
 to believe that his convictions ever faltered as to the 
 accordance of the social ideal with the divine order. 
 
 Justice, then, it is the business of the State to maintain 
 
44 TUEGOT. 
 
 between man and man. But what is justice between 
 man and man if it be not that every man be free to 
 pursue his own interest, so long and so far as he shall not 
 infringe the rights of others in a similar pursuit ? In his 
 second letter on Tol'eration (1754), he says : — " The prin- 
 ciple that nothing can restrict the rights of society over 
 the individual but the greater good of society, appears to 
 me false and dangerous. Every man is born free ; that 
 freedom can never rightly be restrained unless it de- 
 generate into license, that is to say, unless it cease to be 
 freedom by becoming usurpation. Liberties, like pro- 
 perties, are bounded by each other. The liberty to injure 
 has never existed in the face of conscience. The law 
 ought to forbid it because conscience does not permit it. 
 The liberty to act without doing injury to others cannot, 
 on the contrary, be restrained by any but tyrannical laws. 
 Governments are far too much accustomed always to 
 sacrifice the well-being of individuals to pretended rights 
 'of society. It is forgotten that society exists for indi- 
 viduals — that it is instituted only to protect the rights of 
 all, by securing the accomplishment of all mutual duties." 
 
 In this passage, exception may fairly be taken to one 
 short sentence, that in which he says : "The law ought to 
 forbid it because conscience does not periiiit it." This is 
 to make the domain of state-law co-extensive with that 
 of conscience, the less with the greater, the lower with 
 the higher, — a position which Turgot himself, in the very 
 same letter, clearly disclaims. He says : "To affirm that 
 all offences are cases of conscience, including those in 
 which violence injures civil society, is true, but what 
 then ? God could punish Cartouche ; but was he broken 
 on the wheel because he had offended God ? All that 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 45 
 
 injures society is subject to the tribunal of conscience ; 
 but what offends conscience is punishable only because it 
 violates the public order." 
 
 Law, then, is authoritative only wheii based upon 
 justice, whether it be made by one or by many. " Laws," 
 he says, as quoted by Condorcet, "cannot be legitimate if 
 they do not fulfil two conditions : the first, of proceeding 
 from a power legitimately instituted ; the second, of not 
 violating in any respect the natural rights which they 
 ought to protect. . . These two conditions have often 
 been confounded ; not so much because we see bad laws 
 spring up in absolute governments (for bad laws exist in 
 all governments), but because unjust laws, when they 
 proceed from the authority of one man, appear unjust 
 in the eyes of the multitude, while the acts of injustice 
 committed by a people appear such only to the wise. 
 Besides, in the one case, the people seem sacrificed to a 
 few individuals ; in the other, a few individuals seem 
 sacrificed to the general welfare, or the general existence." 
 
 In the same spirit, in 1778^ he wrote to IQ r. Price : 
 " How happens it that you are almost the first among 
 your literary men who has shown the falsity of the 
 notion, hackneyed .by almost all republican writers, that 
 liberty consists in being subject to laws only, as if a man 
 oppressed by an unjust law were free ? This would not 
 be true even were it supposed that all the laws are the 
 work of the assembled nation ; for, assuredly, the indi- 
 vidual has also his rights, which the nation can take 
 from him only by an illegitimate use of the public force." 
 
 Is it treasonable to hint that, even in these our days, 
 when the omnipotence, if not the infallibility, of majorities 
 is so loudly proclaimed, such words have in them a useful 
 
46 TUEGOT. 
 
 warning ? Of more than Roman councils, may it not be per- 
 tinently asked — how many fallibles make up the infallible ? 
 The state, then, existing for the protection of individual 
 rights, the question arises — what are those rights ? Among 
 them a first rank must be assigned to the riglit of labour, — 
 " le droit du travail" which is a very different thing from 
 the droit au travail, the right to labour, so fiercely con- 
 tended for in the French assembly of 1848. The right to 
 be free to labour is one thing ; the right to be supplied by 
 others with materials on which, and instruments with 
 which, to labour, is quite another thing. The difference 
 is not greater than between freedom to eat and the right 
 to be fed. The restrictions on this freedom, this right, 
 which now come from below, or beside, in those days 
 came mostly from above. But the pretext is ever the 
 same, — the general welfare ; A being supposed to gain by 
 the tying of B's hands, B by the tying of A's, so that both 
 gain, and so on, all through the alphabet. No individual 
 right seemed to Turgot more sacred than this — freedom 
 to work, none more directly derived from the wants on 
 the one hand, and the powers on the other, with which 
 humanity has been constituted. In the preamble to the 
 decree of February, 1776, abolishing _/itr'a7ides, or guilds, 
 the question is argued with great ability. It is the King 
 who is made thus to speak : " This illusion has been car- 
 ried so far by some as to maintain that the right of labour 
 was a royal right, which the prince could sell, and which 
 his subjects must buy. We hasten to repudiate this 
 position. God, by creating man with needs, by rendering 
 labour necessary for his maintenance, has made the right 
 of labour the property of every man ; and this property is 
 the first, the most sacred, the most imprescriptible of all. 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 47 
 
 "We regard it as one of the first duties of our justice, 
 and as one of the acts most worthy of our beneficence, to 
 free our subjects from all invasions of this inalienable 
 right of humanity. We purpose, accordingly, to abolish 
 those arbitrary institutions which forbid the indigent to 
 live by his labour ; which repulse a sex whose weakness 
 has greater needs and less resources, and which seem by 
 condemning it to inevitable suffering, to league with 
 misery and profligacy; which extinguish emulation and 
 industry, and render useless the talents of those whom 
 circumstances exclude from the close body of a craft- 
 union ; which deprive the State and the Arts of all the 
 intelligence which strangers might introduce ; which 
 retard the progress of those arts by the manifold difii- 
 culties put in the way of inventors, \9ith whom different 
 crafts dispute the right of working discoveries which they 
 have not made ; which, by the vast expenses that artisans 
 are obliged to incur, in order to acquire permission to 
 labour ; by the endless lawsuits among all these crafts on 
 account of these several exclusive privileges, load industry 
 with an enormous impost, burdensome to subjects, unpro- 
 ductive to the State ; which, finally, by the facility which 
 they afford to the members of the crafts to league to- 
 gether, become an instrument of monopoly, and favour 
 schemes whose object is to raise beyond its natural level 
 the cost of the articles most needful for the subsistence of 
 the people. 
 
 " In this act of justice we shall not be arrested by the 
 fear that a multitude of artisans will use the freedom 
 restored to all, so as to practise crafts of which they are 
 ignorant, and that the public will be inundated with 
 articles badly made. Liberty does not produce these evil 
 
48 TUEGOT. 
 
 results in places where it has beea long established. The 
 workmen in the suburbs and in other places do not work 
 less skilfully than those in the heart of Paris. Every one 
 knows, besides, how illusory is the working of jurandes 
 as regards the perfection of work ; and that, all the mem- 
 bers of corporations being led bj esprit de corps to 
 support each other, an individual who complains is always 
 worsted, and is wearied out by seeking from court to court 
 a justice more costly than his original grievance. Those 
 who know the course of trade know also that every im- 
 portant enterprise of traflSc or of industry needs the 
 co-operation of two sets of men, — capitalists, who advance 
 the materials and the tools needful in each case, and 
 workmen, who labour for stipulated wages. Such is the 
 true origin of the distinction between contractors (entre- 
 preneurs), or employers, and workmen (or cornpagnons), 
 which is founded on the nature of things, and does not 
 depend on the arbitrary institution of guilds. Certainly 
 those who employ their capital in a business have the 
 greatest interest in confiding their materials to good work- 
 men only ; and we need not fear that they will take bad 
 workmen at hazard, who would spoil their goods, and 
 alienate their customers. It must be assumed also that 
 capitalists will not risk their means in a craft which they 
 do not know well enough to be able to choose good work- 
 men, and to overlook their work. We shall not fear, 
 then, that the suppression of apprenticeships, of journey- 
 manships (compagnonnages)* and of 'master-pieces' will 
 expose the public to be badly served. 
 
 * The reader may be here referred to George Sand's very interesting 
 work, " Le Compagnon du Tour de France" especially the preface. 
 
WEITINGS AND OPINIONS. 49 
 
 " We shall not fear that a sudden rush of new workmen 
 will ruin the old, and give a dangerous shock to trade. 
 
 "In the places in which commerce is most free, the 
 number of traders and of workmen of- every kind is always 
 limited by, and necessarily proportioned to, the demand, 
 that is, to consumption. It will not go beyond that pro- 
 portion in the places where liberty shall be restored. No 
 new capitalist would risk the loss of his means in a doubtful 
 enterprise, in which he would have to fear the competition 
 of all the employers already established, with the ad- 
 vantages of organisation and of a set of customers already 
 provided. The masters who now compose the corpora- 
 tions, while they lose the exclusive privilege which they 
 have in selling, will gain in buying by the suppression of 
 the exclusive privileges of all other crafts. The artisans 
 will gain from having no longer to depend in the 
 making of their products, on the masters of many other 
 crafts, each of whom claimed the privilege of supplying 
 some indispensable portion. Merchants will gain by being 
 able to sell all sorts of goods accessory to their chief com- 
 merce. All will gain, especially in being no longer subject 
 to the chiefs and oflScers of their craft, in having no more 
 to pay the freqiient dues of visit, in being freed from a 
 host of contributions for useless or mischievous expenses, 
 costs of ceremonies, of banquets, of assemblies, of law- 
 suits, as frivolous in their object as ruinous from their 
 number. 
 
 " While suppressing these guilds, for the general benefit 
 of our subjects, we owe it to those of their legitimate 
 creditors who have contracted with them on the faith of 
 their authorised existence to provide for the security of 
 their claims." 
 
50 TURGOT. 
 
 Such, is the most important portion of a document of 
 which, long though this extract is, I would fain cite the 
 whole. It shows strongly that Turgot was no believer in 
 the gospel of tied hands. Though there is, so far, equality 
 between two men both handcuffed, as there is between 
 two men with hands free, he saw clearly that the equality 
 is on a lower level of productive power, with the result 
 of common, and more than two-fold loss. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to say that of this right of 
 labour for one's own support, he held slavery to be the 
 most cruel, wicked, and mischievous violation — serfdom 
 to be next in order, and after that excessive and unjust 
 taxation. 
 
 The right of labour being granted, its corollary is the 
 right of property, which is the product of labour, mediately 
 or immediately. " Property," and here I quote from Con- 
 dorcet, " is nothing more than the free disposal of what 
 we possess legitimately. In a state of nature, whatever 
 we enjoy without having in any way robbed another of it, 
 constitutes this property. In a state of society,* it becomes 
 that which we have received from our family, or have 
 acquired by our labour, or have obtained by exchange. 
 Laws regulate the manner of this right; 'but they do not 
 create the right itself The free disposal of property 
 includes the power of selling, of giving, or of exchanging 
 whatever is our own ; and, if this property consists of 
 commodities that we ourselves produce, of regulating their 
 reproduction, and enjoying as we please what is derived 
 
 * It ought to be noted in passing that this implicit distinction between a 
 supposed state of nature and the state of society, as if society were not a 
 natural state, is not to be taken as expressive of Turgot's views. It 
 savours much more of Kousseau than of Turgot. 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS, 51 
 
 from it. The only limit to this free disposal lies in doing 
 nothing that may hurt the security, liberty, property, in a 
 word, the rights of another.'' 
 
 This right of property, however, he held to be subject 
 to certain restrictions, according to its nature or its source. 
 Labour, and the occupation which is necessary for labour,, 
 he held to be the primal and rightful origin of property. 
 Of the soil, he held that the proprietor owns not the soil 
 itself, but only the value which his own labour or that of 
 his predecessors has incorporated with it. This distinc- 
 tion, however, he does not seem to have urged to any clear 
 or definite practical result, it may be from the difficulty 
 of separating this added value from tha soil. Bastiat 
 has here followed in his wake, and, steadily recognising 
 the distinction between the "gratuitous utility," which 
 is the free gift of nature, and the "onerous utility,'' or 
 value, which human labour has conferred, contends that 
 the price of land is not more, while it may be less, than the 
 equivalent of all the toil bestowed on its improvement. 
 As Mr. Stirling, however, the translator of Bastiat's " Har- 
 monies Economiques," has pointed out, this view fails to 
 apply to those cases in which the soil commands a high 
 price (or rent), not in consequence of what Turgot calls 
 " avarices foncih-es," or expenditure on its improvement, 
 but in spite of, or even, as in the Highland deer-forests, in 
 consequence of its very wildness, and the very absence of 
 all attempt at cultivation. The kelp-shores cited by 
 Adam Smith are another example ; and so is the price 
 of building-land, of which previous cultivation, if any, 
 goes for nothing. One singular consequence indeed, if I 
 may call it consequence, Turgot seems to have drawn from 
 his premisses, viz : that the ownership of the surface-soil 
 
52 TUEGOT. 
 
 does not carry with it the ownership of the minerals 
 below ; — a doctrine which, it might be shown, goes either 
 too far or not far enough. Into this very tempting field of 
 discussion, however, I must not enter. In view of present 
 disputations, it is no blame to Turgot that he did not, and 
 could not, go to the bottom of this grave question — the 
 right of property in land. Less than most succeeding 
 economists has he viewed this and other questions through 
 the medium of historical legislation. Much less than most 
 of these is he disposed to think that "whatever is is right." 
 
 Conquest he held to confer no solid or lasting right. 
 The privileges of the nobles, feudal rights (so called), and 
 state-offices sold by the sovereign, he excluded from his 
 scheme of property. The power of bequest he did not 
 admit without important restrictions. The family of the 
 deceased he seems to have regarded as the rightful heirs, 
 with equal division among the children, and, failing them, 
 among the nearest relations ; but on these points I do not 
 know of any original or detailed exposition of his views. 
 The authority of Condorcet, while not lightly to be 
 disputed, cannot, I think, always be accepted without 
 confirmation from other sources. 
 
 But on one point not less important we have Turgot's 
 own statement of his conclusions. Corporate property he 
 maintained to be wholly the creation of the state, existing 
 solely in the interest of the state, and dependent on the 
 will of the state. In the words of a recent commentator ; 
 " The state has always the rightful disposal of this pro- 
 perty ; it is the master of all foundations ; without offence 
 to justice, it can modify them, transform them, suppress 
 them, employ their funds without regard to the will of the 
 founders ; it has no other rule to follow in this matter 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 53 
 
 than the general utility ; and this right of the state is not 
 a violation of the rights of individuals. If individuals had 
 the right to dispose of their goods for all time after their 
 death, if they had the power to determine its employment 
 absolutely and in perpetuity, landed property and every 
 other kind of capital would be fixed beyond all power of 
 change ; future generations would no longer employ them 
 for the satisfaction of their own needs, and according to 
 the state of their intelligence ; the right of property, and 
 consequently, of free labour, would for them no longer 
 exist; they must conform in their mode of life to the 
 ideas and to the will of past ages ; the living would 
 become the slaves of the dead. The right of constituting 
 foundations is not, therefore, a consequence of the right 
 of property inherent in the individual ; this right, like 
 every other, has its limit in the right of others ; if not so, 
 it . would degenerate into privilege. Here the right of 
 each generation is limited by the right of all succeeding 
 • generations." 
 
 To this summary I will add only, and without comment, 
 two very brief extracts from the Essay on Foundations, 
 which Turgot contributed to the Encyclop^die : — "We 
 conclude that no work of man is made for immortality on 
 earth ; and, since foundations, being ever multiplied by 
 vanity, would, in the long run, absorb all individual funds 
 and properties, it is of inevitable necessity that we should 
 be able to annul them. If all the men that ever lived 
 had had a mausoleum, it would have been needful, in 
 order to find land to cultivate, to overthrow those sterile 
 monuments, and to disturb the ashes of the dead in 
 order to feed the living." And again : — " A founder is 
 one who wishes to make his will eternal (^terniser) ; 
 
54 TUEGOT. 
 
 now, though we should suppose his intentions always 
 pure, how many reasons are there not for distrustiDg his 
 wisdom ? How easy is it not to do evil, while wishing to 
 do good !" " There is every reason to presume that a 
 foundation, however useful it may appear, will one day 
 become at least useless, perhaps injurious, and will long 
 remain so. Is not that consideration enough to arrest 
 every founder who proposes to himself any other end 
 than the gratification of his vanity ?" 
 
 The inequality of conditions he regarded as a conse- 
 quence of the rights of labour and of property. In a letter 
 to Madame de GrafEgny (1751), he says : " This diversity 
 of conditions is a thing very important and very easy to 
 justify by showing its necessity and its utility. Its ne- 
 cessity, because men are not born equal, because their 
 strength, their talents, their passions, would always disturb 
 the momentary equilibrium that might be established by 
 law ; families unequal in capacity and in strength have 
 multiplied the causes of inequality. What would society 
 be without this inequality of conditions ? Every one 
 would be reduced to what is barely necessary, or, rather, 
 there would be many to whom even that would not be 
 assured. Work cannot be carried on without implements 
 and the means of living till the harvest has been reaped. 
 Those who have not had the intelligence or the oppor- 
 tunity to acquire these things, have no right to deprive of 
 them one who has earned them by his labour. If the idle 
 and the ignorant were to rob the industrious and the 
 skilful, all work would be discouraged, and misery would 
 be general. It is more just and useful for all that those 
 who have been deficient in either talent or good fortune 
 should lend their arms to those who can give them 
 
WHITINGS AND OPINIONS. 55 
 
 payment in advance, and secure for them a part in the 
 yet future production." 
 
 From the same rights of labour and of property he 
 deduced freedom of trade within and without the limits 
 of the country. In this respect, the staunchest free-trader 
 of our day can, I think, find no shortcoming on Turgors 
 part. In a let ter to Dr. Josiah Tucker,^. date d 1770_ 
 (exactly, alas ! one hundred years ago — so slow is human 
 progress), he says : " I confess to you, I cannot help sur- 
 prise that in a nation which enjoys freedom of the press, 
 you should be almost the only author that has known 
 and felt the advantages of free commerce, and that has 
 not been misled by the puerile and sanguinary illusion 
 of a pretended exclusive commerce. May the efforts of 
 enlightened and humane politicians destro y this abomina- 
 ble_idol, which still survives the mania of conquests and 
 religious intolerance, as to which the world begins to be 
 undeceived ! How many millions of men have been 
 immolated to those three monsters ! I see with joy, as 
 citizen of the world, the approach of an event which, more 
 than all the books of philosophers, will dispel the phantom 
 of the jealousy of commerce. I speak of the separation 
 of your colonies from the mother country, which will soon 
 be followed by the separation of all America from Europe.* 
 
 " It is then that the discovery of that part of the world 
 will become truly useful to us. It is then that it will 
 multiply our enjoyments far more abundantly than when 
 we bought them with torrents of blood. The English, 
 French, Spanish, all nations will enjoy sugar, coffee, indigo, 
 
 * He here, in 1770, repeats his prophecy of 1750. (See Lecture I, p. 8. ) 
 As yet, it has been fulfilled only in part. 
 
56 TURGOT. 
 
 and sell their several commodities as the Swiss do now ; 
 and they will have also, like the Swiss people, the ad- 
 vantage that these products will no longer serve as a pre- 
 text for intriguers to precipitate their nation into ruinous 
 wars, and to overwhelm them with taxes." 
 
 In another letter, also to Tucker, in 1773, he 
 
 " My principles in this matter (trade in corn) are absolute 
 freedom to import, without distinction of vessels of this or 
 that nation, and without any dues of entry ; freedom 
 equally absolute to export in every kind of vessel, without 
 any export duty or restriction, even in times of scarcity ; 
 freedom within the country to sell to whom one chooses, 
 when and where one chooses, without being obliged to 
 take the grain to the public market, and without the inter- 
 ference of any one to fix the price of corn or of bread. 
 These principles I would extend to every kind of mer- 
 chandise, and this, as you know, is quite opposed to the 
 practice of your government and of ours." 
 
 To Dr. Price he wrote, in 1778, a very memorable letter 
 on the American Constitutions,* wherein he says : " The 
 whole edifice " (of the present system) " has rested till 
 now on the false basis of a very old and very vulgar policy, 
 on the prejudice that nations, provinces, can have inte- 
 rests, as provinces and nations, other than that which indi- 
 viduals have in being free, and in defending their property 
 against brigands and conquerors ; a pretended interest in 
 having more trade than others, in not buying goods from 
 'the foreigner,' in forcing the foreigner to consume their 
 
 * See the 4th volume of John Adama' collected works. This letter 
 drew from Mr. Adams an elaborate defence in three octavo volumes. At 
 bottom, then as in recent years, the conflict was between Federalism and 
 Centralisation. Events have borne out Turgot's foresight. 
 
"WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 57 
 
 products and their manufactures ; a pretended inte- 
 rest in having a vaster territory, in acquiring this or 
 that province, this or that island, this or that village ; an 
 interest in striking terror into other nations ; an interest 
 in triumphing over them by the glory of arms, or by that 
 of arts and sciences.* Some of these prejudices are 
 fomented in Europe, because the ancient rivalry of nations 
 and the ambition of princes oblige all states to be armed 
 in defence against their armed neighbours, and to regard 
 military force as the chief object of government. America 
 has this happiness, that it cannot, for a long time to come, 
 have a foreign enemy to fear, if it be not divided against 
 itself. Thus it can and must appreciate at their just 
 value these pretended interests, these subjects of discord 
 which are the only grounds of fear for liberty. With the 
 sacred principle of the freedom of commerce, regarded as 
 a result of the right of property, all the pretended inte- 
 rests of commerce disappear. The pretended interests of 
 possessing more or less of territory are dispelled by the 
 principle that the earth belongs not to nations but to the 
 individual proprietors of lands." 
 
 Pardon me if I cite from this same letter another 
 passage in which this French precursor of Bright and 
 Cobden rises, like them, into a strain of the noblest 
 eloquence. "It is impossible not to pray that this nation 
 (the United States) may attain all the prosperity of which 
 it is capable. It is the hope of the human race. It may 
 
 * These last few words may with advantage be meditated by some of 
 our foremost advocates of "technical instruction." "The glory of supe- 
 riority in arts and sciences," however, though it may be " the last infirmity 
 of noble minds," is vastly better than that insane and wicked thirst of 
 "military gloiy " which, even at this hour, threatens once more to desolate 
 Europe on the most frivolous pretext. 
 
58 TUEQOT. 
 
 become its model. It must prove to tbe world, by real 
 fact, that men may be free, yet tranquil, and can dispense 
 with the chains of every kind which tyrants and charlatans 
 of every robe have sought to impose on them under pre- 
 text of the public weal. It must give the example of 
 political freedom, religious freedom, commercial and in- 
 dustrial freedom. The asylum which it opens to the 
 oppressed of all the nations must console the world. The 
 ease with which men may escape to it from the evils of 
 bad governnient will force the governments of Europe to 
 be just and to be intelligent-; the rest of the world will 
 little by little open its eyes to the nothingness of the 
 illusions by which politicians have been mocked. But 
 for this end America must guard itself from these illu- 
 sions, and it must not again become a copy of our Europe, 
 a mass of divided powers, disputing with each other terri- 
 tories or profits of trade, and continually cementing the 
 slavery of their people with their own blood. All en- 
 lightened men, all the friends of humanity, must at this 
 moment unite their wisdom, and join their reflections to 
 those of wise Americans, to assist in the great work 
 of their legislation. This would be your worthy task ; 
 would that I could stimulate your zeal ; and if in 
 this letter I have given way more, than I ought to the 
 effusion of my own thoughts, this desire has been my 
 only motive, and will excuse, I hope, the tedium which I 
 have caused you. I pray that the blood which has flowed, 
 and which may still flow in this quarrel, may not have 
 been useless to the human race." 
 
 Can it be doubted that in such noble aspirations for the 
 good of all mankind he found an ample solace for the loss 
 of position, without the power of doing good ? 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 59 
 
 From what I have cited it is sufficiently apparent that 
 neither the now extinct " Mercantile System," nor " Pro- 
 tection," nor " Navigation Laws," nor the still lingering 
 phantom of " Reciprocity," had for him the least illusion. 
 But one other passage may be cited from Condorcet, 
 which shows still more clearly how thoroughly Turgot 
 comprehended the true interest of nations in their com- 
 mercial dealings with each other, and which has an 
 important bearing on present or recent discussions of 
 " R eciprocity ," " If we consider the similarity of one 
 people to another, we may assert that national interests 
 cannot be concerned in those cases where these interests 
 are said to be opposed. If, indeed, the heads of one 
 nation could derive real advantage from the subjugation 
 of another nation, it is, in effect, impossible that this 
 advantage should extend to the whole body of the people. 
 The more a nation is surrounded with rich, powerful, and 
 industrious neighbours, the more readily will it find among/ 
 them the supply of its wants, and the encouragement oi 
 its industry. It would, doubtless, be obliged to produc^ / 
 such commodities only as are best adapted to the nature 
 of the soil, and to practise only such kind of business as 
 can resist competition ; but this, instead of being a disad- 
 vantage, would be, on the contrary, a general benefit. 
 Freedom of foreign commerce is the only way of placing 
 commerce out of the power of monopoly. It is of equal 
 importance that in the sale of our commodities foreign 
 competition should render us independent of native mer- 
 chants ; and that this same competition, by supplying us 
 with foreign merchandise, should protect us from the 
 avidity of our own manufacturers. Even if other nations 
 should prohibit our commodities, and shut their forts 
 
6o TUKGOT. 
 
 against us, it would still be our interests to let our ports 
 remain open ; a reciprocity of prohibitions serving no 
 other purpose than to deprive us of foreign succour, and 
 to oblige us to pay more dearly for our wants. It is for 
 the common interest of nations to be well governed in their 
 transactions with each other, to be as just in their deal- 
 ings with foreigners as in dealing among themselves, and 
 to preserve peace with neighbouring powers. Wars of 
 vanity, ambition, and commerce, are equally fruitless. It 
 can never be the interest of one nation to attack another, 
 to restrict the liberty of another, or to monopolise one 
 branch of commerce to the exclusion of its neighbour. 
 This may be considered as a general maxim in the same 
 way as the interest of a nation is in unison with the 
 common interest of every individual, and as the real 
 interest of every individual differs not from the common 
 interest of society." 
 
 Very fruitful in consequences is any good principle 
 thoroughly understood. In 1787, at Crichoff, in White 
 Russia, Bentham wrote his '' Defence of Usury," which 
 converted even Adam Smith, as he had the candour to 
 acknowledge. Nearly twenty years before that time 
 Turgot wrote his Memoire on "Loans of Money," in which 
 he maintained not only the rightfulness of interest for 
 loans of money, but the justice and the duty of leaving 
 money to find its level in the market like all other com- 
 ipodities.* He says : " It is not these vain subtleties that 
 
 * See Lecky's "History of Rationalism," vol. ii., p. 294, note. He 
 says : " On the whole there is not much in Bentham that was not antici- 
 pated by Turgot. In Italy, Genovesi, who -was a contemporary of Turgot, 
 advocated the abolition of usury laws." (Pecchio, " Storia deUa Economia 
 PubUco in Italia;" p. 114.) 
 
WEITINGS Alv'D OPINIONS. 6 1 
 
 render loan at interest legitimate; it is not even its 
 utility, or ratlier its necessity as the support of commerce; 
 it is legitimate on a still more general and worthy prin- 
 ciple, since it is the base on which the whole edifice of 
 society rests ; I mean the inviolable right, attached to 
 property, to be absolute master of what one owns, not to 
 be deprived of it without one's consent, and to be able to 
 attach to one's consent such conditions as one thinks fit. 
 The owner of any article whatever may keep it, or give it, 
 or sell it, or lend it gratuitously or for hire, either for a 
 fixed, or for aa indefinite time. If he sells, or if he lends, 
 the price of the sale or of the loan is limited only by the 
 will of him who buys or who borrows ; and so long as this 
 will is quite free, and as there is, further, no fraud on 
 either side, the price is always just, and no one is injured. 
 These principles are avowed by all when anything but 
 money is in question, and it is evident that they apply to 
 money no, less than to any other thing. The ownership of 
 money is not less absolute than that of a piece of furniture, 
 a piece of stuff, or a diamond ; he who owns it is not more 
 bound to deprive himself of it gratuitously. To give it, to 
 lend it gratuitously, is a laudable act which generosity 
 inspires, which humanity and charity sometimes require, 
 but which is never in the domain of rigorous justice. One 
 may also either give or lend any sort of commodity ; and 
 one ought in certain cases. Beyond those circumstances 
 in which charity requires that one should deprive one's 
 self to succour the distressed, one may sell one's money, 
 and, in truth, one does sell it when- one gives it in exchange 
 for a plot of ground, or for any equivalent return ; one 
 sells it for money when one gives money in one place to 
 receive it in another, with a certain addition ; or at oue 
 
62 TURGOT. 
 
 time to receive it at another, with a similar addition, 
 because the difference of times, as of places, makes a real 
 difference in the value of money." And again (if these 
 principles were adopted) : " The trade in money would be 
 free as all trade ought to be. The effect of this freedom 
 would be competition, and the effect of this competition 
 would be a lower rate of interest ; not only because the 
 disgrace and the risk attached to loans at interest " (under 
 usury laws) " are a surcharge which the borrower must 
 always pay, but because a larger amount of money which 
 lies useless in coffers would come into circulation when 
 prejudice, no longer confirmed by the authority of the 
 laws, had by degrees given way to reason. Economy 
 would become so much the more active in accumulating 
 capital, when trade in money should become an outlet 
 always open to it." .The memoir is long and closely 
 argued. It extends to fifty-three sections, and even now 
 it deserves, and, I must add, needs to be studied in this 
 country as well as in France.* 
 
 * In France, so late as 1849, a controversy was maintained with great 
 ability between Proudhon and Bastiat, on the question not merely of 
 laws against usury, but of the rightfulness of interest of any amount 
 for the loan of money. I have before me a pamphlet entitled " Usury 
 the Scourge of Nations : Money Interest an Everlasting Ta.'c Levied by 
 the Annuitant Class," 1870; by James Harvey; addressed to the Land 
 and Labour League. The author says : " If interest of money is wrong, 
 annihilate it," and maintains that interest is fundamentally wrong, and, 
 a fortiori, usury. He proposes, however, not very logically or intelligibly, 
 that " Money should not consist of the dearest metal Imown, but should be 
 a mere jmper instrument, authorised by the state, and issued in sufficient 
 quantities to bring interest,, if not to the point of utter annihilation, at least 
 to the lowest possible rate " (p. 5. ) If it is not posMle to annihilate interest, 
 why urge its annihilation ? If interest is wrong, and its annihilation is 
 possible, why stop short at the lowest possible rate; and what, besides, is 
 the meaning of " the lowest possible rate ?" 
 
WKITINGS AND OPINIONS. 63 
 
 But regarding money, there are other questions, prelimi- 
 nary, much more difficult, and accordingly much more 
 disputable and more disputed. Among these the relation 
 of " paper money" to metallic money holds a prominent 
 place. On this subject an unfinished memoir, entitled 
 " Valeurs et Monnaies," and a letter written, at the age 
 of twenty-two, to Abb^ Cicd, of which part has been lost, 
 give a full exposition of Turgot's views. It would be well, 
 I think, if the " currency doctors " of this our time had 
 read and mastered his clear and cogent reasoning. It is 
 not a little curious to see how controversies, seemingly 
 long ago extinct, do, like volcanoes, burst forth again in 
 flame, largely mixed with smoke, sometimes in another 
 place, sometimes in the same. The grand fundamental 
 question, then as now, lay in a very narrow compass. Is 
 the function of paper money the same exactly as that of 
 metallic money ? Is it independent of metallic money, or 
 ought it to have a metallic basis ? In order to answer 
 these questions wisely, a preliminary question must be 
 answered : What is the function of metallic money ? In 
 1 720, the Abb^ Terrasson, in defence of the then waning 
 system of the famous Law, had published a series of four 
 letters, in which he contended that money of any kind is 
 only a sign adopted to represent wealth, and to facilitate 
 its exchange ; that the nature of this sign is a matter of 
 indifference ; that money belongs to the State, and not to 
 individuals ; that the ruling power may withdraw gold 
 and silver from circulation, substitute paper money for 
 them, and exempt its subjects from taxation by 
 periodic issues of paper money. This was the doctrine 
 then generally held, and even Montesquieu, in his 
 " Esprit des Lois," in 1748, defined money as " a sign 
 
64 TURGOT. 
 
 which represents the value of every kind of merchaadise." 
 The gist of this doctrine was obviously — that money is 
 a mere sign of value, conventionally adopted ; that the 
 nature of this sign is indifferent, and, consequently, that 
 paper, which is light and cheap, may, with advantage, be 
 wholly substituted for metals, which are cumbrous and 
 dear. I cannot now examine this very plausible and 
 tempting theory, though it is still held by many very 
 worthy and not irrational persons.* Turgot, however, 
 then, as in his later writings, said that " paper money," so 
 called, is not money proper, but a promise to pay money ; 
 that money proper is not a mere sign, but itself a veritable 
 commodity, an article of commerce which, from its pecu- 
 liar qualities, serves as a common measure of every other 
 article ; that, as a commodity, money is the property of 
 individuals, and not of the State ; and that credit, of 
 which " paper money" is the token or pledge, or evidence, 
 implies money in itself valuable, as such money implies 
 other commodities. 
 
 But this subject would require a separate treatment, 
 and must not detain us now. We must pass lightly over 
 even his most elaborate and complete economic work, 
 "Rej ections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth," 
 which was first published in 1766, ten years before the 
 publication of " The Wealth of Nations," and five before 
 it was commence'd. In 1770, Turgot sent a copy to Dr. 
 Tucker, and through him it is not unlikely that it was 
 made known to Adam Smith. It was written during a 
 
 * One of these, a personal friend, I ventured, some years ago, to con- 
 gratulate on the then recent repeal of the paper duty, and on this ground, 
 that, when the theory should be adopted, money would thus be rendered so 
 much more abundant aijid accessible to the poor ! 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 65 
 
 journey through his district of Limoges, in snatches of 
 time, amidst numerous interruptions, and even hardships. 
 The occasion of it was this : Two Chinese youths, who had 
 been sent by the Jesuits to France, to pursue their studies, 
 were about to -return home, assisted by a pension from the 
 government. Turgot not only gave them many books 
 and scientific instruments, but wrote for them a set of 
 " Questions on China," fifty-two in number ; and, to help 
 them in their replies, drew up this system of economic 
 doctrine, which, notwithstanding all that has since been 
 written, well merits the earnest study of every disciple of 
 the science. Dupont de N emours has made a careful 
 comparison of the points ofreseinblance and of difierence 
 between this work of Turgot and that of Adam Smith. 
 But it is the less necessary, even did time permit, to enter 
 on this inquiry, because, in both respects, Tu rgfot himse lf 
 was the faithful though intelligent and^thoiightfuHollower 
 of one to whom the honour of originality is more justly 
 due — the once famous, and ever memorable Francis 
 Quesnay, the founder of the school of Les Economistes, 
 as they were long styled, or Les Physiocrates, as they are 
 now, more distinctively, designated. 
 
 Quesnay was physician to I^ouis XV., who called him 
 his " thinker," and ennobled him with the pansy as his 
 crest, that flower standing for thought — the French 
 pense4 — (as every reader of Hamlet knows.) He estab- 
 lished at Versailles a printing press, and made the kigg 
 print with his own hands these memorable words : " W^henv 
 the peasants are poor the kingdom is poor ; and when the 
 kingdom is poor the king is poor." On occasion of Adam 
 Smith's second visit to Paris, in 1765, he associated much 
 with Quesnay, as well as with Turgot (who was Quesnay's 
 
66 TUEGOT. 
 
 junior by thirty-three years) ; he intended to dedicate to 
 Quesnay his " Wealth of Nations," but was prevented by 
 Quesnay's death, in his eightieth year, in 1774 (the year 
 in which Louis XV. also died), two years before the 
 appearance of that great work.* Of Quesnay's doctrine I 
 must refrain from anyfull exposition here, and refer you 
 to Mr. M'CuUoch's Introductory Discourse, prefixed to his 
 edition of "The Wealth of Nations." It cannot, however, 
 be here omitted that his most distinctive tenet that agri- 
 culture is the only employment that yields a net revenue — 
 a tenet in which he was followed by Turgot, Dupont, 
 Mercier de la Rivifere, and others, — but not by Adam 
 Smith, — is now universally regarded as erroneous, though 
 Adam Smith's own distinction between productive and 
 unproductive labour finds less and less acceptance, and the 
 question where and how to draw the line is still much dis- 
 cussed. The French economists in general frankly recog- 
 nise the superiority of Adam Smith to Quesnay in this and 
 in other respects, though they deny his priority, and with 
 reason. One of their number has designated Smith the 
 Amerigo Vespucci of economic science, Quesnay, of course, 
 being the Columbus. 
 
 As to the respective merits of Turgot and Adam Smith, 
 opinion is in France somewhat more divided, as will 
 appear from four authorities that I will briefly cite. M. 
 
 * For three-and-tbirty years there has hung over the fire-place in my 
 library Willes' exquisite engraving, dated 1747, of the portrait of Du 
 Quesnay, " Doctor utriusque Medioinse," and Physician of the most noble 
 Duke of Vaieroy. It represents a, man past middle life, seated among 
 books, vrith loose robe and flowing wig. The brow is ample and beauti- 
 fully forrned ; the face seems to sparkle with mingled acuteness and bene- 
 volence. It might be a handsome likeness of Voltaire ; with aU his intellect 
 but with more of kindliness and imagination, and less of sarcasm. To this 
 portrait I owe my early interest in economics. See Appendix. 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 67 
 
 Batbie says of Turgot's " Reflexions" : " The books which 
 have been since published are not superior to this first 
 essay, and Adam Smith's work itself, doubtless more com- 
 plete and analytic, falls below it as a systematically con- 
 nected whole. Putting aside the error of the physiocratic 
 theory, it is as profound as it is luminous." Of the same 
 work M. Daire says: "Never were more just ideas, on 
 such a subject, concentrated in fewer pages. There is 
 not, doubtless, in this work the whole of Adam Smith's 
 book, just as the whole picture of a great master does not 
 exist upon the canvass, when his genius has traced only 
 the sketch : but suppose this sketch to be completed by an 
 aitist of equal merit, and you will have perhaps an exact • 
 notion of the respective share of glory that belongs to the 
 pupil of Gournay, and to the philosopher of Glasgow. The 
 first, with greater powers of generalisation, lays the funda- 
 mental principles of the science ; while the second, gifted 
 above all with the faculty of analysis, deduces from them 
 numerous consequences with profound sagacity. We 
 may dispute about the greater or less value of these 
 two tasks; but to me it seems that neither ought 
 to make us forget the other." M. Mastier says : 
 "Though on those three important points Turgot shares 
 the errors of Quesnay, he cannot be regarded as a mere 
 disciple. He has elucidated, rectified, enriched the doc- 
 trine of his master : he is himself a master, and the pre- 
 ciirsor of Adam Smith." Lastly, M. Puynode says : " How ' 
 can we help wondering at Dupont de Nemours for holding 
 the 'Reflexions ' of Turgot to be superior to Adam Smith's 
 inquiry published nine years later ? As well might w:e set 
 the ' BepuUique ' of Bodin above Montesquieu's ' Esprit 
 des Lois,' or the 'Tableaux de la Natv/re' of Buffon 
 
68 TURGOT. 
 
 above the ' Systeme du Monde' of Laplace. It is to prefer 
 a vacillating light to a most brilliant sunrise. Turgot's 
 'Reflexions' have the merit of a remarkable error re- 
 markably expounded ; the ' Inquiry ' of Adam Smith 
 is one of the most astonishing creations of the human 
 mind. It has laid the basis of the whole economic science, 
 while often reaching its highest summits. For myself, I 
 can never read it afresh without thinking of the ' Theodic^' 
 of Plato, which comes so near to Christian doctrine." 
 
 To this eloquent and generous tribute to Adam Smith 
 I most cordially subscribe ; to this depreciation of Turgot 
 I must, with sincere deference, demur. M. Daire seems 
 to me somewhat nearer to the truth than M. Puynode. 
 
 On the question of taxation, a brief extract from his 
 Memoir to the King about the suppression of the CorvSe 
 will impressively illustrate the feeling with which he 
 regarded the system of his time. " What is taxation ?" 
 he asks. " Is it a burden imposed upon feebleness by 
 force ? This would be analogous to the foundation of a 
 government solely on the right of conquest. Then the 
 prince would be regarded as the common enemy of society ; 
 the strongest would defend themselves against him as they 
 best could, the weakest would suffer themselves to be 
 crushed. In that case, it would be natural that the rich 
 and powerful should throw the whole burden on the weak 
 and poor, and guard jealously this privilege. 
 
 " This is not our idea of a paternal government, founded 
 on a Constitution, in which the monarch is raised above 
 all to secure the happiness of all ; in which he is the de- 
 pository of the public power, in order to maintain the rights 
 of each by justice within, and by military force against 
 attacks from without. The expenditure of government 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 69 
 
 having for its object the interest of all, all ought to 
 contribute to it, and the more advantage one derives from 
 society,' the more ought one to hold it as an honour to 
 share its burdens. It is diffioulti from this point of view, 
 for the fiscal privilege of the nobility to appear just If 
 one looks at the question from the side of humanity, it is 
 very difficult to congratulate one's self on being exempt 
 from taxes as a gentleman, when one sees the pot of the 
 peasant taken in execution. 
 
 " If we look at the question from the side of the political 
 benefit and strength of a nation, one sees at a glance that 
 if the privileged are numerous, and possess a great part of 
 the national wealth, as the expenses of the State require 
 a very large sum, it may happen that the sum is beyond 
 the means of those who remain subject to taxation. Then 
 it follows, either that the government is deprived of the 
 means and defence that it requires, or that the non- 
 privileged people are burdened beyond their strength, so 
 that the State is at once impoveriSifed and enfeebled.*" 
 By the ignorance and injustice around him, Turgot was 
 thus condemned to teach to the ruling powers the very 
 alphabet of legislation. 
 
 But we must turn from Economics, and, ere we con- 
 clude, illustrate very briefly his doctrine regarding Free- 
 dom of Thought and of Speech, Kieligious Toleration, and 
 
 * It is curious to remark that while Turgot held, with Quesnay, that 
 taxation should be laid upon the soil directly, because only the soil yielded 
 a net revenue, out of which all taxes must directly or indirectly be paid, his 
 opponents drew from the same premisses the opposite practical conclusion, 
 that taxation might justly be levied on other property and its owners, 
 because it would still, if indirectly, fall upon the soil. Landowners thus 
 seemed to accept the theory and conform to it, while, in fact, giving them- 
 selves the benefit of the doubt as to its truth. See Appendix. 
 
70 TUEGOT. 
 
 lastly, Education. "It is not error," he says, "that is 
 opposed to the progress of truth. It is cowardice, self- 
 conceit, the spirit of routine, all that encourages inaction." 
 "You fear lest you should go astray by directing your 
 mental energies to the discovery of new truths. You 
 prefer peaceably to retain the opinions most generally 
 received, whatever they may be. That is to say, you will 
 not walk, lest you should break your legs. But in this 
 very way your state is that of one who has had his legs 
 broken : they are useless to you. And why has God 
 given legs to men if not to walk, or mind, if not to think ?" 
 Liberty of the press he maintained to be the greatest 
 aid to a just government, and an invaluable corrective of 
 its possible errors. Its operation in an unjust government 
 is too obvious to be pointed out, or — to be endured. For 
 just government he looked rather to the sovereign than 
 either to the people themselves, whose ignorance and 
 prejudices he distrusted and dreaded (not without reason 
 in his time), or to the nobility, of whom Chamfort said 
 that, if they were the intermediary between the king and 
 the people, it was "as the hound is an intermediary 
 between the hunter and the hare." * But to the 
 sovereign, or to government of any kind, he denied 
 all right to restrain conscience in matters of religion. 
 His memoir on "Toleration," addressed, in 1775, to 
 the King, is worthy of the disciple of John Locke, and 
 may still be read with profit, as well as pleasure. He 
 had endeavoured to induce the King not to take the oath 
 for the persecution of heretics, and the King, it is said, 
 undecided how to act, had, at this part of the coronation 
 
 * To this it may fairly be added that they did a deal of hunting on their 
 own account. 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 7 1 
 
 service, muttered some unintelligible words. " Your oaths, 
 sire," he says, "have been pronounced in presence of God 
 and of your subjects. Justice from you is your subjects' 
 right and interest. To commit an injustice in order to 
 fulfil the formulas which you have been made to pro- 
 nounce, would be to violate your obligations to God, to 
 your people, and to yourself." " All sovereigns have not 
 the same religion, and every religious man feels himself 
 bound by conscience, for duty's sake and for his own 
 salvation, to follow the religion which he believes to be 
 true. In judging men, God will demand if they have 
 believed and practised the true religion. He will not ask 
 them if they have believed and practised the religion of 
 their sovereign. How could he demand this, if all sove- 
 reigns are not of the true religion ? Cast your eye over 
 ■ the map of the world, sire, and see how few countries there 
 are whose sovereigns are Catholics. How can it be that 
 the greater number of sovereigns in the universe being in 
 error, they should all have received from God the right to 
 judge of the true religion ? If they have not this right, 
 if they have neither the infallibility nor the divine mission 
 which alone could confer it, how can they dare to take it on 
 themselves to decide on the fate of their subjects, of their 
 happiness or their misery for all eternity ? Every man, 
 by the principles of religion, has his soul to save ; he has 
 all the lights of reason and of revelation to guide him to 
 the way of salvation ; he has conscience to apply those 
 lights, but that conscience is for himself alone. To follow 
 his own conscience is the right and the duty of every man, 
 and no man has the right to make his own a rule for 
 another. Each answers for himself before God, and no 
 one answers for another." 
 
72 TURGOT. 
 
 " Will the defenders of intolerance say that the prince 
 has a right to command only when his religion is true, 
 and that then he ought to be obeyed. No ; even then he 
 cannot, and ought not to, be obeyed ; for if one ought to 
 adopt the religion which he prescribes, it is not because 
 he commands it, but because it is true ; and it is not, and 
 cannot be, because the prince commands it, that it is true. 
 There is no man so absurd as to believe a religion true 
 for such a reason. He, then, who submits in good faith 
 does not obey the prince, but his own conscience ; and the 
 order of the prince adds not, and cannot add, any weight 
 to the obligation which conscience thus imposes. Whether 
 the prince does or does not believe a religion, whether he 
 does or does not command it to be adopted, it is neither 
 more nor less what it is, either true or false. The 
 opinion of the prince is, then, absolutely foreign to the 
 truth of a religion, and consequently to the obUgation to 
 adopt it; the prince has, then, as prince, no right to 
 judge, or to command in this respect ; his incompetence is 
 absolute in matters of this order, which are not in his 
 sphere, and in which the conscience of each individual 
 has, and can have, no other judge but God alone." 
 
 The first part of this Memoir thus concludes : " How 
 can religion command sovereigns, how can it permit them, 
 to use their power to constrain their subjects in respect of 
 religion ? Can religion command, or permit, a crime ? 
 To command a crime is to commit one ; he who commands 
 an assassination is by every one regarded as an assassin. 
 Now the prince who commands a subject to profess a 
 religion which he does not believe, or to renounce that 
 which he does believe, commands a crime ; the sub- 
 ject who obeys is guilty of falsehood ; he betrays his 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 73 
 
 conscience, lie does a thing which God forbids. The 
 Protestant who, for interest or through fear, becomes 
 a Catholic ; and the Catholic who, from like motives, 
 becomes a Protestant, are guilty of the same offence. 
 For it is not the truth or the error of an assertion that 
 constitutes the falsehood or the perjury ; he who affirms 
 with an oath that to be true which he then believes untrue, 
 is quite as much perjured as if the thing were actually 
 untrue. Falsehood or perjury consists in the contradiction 
 between the assertion and the belief of him who affirms or 
 who swears." 
 
 The other two parts, of which Turgot seems to have 
 kept no copy, were unhappily lost in the cabinet of the 
 King. ' The first part was recovered from a rough but 
 corrected copy, such as Turgot seldom made, for com- 
 monly he wrote without need for alteration, such were the 
 orderliness of his thoughts, and the accuracy of his freest 
 expressions. The iteration which marks it was not, we 
 may believe, without design. 
 
 On Education he anticipated Eousseau, whose " Emile" 
 was not published till 1762, and Kousseau was the ac- 
 knowledged teacher of Pestalozzi. A few brief quotations 
 will illustrate his opinions : " If we were to teach our 
 children nothing but truths, and to talk with them only 
 of what they can understand, there would scarcely be any 
 mbre false thinkers." "Justness of thought is of all 
 qualities that which has most influence upon the details 
 of conduct, and that which nature has bestowed most 
 equally and universally." 'The only source of public hap- 
 piness is the possession of truths to which the order of 
 society may be conformed. It is, therefore, useful, and 
 even necessary, to increase, and especially to diffuse, 
 
TUBGOT. 
 
 knowledge." " The moral instruction of the people ought 
 to be absolutely distinct from both theological opinions 
 and the ceremonies of worship. The morals of all nations 
 have been the same ; and almost everywhere they have 
 been corrupted solely by being mixed with theology. The 
 truth of the principles of morality is shaken by connecting 
 them with opinions which are either openly controverted, 
 or rejected in secret by a considerable number of men, 
 and especially by those men who have the greatest influ- 
 ence on the fate of mankind. Factitious duties are mixed 
 with real duties, though often opposed to them ; and the 
 latter are, in the meantime, always sacrified to the former. 
 By this mixture, the natural order of duties is inverted, 
 and real duties are evaded or violated on the plea of 
 practising some imaginary virtue." " Since, then, a 
 national education truly worthy of the name is not a 
 chimera, the care of establishing and of perfecting it ought 
 to be one of the first duties of those who guide a nation ; 
 and they ought, above all, to be careful not to abandon it 
 to the management of priests, whose direct influence over 
 the morals of the people is incompatible with the good 
 order of society." 
 
 So far, as reported by Condorcet, in different parts of 
 his Vie de Turgot (published in London anonymously in 
 1786). In a letter to Madame de Graffigny, of date 1751, 
 Turgot says : " It is in pedantry that in our day education 
 consists. We are taught everything in the opposite of 
 nature's method. Take the rudiments ; we begin by 
 trying to cram into the heads of children a host of the 
 most abstract ideas. Those whom all Nature invites to 
 herself by every object, we tie up in one place ; we 
 occupy them with words which can offer to them no sense. 
 
WHITINGS AND OPINIONS. 75 
 
 since the sense of words can come only with the ideas, and 
 since those ideas come to us only by degrees, taking their 
 source from sensible objects. But, further, we wish them 
 to acquire those ideas without the aids that we ourselves 
 have had — we whom age and experience have formed. 
 We fetter their imaginations, we withhold from them the 
 sight of objects by means of which nature gives to the 
 savage the first notions of all things, of all the sciences 
 even, of astronomy, of geometry, "of the elements of 
 natural history. A man, after a very long education, 
 knows not the course of the seasons, how to find his way, 
 or discover his position by the cardinal points ; he knows 
 not the commonest plants or animals. We have not an 
 eye for nature. It is the same in morals ; general ideas 
 here, too, spoil everything. We are very careful to tell a 
 child that it must be just, temperate, virtuous. Has it 
 the least idea of what virtue is ? Do not say to your son — 
 ' be virtuous,' but make him feel pleasure in being so ; 
 develop in his heart the germ of the sentiments which 
 nature has implanted. We need oftener to erect barriers 
 against education than against nature. Give him occa- 
 sions to be truthful, generous, compassionate ; rely on the 
 human heart ; leave those precious seeds of virtue to 
 expand in the air which surrounds them ; do not stifle 
 them under a mass of matting and wooden frames. I am 
 not of those who wish to reject abstract and general ideas ; 
 they are necessary ; but I do not think they are in their 
 place in our mode of teaching. Let them come to children 
 as they have come to men, by degrees, and by rising from 
 sensible notions up to them. Another feature of our 
 education, which seems to me bad and ridiculous, is our 
 severity towards these poor children. They commit some 
 
76 TUEGOT. 
 
 folly ; we reprove them as if it were of great importance. 
 There is a multitude of such things of which they will be 
 corrected by mere lapse of time ; but we do not think 
 of that ; we wish our son to be well brought up, and we 
 overwhelm him with little rules of civility, often frivolous, 
 which can only hamper him, since he knows not their 
 reasons. I think it enough to prevent him from annoying 
 those whom he sees. The rest will come little by Httle. 
 Inspire him with the desire to please, and he will soon 
 know more of the ways how than all the masters can 
 teach him. Again, we wish a child to be grave ; we make 
 his excellence to consist in his not running ; we are for 
 ever afraid lest he fall. What is the result ? He is 
 harrassed and enfeebled. We have above all forgotten 
 that it is a part of education to form the body ; and the 
 reason is not far to seek ; it springs from our old customs, 
 our old institutions. Our ignorant nobles knew nought 
 but the body ; it was men of the people who studied ; it 
 was only to become priests and monks ; again, it was only 
 persons of a certain age, and whose studies, consequently, 
 could be conducted in a graver fashion. Hence, too, the 
 course was to learn only Latin ; that was then the whole 
 of education, because it was not men that it was sought 
 to form, but priests — persons capable of answering in the 
 examinations required of them. Even at this day we 
 study philosophy, not to be philosophers, but to pass 
 Masters of Arts. What followed ? When the nobles 
 wished to study, they studied after the forms of established 
 colleges ; and the only result has often been that they 
 have been disgusted with the study." 
 
 Much remains of interest and value ; but I must here 
 close abruptly, in the hope that, little by little, there has 
 
WRITINGS AND OPINIONS. 77 
 
 grown up in the minds of even those of you, if any, to 
 whom Turgot was heretofore not much more than a 
 name or a shadow, — a tolerably clear and full idea of 
 what manner of man he was in his character and life, — 
 and that you will not think my admiration excessive, or 
 your time ill spent, I cannot better sum up all than in 
 the words of M. Monjean : " A synthetic spirit in an age 
 of analysis, religious in an age of scepticism and the shak- 
 ing of all creeds : upright and simple amidst the sophisms 
 of interests, of the violence of sects and the noise of social 
 declamations ; studious of the past which he understood 
 with admirable judgment, amidst the contempt of all 
 traditions, and the intolerant dicta of the haughty worship- 
 pers of pure reason and absblute right ; of conduct strictly 
 pure, in the general laxity of morals, he never had other 
 guide than his conscience, other aim than the truth, 
 other practice than goodness. No language can give an 
 adequate notion of what Turgot was. It is in the collec- 
 tion of his works that we must contemplate at once the 
 man, the writer, and the administrator. From the words 
 which he addressed to his contemporaries, men of this day 
 may draw the most salutary lessons. If he seems to have 
 thus written for the future, it is because he had seized 
 the truth, which is of all times. Turgot is one of those 
 thinkers whose works are as lasting as the human race,^ — 
 one of those citizens whose name is inseparably united with 
 that of their country. A man complete and admirable in 
 the diverse manifestations of his faculties moral and intel- 
 lectual,— he belongs to science by his genius, to France by 
 his patriotism, to all ages by his virtue." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Page 1. 
 
 "In reading the history of that noble efflorescence of charity 
 which marked the first ages of Christianity, it is impossible to avoid 
 reflecting upon the strange destiny that has consigned almost aU its 
 authors to obscurity, while the names of those who took any con- 
 spicuous part in sectarian history have become household words 
 among mankind." — Lecky. History of Rationalism. 1865. Vol. 
 ii., p. 265. 
 
 While these, pages are passing through the press, a gentleman 
 long and creditably engaged in education, writes to me : " I am 
 sorry to confess my utter ignorance of Turgot. Was he a teacher f 
 
 Page 12. 
 
 Of Turgot's article on Evidence in the Encyclop^die, Rivarol 
 said, with his usual preference of sarcasm to truth — " It is a cloud 
 undertaking to write on the sun." 
 
 Page 12. 
 
 " The maxim which has become the device of modern society — 
 'laissez faire, laissez passer' — applied to industry and to com- 
 merce, — this maxim, so often criticised by those who have not 
 taken the trouble to understand it, is perfectly true and just. 
 ' Laissez faire^ that is to say, allow every man to use honestly and 
 to the best of his judgment the faculties which he has received 
 from God. This is a natural right of the first rank — to hve by 
 labour. ' Laissez passer^ that is to say, do not obstruct exchange. 
 If God has created different climates, and productions as different 
 as the climates, it is in order to make humanity one people, united 
 by the community of wants and of interests. To obstruct exchange 
 
APPENDIX. 79 
 
 is to obstruct labour ; to obstruct labour is to obstruct Kfe. Who 
 can give the State this strange right to impoverish its subjects, and 
 to make them die of hunger 1 . . . Let the State preserve peace 
 and security, it has done its part ; whenever it passes out of its 
 own sphere it troubles and deranges society. There is famine only 
 in the countries in which the States interfere to regulate the supply 
 of food. The most wretched people are ever the most protected. 
 Each for himself and God for all, is the principle of the modern 
 world — a principle as true in economics, as it is false in the domain 
 of charity."-;^Edouard Laboulaye, "Za Partie Liberale." 1864. 
 C. iii., p. 23—24. 
 
 Page 23. 
 
 " Je vous ai dit que nos d6put6s avaient I'ordre Icrit d'aboUr les 
 barri^res interieures, qui gSnaient le commerce ; les maltrises et 
 jurandes, qui g6naient I'industrie ; les dimes et droits feodaux, qui 
 gtoaient I'agriculture ; la v§naUt§ des charges et offices, contraire a 
 la justice ; les tortures et autres barbaries, contraires a I'humanitS ; 
 et les voeux des moines, contraires aux families, aux bonnes moeurs 
 et au bon sens." — Histoire d'un Paysan. Par Erokmann-Chatrian. 
 1869. Vol. ii., p. 2. 
 
 Page 32. 
 
 It is right to say that Dugald Stewart doubts that this epistolary 
 correspondence between Adam Smith and Turgot ever existed. 
 He thinks it " proper to mention," moreover, " that Smith's poli- 
 tical lectures, comprehending the fundamental principles of his 
 ' Inquiry,' were dehvered at Glasgow as early as the year 1752 or 
 1753 ; at a period, surely, when there existed no French performance 
 on the subject, that could be of much use to him in guiding his 
 researches." The question, however, reaUy regards not originahty, 
 but priority, especially in publication. Adam Smith was assuredly 
 no plagiarist, no mere adopter of others' thoughts. 
 
 Page 52. 
 
 As an evidence of the growing tendency to agitate the question 
 of land tenure, and as a sign of the direction of opinion, I append, 
 without comment, the programme of an Association lately formed 
 in London, under the presidency of Mr. J. S. MUl. 
 
8o APPENDIX. 
 
 LAND TENURE EEFORM ASSOCIATION. 
 
 THE NEW PROGEAMMB — 
 
 I. To remove all legal and fiscal impediments to the transfer of 
 land. 
 
 II. To secure the abolition of the law of primogeniture. 
 
 III. To restrict within the narrowest limits the power of tying 
 up land. 
 
 IV. To claim for the benefit of the State, the interception by 
 taxation of the future unearned increase of the rent of land, [so far 
 as the same can be ascertained], or a great part of that increase, 
 which is continually taking place, without any effort or outlay by 
 the proprietors, merely through the growth of population and wealth ; 
 reserving to owners the option of relinquishing their property to the 
 State at the market value which it may have acquired at the time 
 when this principle may be adopted by the legislature. 
 
 V. To promote a pohcy of encouragement to co-operative agri- 
 culture, through the purchase by the State, from time to time, of 
 estates which are in the market, and the letting of them, under 
 proper regulations, to such co-operative associations, as afford 
 sufficient evidence of spontaneity and promise of efficiency. 
 
 VI. To promote the acquisition of land in a similar manner, to be 
 let to small cultivators, on conditions, which, while providing for 
 the proper cultivation of the land, shall secure to the cultivator a 
 durable interest in it. 
 
 VII. Lands belonging to the crown, or to public bodies, or 
 charitable and other endowments, to be made available for the same 
 purposes, as weU as for the improvement of the dwellings of the 
 working classes ; and no such lands to be suffered (unless in 
 pursuance of the above-mentioned ends, or for peculiar and excep- 
 tional reasons) to pass into private hands. 
 
 VIII. All lands now waste, or requiring an Act qf Parliament to 
 authorise their inclosure, to be retained for national uses ; compen- 
 sation being made for manorial rights and rights of common. 
 
 IX. That, while it is expedient to bring a large portion of the 
 present waste lands under cultivation for the purposes and on the 
 principles laid down in the preceding articles, it is desirable that 
 the less fertile portions, especially those which are within reach 
 of populous districts, should be retained in a state of wild natural 
 
APPENDIX. 8 1 
 
 beauty, for tlie general enjoyment of the community, and encourage- 
 ment in all classes of healtMul rural tastes, and of the higher order 
 of pleasures; also, in order to leave to future generations the 
 decision of their ultimate uses. 
 
 X. To obtain for the State the power to take possession (with a 
 view to their preservation) of all natural objects or artificial 
 constructions attached to the soil which are of historical, scientific, 
 or artistic interest, together with so much of the surrounding land 
 as may be thought necessary, the owners being compensated for 
 the value of the land so taken. 
 
 John Stuaet Mill, Chairman. 
 Peter Alfred Taylor, Treasurer. 
 Andrew Reid, Secretary. 
 
 Land Tenure Refortn Association, 
 
 9, Buckingham-street, Strcmd, London, W.C., 
 July 8th, 1870. 
 
 Page 66. 
 
 That this was Adam Smith's intention is proved by the unim- 
 peachable testimony of Dugald Stewart. In his " Account of the 
 Life and Writings of Adam Smith," he says : " Mr. Smith was also 
 well known to M. Quesnai, the profound and original author of the 
 ' Economical Table,' a man (according to Mr. Smith's accotmt of him) 
 of the greatest modesty and simphcity ; and whose system of poh- 
 tical economy he has pronounced, with all its imperfections, ' to be 
 the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been pubhshed 
 oh the principles of that very important science.' If he had not 
 been prevented by Quesnai's death, Mr. Smith had once an intention 
 (as he told me himself) to have inscribed to him his ' Wealth of 
 Nations.' " 
 
 Adam Smith, however, says : " The most distinct and best con- 
 nected account of this (Quesnai's) doctrine is to be found in a little 
 book written by M. Mercier de la Rividre, some time intendant of 
 Martinico, entitled, ' The Natural and Essential Order of Political 
 Societies.' " B. iv., c. 9. Mr. M'CuUoch also, in his " Introductory 
 Discourse,'' quotes M. Mercier de la Riviere as " the ablest expo- 
 sitor of this system." P. bdii. 
 
 p 
 
82 APPENDIX. 
 
 Page 69. 
 
 This question as to the final incidence of taxation was humor- 
 ously treated by Mr. C. Head, M.P., at an Oxford meeting, on 20th 
 July, 1870. He said : " What did the Government propose to 
 do for them in the circumstances in which they were placed? 
 They proposed to set landlord and tenant by the ears ; to divide 
 the rate between the owners and the occupiers. In fact, by putting 
 the lots into two baskets on the back of one donkey, they wanted to 
 make them believe that the same beast did not carry the whole 
 hmden."— Times, 2lst July, 1870. It is not quite self-evident, 
 however, which is the donkey. 
 
 Page 70. 
 
 " Louis the XVI.'s minister, Turgot, was the first to perceive 
 this " (that seditious songs were scattered about by the thousand, 
 and did more than any amount of newspaper writing could have 
 done). " He argued very soundly that it was much better to allow 
 people to relieve their minds in gazettes published openly, and by 
 responsible editors, than to let them have recourse to pamphlets, 
 the authors of which it was impossible to detect. All he could 
 obtain, however, was that a body of seventy-two censors should be 
 established", and that these men, for the most part ignorant super- 
 numerary clerks, should receive instructions to be indulgent. Not 
 long afterwards the Revolution broke out, sweeping away both king 
 and censors, and flooding the country with such papers as VAmi du 
 Peuple, Le Pire Duchene, Le Vieux Cordelier, and others equally 
 absurd and bloodthirsty." — Pall Mall Gazette, 15th October, 1869. 
 " Continental Journalism." 
 
 Page 74. 
 
 " Nothing tends more to impede the progress of liberty, nothing 
 is more fatal to independence of spirit in the public, than to add to 
 the powers of the priesthood in matters of education. If you give 
 them such increased powers by legislative enactment, you do more 
 than you could effect by any other means to enslave and degrade a 
 people subject to their influence." — John Bright. 
 ■ It is, however, one thing to deny to the clergy an exclusive or a 
 dominant sway in matters of education, and quite another to refuse 
 to them all share whatever in the work. 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 Page 30. 
 " So, when Zwingle died, exclaiming, ' The body they can kill, the 
 soul they cannot kill,' — over his corpse animosity relented suffi- 
 ciently to acknowledge, — ' If you were a heretic, Zwingle, you were 
 ■an honesst man.'" 
 
 Page 41. 
 
 " Eadem ratio fecit hominem hominum appetentem, cumque his 
 naturS, et sermone, et usu congruentem, ut profectus a oaritate 
 •domesticorum, ac suonim, serpat longius, et se imphcet primum 
 «ivium, deinde omnium mortalium societate : atque, ut ad Architam 
 scripsit Plato, non sibi se soli uatum meminerit, sed patriaj, sed 
 suis, ut perexigua pars ipsi relinquatur." Cicero. De Finibus — 
 II. 14. 
 
 Page 51. 
 
 " En general, avant qu'une terre puisse gtre cultivefi, il faut qu'elle 
 soit defrichee, qu'eUe soit preparee par une multitude de travaux 
 
 et de depenses diverses or, comme ces richesses 
 
 inobilieres, incorporSes jjuur aiiisi dire dans les terres, ne peuvent 
 plus en etre separees, il est sensible qu' on ne peut se porter a faire 
 ces depenses que sous la condition de rester proprietaire de ces 
 terres :" ... 
 
 Mercier de la Eiviire, quoted by Ch. Dupont White : " Relations 
 du Travail avec le Capital :" 1846, p. 312. 
 
 A. IRELAND AND CO., PRIKTERS, MANCHESTER. 
 
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