{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_22865/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_22865","id":"gutenberg_22865","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22865","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Economics","Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: History - European","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, baron de l'Aulne, 1727-1781"],"text":"Produced by Paul Murray, Rene Anderson Benitz and the\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCRITICAL MISCELLANIES\n\n\nby\n\nJOHN MORLEY\n\n\nVOL. II.\n\nEssay 2: Turgot\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nMACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED\nNew York: The MacMillan Company\n1905\n\n\n\n\nTURGOT.\n\n\nI.\n                                                         PAGE\n\nBirth and family descent                                  41\n\nHis youth at the Sorbonne                                 47\n\nIntellectual training                                     52\n\nHis college friends: Morellet, and Lomenie de Brienne     54\n\nTurgot refused to become an ecclesiastic                  56\n\nHis revolt against dominant sophisms of the time          60\n\nLetter to Buffon                                          61\n\nPrecocity of his intellect                                65\n\nLetter to Madame de Graffigny                             65\n\nIllustrates the influence of Locke                        69\n\nViews on marriage                                         72\n\nOn the controversy opened by Rousseau                     72\n\nTurgot's power of grave suspense                          76\n\n\nII.\n\nFirst Discourse at the Sorbonne                           78\n\nAnalysis of its contents                                  80\n\nCriticisms upon it                                        86\n\nIt is one-sided                                           87\n\nAnd not truly historic                                    88\n\nFails to distinguish doctrine from organisation           89\n\nOmits the Christianity of the East                        90\n\nAnd economic conditions                                   92\n\nThe contemporary position of the Church in Europe         93\n\n\nIII.\n\nSecond Discourse at the Sorbonne                          96\n\nIts pregnant thesis of social causation                   97\n\nCompared with the thesis of Bossuet                       99\n\nAnd of Montesquieu                                       100\n\nAnalysis of the Second Discourse                         102\n\nCharacteristic of Turgot's idea of Progress              106\n\nIts limitation                                           108\n\nGreat merit of the Discourse, that it recognises\nordered succession                                       110\n\n\nIV.\n\nTurgot appointed Intendant of the Limousin               111\n\nFunctions of an Intendant                                112\n\nAccount of the Limousin                                  114\n\nTurgot's passion for good government                     118\n\nHe attempts to deal with the _Taille_                      119\n\nThe road _Corvee_                                          121\n\nTurgot's endeavours to enlighten opinion                 126\n\nMilitary service                                         129\n\n   \"     transport                                       131\n\nThe collection of taxes                                  132\n\nTurgot's private benevolence                             133\n\nIntroduces the potato                                    134\n\nFounds an academy                                        135\n\nEncourages manufacturing industry                        136\n\nEnlightened views on Usury                               137\n\nHas to deal with a scarcity                              138\n\nHis plans                                                139\n\nInstructive facts connected with this famine             142\n\nTurgot's Reflections on the Formation and\nDistribution of Wealth                                   149\n\n\nV.\n\nTurgot made Controller-General                           150\n\nHis reforms                                              151\n\nTheir reception                                          153\n\nHis unpopularity                                         156\n\nDifficulties with the king                               157\n\nHis dismissal                                            158\n\nHis pursuits in retirement                               159\n\nConclusion                                               162\n\n\n\n\nTURGOT.\n\nI.\n\n\nAnne-Robert-Jacques Turgot was born in Paris on the 10th of May 1727. He\ndied in 1781. His life covered rather more than half a century,\nextending, if we may put it a little roughly, over the middle fifty\nyears of the eighteenth century. This middle period marks the exact date\nof the decisive and immediate preparation for the Revolution. At its\nbeginning neither the intellectual nor the social elements of the great\ndisruption had distinctly appeared, or commenced their fermentation. At\nits close their work was completed, and we may count the months thence\nuntil the overthrow of every institution in France. It was between 1727\nand 1781 that the true revolution took place. The events from '89 were\nonly finishing strokes, the final explosion of a fabric under which\nevery yard had been mined, by the long endeavour for half a century of\nan army of destroyers deliberate and involuntary, direct and oblique,\nsuch as the world has never at any other time beheld.\n\nIn 1727 Voltaire was returning from his exile in England, to open the\nlong campaign, of which he was from that time forth to the close of his\ndays the brilliant and indomitable captain. He died in 1778, bright,\nresolute, humane, energetic, to the last. Thus Turgot's life was almost\nexactly contemporary with the pregnant era of Voltaire's activity. In\nthe same spring in which Turgot died, Maurepas too came to his end, and\nNecker was dismissed. The last event was the signal at which the floods\nof the deluge fairly began to rise, and the revolutionary tide to swell.\n\nIt will be observed, moreover, that Turgot was born half a generation\nafter the first race of the speculative revolutionists. Rousseau,\nDiderot, Helvetius, Condillac, D'Alembert, as well as the foreign Hume,\nso much the greatest of the whole band of innovators, because\npenetrating so much nearer to the depths, all came into the world which\nthey were to confuse so unspeakably, in the half dozen years between\n1711 and 1717. Turgot was of later stock and comes midway between these\nfathers of the new church, between Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, and the\ngeneration of its fiery practical apostles, Condorcet, Mirabeau,\nRobespierre.[1] The only other illustrious European of this decade was\nAdam Smith, who was born in 1723, and between whose labours and some of\nthe most remarkable of Turgot's there was so much community. We cannot\ntell how far the gulf between Turgot and the earlier band was fixed by\nthe accident that he did not belong to their generation in point of\ntime. The accident is in itself only worth calling attention to, in\nconnection with his distance from them in other and more important\npoints than time.\n\n[Footnote 1: Born in 1743, 1749, and 1759 respectively.]\n\nThe years of Turgot exactly bridge the interval between the ministry of\nthe infamous Dubois and the ministry of the inglorious Calonne; between\nthe despair and confusion of the close of the regency, and the despair\nand confusion of the last ten years of the monarchy. In 1727 we stand on\nthe threshold of that far-resounding fiery workshop, where a hundred\nhands wrought the cunning implements and Cyclopean engines that were to\nserve in storming the hated citadels of superstition and injustice. In\n1781 we emerge from these subterranean realms into the open air, to find\nourselves surrounded by all the sounds and portents of imminent ruin.\nThis, then, is the significance of the date of Turgot's birth.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nHis stock was Norman, and those who amuse themselves by finding a vital\ncondition of the highest ability in antiquity of blood, may quote the\ndescent of Turgot in support of their delusion. His biographers speak of\none Togut, a Danish Prince, who walked the earth some thousand years\nbefore the Christian era; and of Saint Turgot in the eleventh century,\nthe Prior of Durham, biographer of Bede, and first minister of Malcolm\nIII. of Scotland. We shall do well not to linger in this too dark and\nfrigid air. Let us pass over Togut and Saint Turgot; and the founder of\na hospital in the thirteenth century; and the great-great-grandfather\nwho sat as president of the Norman nobles in the States-General of 1614,\nand the grandfather who deserted arms for the toga. History is hardly\nconcerned in this solemn marshalling of shades.\n\nEven with Michel-Etienne, the father of Turgot, we have here no dealing.\nLet it suffice to say that he held high municipal office in Paris, and\nperformed its duties with exceptional honour and spirit, giving\nsumptuous fetes, constructing useful public works, and on one occasion\njeoparding his life with a fine intrepidity that did not fail in his\nson, in appeasing a bloody struggle between two bodies of Swiss and\nFrench guards. There is in the library of the British Museum a folio of\n1740, containing elaborate plates and letterpress, descriptive of the\nfetes celebrated by the city of Paris with Michel-Etienne Turgot as its\nchief officer, on the occasion of the marriage of Louise-Elizabeth of\nFrance to Don Philip of Spain (August 1739). As one contemplates these\ncourtly sumptuosities, La Bruyere's famous picture recurs to the mind,\nof far other scenes in the same gay land. 'We see certain wild animals,\nmale and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by\nthe sun, bound to the earth that they dig and work with unconquerable\npertinacity; they have a sort of articulate voice, and when they rise on\ntheir feet, they show a human face; in fact they are men.' That these\nviolent and humiliating contrasts are eternal and inevitable, is the\nlast word of the dominant philosophy of society; and one of the reasons\nwhy Turgot's life is worth studying, is that he felt in so pre-eminent\na degree the urgency of lightening the destiny of that livid, wild,\nhardly articulate, ever-toiling multitude.\n\nThe sum of the genealogical page is that Turgot inherited that position\nwhich, falling to worthy souls, is of its nature so invaluable, a family\ntradition of exalted courage and generous public spirit. There have been\nnoble and patriotic men who lacked this inheritance, but we may be sure\nthat even these would have fought the battle at greater advantage, if a\nmagnanimous preference for the larger interests had come to them as a\nmatter of instinctive prejudice, instead of being acquired as a matter\nof reason. The question of titular aristocracy is not touched by this\nconsideration, for titular aristocracies postpone the larger interests\nto the narrow interests of their order. And Turgot's family was only of\nthe secondary noblesse of the robe.\n\nTurgot was the third son of his father. As the employments which persons\nof respectable family could enter were definite and stereotyped, there\nwas little room for debate as to the calling for which a youth should\nprepare himself. Arms, civil administration, and the church, furnished\nthe only three openings for a gentleman. The effects of this rigorous\nadherence to artificial and exclusive rules of caste were manifestly\ninjurious to society, as such caste rules always are after a society has\npassed beyond a certain stage. To identify the interests of the richest\nand most powerful class with the interests of the church, of the army,\nand of a given system of civil government, was indeed to give to that\nclass the strongest motives for leaving the existing social order\nundisturbed. It unfortunately went too far in this direction, by\nfostering the strongest possible motives of hostility to such\nmodifications in these gigantic departments as changing circumstances\nmight make needful, in the breasts of the only men who could produce\nthese modifications without a violent organic revolution. Such a system\nleft too little course to spontaneity, and its curse is the curse of\nFrench genius. Some of its evil effects were obvious and on the surface.\nThe man who should have been a soldier found himself saying mass and\nhearing confessions. Vauvenargues, who was born for diplomacy or\nliterature, passed the flower of his days in the organised dreariness of\ngarrisons and marches. In our own day communities and men who lead them\nhave still to learn that no waste is so profuse and immeasurable, even\nfrom the material point of view, as that of intellectual energy,\nchecked, uncultivated, ignored, or left without its opportunity. In\nFrance, until a very short time before the Revolution, we can hardly\npoint to a single recognised usage which did not augment this waste. The\neldest son usually preserved the rank and status of the family, whether\ncivil or military. Turgot's eldest brother was to devote himself to\ncivil administration, the next to be a soldier, and Turgot himself to be\nan ecclesiastic.\n\nThe second of the brothers, who began by following arms, had as little\ntaste for them as the future minister had for the church. It is rather\nremarkable that he seems to have had the same passion for\nadministration, and he persuaded the government after the loss of Canada\nthat Guiana, to be called Equinoctial France, would if well governed\nbecome some sort of equivalent for the northern possession. He was made\nGovernor-general, but he had forgotten to take the climate into account,\nand the scheme came to an abortive end, involving him in a mass of\nconfused quarrels which lasted some years. He had a marked love for\nbotany, agriculture, and the like; was one of the founders of the\nSociety of Agriculture in 1760; and was the author of various pieces on\npoints of natural history.[2]\n\n[Footnote 2: Among others, of a little volume still to be met with in\nlibraries, _Sur la maniere de preparer les diverses curiosites\nd'histoire naturelle_ (1758).]\n\nTurgot went as a boarder first to the college of Louis-le-Grand, then to\nthat of Plessis; thence to the seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he took\nthe degree of bachelor in theology; and from Saint Sulpice to the\nSorbonne. His childhood and youth, like that of other men who have\nafterwards won love and admiration, have their stories. The affection of\none biographer records how the pocket-money with which the young Turgot\nwas furnished, used always instantly to disappear, no one knew how nor\non what. It was discovered that he gave it to poor schoolfellows to\nenable them to buy books. Condorcet justly remarks on this trait, that\n'goodness and even generosity are not rare sentiments in childhood; but\nfor these sentiments to be guided by such wisdom, this really seems the\npresage of an extraordinary man, all whose sentiments should be virtues,\nbecause they would always be controlled by reason.'[3] It is at any rate\ncertain that the union of profound benevolence with judgment, which this\nstory prefigures, was the supreme distinction of Turgot's character. It\nis less pleasant to learn that Turgot throughout his childhood was\nalways repulsed by his mother, who deemed him sullen, because he failed\nto make his bow with good grace, and was shy and taciturn. He fled from\nher visitors, and would hide himself behind sofa or screen; until\ndragged forth for social inspection.[4] This is only worth recording,\nbecause the same external awkwardness and lack of grace remained with\nTurgot to the end, and had something to do with the unpopularity that\ncaused his fall. Perhaps he was thinking of his own childhood, when he\nwrote that fathers are often indifferent, or incessantly occupied with\nthe details of business, and that he had seen the very parents who\ntaught their children that there is nothing so noble as to make people\nhappy, yet repulse the same children when urging some one's claim to\ncharity or favour, and intimidate their young sensibility, instead of\nencouraging and training it.[5]\n\n[Footnote 3: _Vie de Turgot_, p. 8 (ed. 1847).]\n\n[Footnote 4: _Memoires de Morellet_, i. 12 (ed. 1822).]\n\n[Footnote 5: Lettre a Madame de Graffigny. _OEuv._ ii. 793.]\n\nMorellet, one of the best known of the little group of friends and\nbrother students at the Sorbonne, has recorded other authentic traits.\nTurgot, he says, united the simplicity of a child to a peculiar dignity\nthat forced the respect of his comrades. His modesty and reserve were\nthose of a girl, and those equivocal references in which the\nundisciplined animalism of youth often has a stealthy satisfaction,\nalways called the blood to his cheeks and covered him with\nembarrassment. For all that, his spirit was full of a frank gaiety, and\nhe would indulge in long bursts of laughter at a pleasantry or frolic\nthat struck him. We may be glad to know this, because without express\ntestimony to the contrary, there would have been some reason for\nsuspecting that Turgot was defective in that most wholesome and human\nquality of a capacity for laughter.\n\nThe sensitive purity which Morellet notices, not without slight lifting\nof the eyebrow, remained with Turgot throughout his life. This was the\nmore remarkable from the prevailing laxity of opinion upon this\nparticular subject, perhaps the worst blemish upon the feeling and\nintelligence of the revolutionary schools. For it was not merely\nlibertines, like Marmontel, making a plea for their own dissoluteness,\nwho habitually spoke of these things with inconsiderate levity. Grave\nmen of blameless life, like Condorcet, deliberately argued in favour of\nleaving a loose rein to the mutual inclinations of men and women, and\nlaughed at the time 'wasted in quenching the darts of the flesh.'[6] It\nis true that at D'Holbach's house, the headquarters of the dogmatic\natheism in which the irreligious reaction culminated, this was the only\ntheme on which freedom of speech was sometimes curtailed. But the fact\nthat such a restriction should have been noticed, suggests that it was\nexceptional.[7] One good effect followed, let us admit. The virtuousness\nof continence was not treated as a superstition by those who vindicated\nit as Turgot did, but discussed like any other virtue; and was defended\nnot as an intuition of faith, but as a reasoned conclusion of the\njudgment. It was permitted to occupy no solitary and mysterious throne,\napart and away from other conditions and parts of human excellence and\nsocial wellbeing. There is intrinsically no harm in any virtue being\naccepted in the firm shape of a simple prejudice. On the contrary, there\nis a multitude of practical advantages in such a consolidated and\nspontaneously working order. But in considering conduct and character,\nand forming an opinion upon infractions of a virtue, we cannot be just\nunless we have analysed its conditions, and this is what the eighteenth\ncentury did defectively with regard to that particular virtue which so\noften usurps the name of all of the virtues together. In this respect\nTurgot's original purity of character withdrew him from the error of the\ntime.\n\n[Footnote 6: Letter to Turgot, _OEuv. de Condorcet_, i. 228. See also\nvi. 264, and 523-526.]\n\n[Footnote 7: Morellet, i. 133.]\n\nWith the moral quality that we have seen, Morellet adds that for the\nintellectual side Turgot as a boy had a prodigious memory. He could\nretain as many as a hundred and eighty lines of verse, after hearing\nthem twice, or sometimes even once. He knew by heart most of Voltaire's\nfugitive pieces, and long passages in his poems and tragedies. His\npredominant characteristics are described as penetration, and that other\nvaluable faculty to which penetration is an indispensable adjunct, but\nwhich it by no means invariably implies--a spirit of broad and\nsystematic co-ordination. The unusual precocity of his intelligence was\nperhaps imperfectly appreciated by his fellow-students, it led him so\nfar beyond any point within their sight. It has been justly said of him\nthat he passed at once from infancy to manhood, and was in the rank of\nsages before he had shaken off the dust of the playground. He was of the\ntype of those who strangle serpents while yet in the cradle. We know the\ntemperament which from the earliest hour consumes with eager desire for\nknowledge, and energises spontaneously with unceasing and joyful\nactivity in that bright and pure morning of intellectual curiosity,\nwhich neither the dull tumultuous needs of life nor the mists of\nspiritual misgiving have yet come up to make dim. Of this temperament\nwas Turgot in a superlative degree, and its fire never abated in him\nfrom college days, down to the last hours while he lay racked with\nirremediable anguish.\n\nTo a certain extent this was the glorious mark of all the best minds of\nthe epoch; from Voltaire downwards, they were inflamed by an\ninextinguishable and universal curiosity. Voltaire hardly left a single\ncorner of the field entirely unexplored in science, poetry, history,\nphilosophy. Rousseau wrote a comic opera and was an ardent botanist.\nDiderot wrote, and wrote well and intelligently, _de omni scibili_, and\nwas the author alike of the Letters on the Blind and Jacques le\nFataliste. No era was ever so little the era of the specialist.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe society of the Sorbonne corresponded exactly to a college at one of\nour universities, and will be distinguished by the careful reader from\nthe faculty of theology in the university, which was usually, but not\nalways, composed of _docteurs de Sorbonne_. It consisted of a large\nnumber of learned men in the position of fellows, and a smaller number\nof younger students, who lived together just as undergraduates do, in\nseparate apartments, but with common hall, library, and garden. One of\nTurgot's masters, Sigorgne, was the first to teach in the university the\nNewtonian principles of astronomy, instead of the Cartesian hypothesis\nof vortices. As is well known, Cartesianism had for various reasons\ntaken a far deeper root in France than it ever did here, and held its\nplace a good generation after Newtonian ideas were accepted and taught\nat Oxford and Cambridge.[8] Voltaire's translation of the _Principia_,\nwhich he was prevented by the Cartesian chancellor, D'Aguesseau, from\npublishing until 1738, overthrew the reigning system, and gave a strong\nimpulse to scientific inquiry.\n\n[Footnote 8: Whewell's _Hist. Induct. Sciences_, ii. 147-159.]\n\nTurgot mastered the new doctrine with avidity. In the acute letter of\ncriticism which, while still at the Sorbonne, he addressed to Buffon, he\npointedly urged it as the first objection to that writer's theory of the\nformation and movements of the planets, that any attempt at fundamental\nexplanations of this kind was a departure from 'the simplicity and safe\nreserve of the philosophy of Newton.'[9] He only, however, made a\ncertain advance in mathematics. He appears to have had no peculiar or\nnatural aptitude for this study; though he is said to have constantly\nblamed himself for not having gone more deeply into it. It is hardly to\nbe denied that mathematical genius and philosophic genius do not always\ngo together. The precision, definiteness, and accurate limitations of\nthe method of the one, are usually unfriendly to the brooding,\ntentative, uncircumscribed meditation which is the productive humour in\nthe other. Turgot was essentially of the philosophising temper. Though\nthe activity of his intelligence was incessant, his manner of work was\nthe reverse of quick. 'When he applied to work,' says Morellet, 'when it\nwas a question of writing or doing, he was slow and loitering. Slow,\nbecause he insisted on finishing all he did perfectly, according to his\nown conception of perfection, which was most difficult of attainment,\neven down to the minutest detail; and because he would not receive\nassistance, being never contented with what he had not done himself. He\nalso loitered a great deal, losing time in arranging his desk and\ncutting his pens, not that he was not thinking profoundly through all\nthis trifling; but mere thinking did not advance his work.'[10] We may\nadmit, perhaps, that the work was all the better for the thinking that\npreceded it, and that the time which Turgot seemed to waste in cutting\nhis pens and setting his table in order was more fruitfully spent than\nthe busiest hours of most men.\n\n[Footnote 9: _OEuv. de Turgot_, ii. 783. (Edition of Messrs. Eugene\nDaire and H. Dussard, published in the _Collection des Principaux\nEconomistes_, published by Guillaumin, 1844.)]\n\n[Footnote 10: _Memoires_, i. 16.]\n\nWe know the books which Turgot and his friends devoured with ardour.\nLocke, Bayle, Voltaire, Buffon, relieved Clarke, Leibnitz, Spinosa,\nCudworth; and constant discussions among themselves both cleared up and\nenlarged what they read.[11] One of the disputants, certainly not the\nleast amiable, has painted his own part in these discussions: 'I was\nviolent in discussion,' says the good Morellet, as he was pleasantly\ncalled, 'but without my antagonist being able to reproach me with a\nsingle insult; and sometimes I used to spit blood, after a debate in\nwhich I had not allowed a single personality to escape me.'[12]\n\n[Footnote 11: _Ib._ i. 20.]\n\n[Footnote 12: _Ib._ i. 19.]\n\nAnother member of the circle was Lomenie de Brienne, who, in long years\nafter, was chief minister of France for a narrow space through the\nmomentous winter of 1787 and the spring of the next year, filling the\ngap between Calonne and Necker in a desperate and fatal manner.\nLomenie's ambition dated from his youth; and it was always personal and\nmean. While Turgot, his friend, was earnestly meditating on the\ndestinies of the race and the conditions of their development, Lomenie\nwas dreaming only of the restoration of his ancestral chateau of\nBrienne. Though quite without means, he planned this in his visions on a\nscale of extreme costliness and magnificence. The dreams fell true.\nMoney came to the family, and the chateau was built exactly as he had\nprojected it, at a cost of two million francs.[13] His career was\nsplendid. He was clever, industrious, and persevering after his fashion,\nastute, lively, pretentious, a person ever by well-planned hints leading\nyou to suppose his unrevealed profundity to be bottomless; in a word, in\nall respects an impostor.[14] He espoused that richly dowered bride the\nChurch, rose to be Archbishop of Toulouse, and would have risen to be\nArchbishop of Paris, but for the King's over-scrupulous conviction that\n'an Archbishop of Paris must at least believe in God.' He became an\nimmense favourite with Marie Antoinette and the court, was made Minister\n'like Richelieu and Mazarin,' and after having postured and played\ntricks in face of the bursting deluge, and given the government the\nfinal impulse into the abyss of bankruptcy, was dismissed with the rich\narchbishopric of Sens and a cardinal's hat for himself, and good\nsinecures for his kinsfolk. His last official act was to send for the\n20,000 livres for his month's salary, not fully due. His brother, the\nCount of Brienne, remained in office as Minister of War. He was a person\nof no talent, his friends allowed, but 'assisted by a good chief clerk,\nhe would have made a good minister; he meant well.' This was hardly a\nsufficient reason for letting him take 100,000 francs out of an\nimpoverished treasury for the furniture of his residence. The hour,\nhowever, was just striking, and the knife was sharpened.\n\n[Footnote 13: Morellet's _Memoires_, i. 17-21; 262-270; and ii. 15.]\n\n[Footnote 14: Marmontel's _Memoires_, bk. xiii.; Morellet, however, with\npersevering friendliness, denies the truth of Marmontel's picture (ii.\n465).]\n\nAll his paltry honour and glory Lomenie de Brienne enjoyed for a season,\nuntil the Jacobins laid violent hands upon him. He poisoned himself in\nhis own palace, just as a worse thing was about to befall him. Alas,\npoetic justice is the exception in history, and only once in many\ngenerations does the drama of the state criminal rise to an artistic\nfifth act. This was in 1794. In 1750 a farewell dinner had been given in\nthe rooms of the Abbe de Brienne at the Sorbonne, and the friends made\nan appointment for a game of tennis behind the church of the Sorbonne in\nthe year 1800.[15] The year came, but no Lomenie, nor Turgot, and the\nSorbonne itself had vanished.\n\n[Footnote 15: Morellet, i. 21.]\n\nWhen the time arrived for his final acceptance of an ecclesiastical\ndestination, Turgot felt that honourable repugnance, which might have\nbeen anticipated alike from his morality and his intelligence, to enter\ninto an engagement which would irrevocably bind him for the rest of his\nlife, either always to hold exactly the same opinions, or else to\ncontinue to preach them publicly after he had ceased to hold them\nprivately. No certainty of worldly comfort and advantage could in his\neyes counterbalance the possible danger and shame of a position, which\nmight place him between the two alternatives of stifling his\nintelligence and outraging his conscience--the one by blind,\nunscrutinising, and immovable acceptance of all the dogmas and\nsentiments of the Church; the other by the inculcation as truths of what\nhe believed to be false, and the proscription as falsehoods of what he\nbelieved to be true. The horror and disgrace of such a situation were\ntoo striking for one who used his mind and acted on principle, to run\nany risk of that situation becoming his own. An ambitious timeserver\nlike Lomenie, or a contented adherent of use and wont like Morellet,\nmight well regard such considerations as the products of a weak and\neccentric scrupulosity. Turgot was of other calibre, holding it to be\nonly a degree less unprincipled than the avowed selfishness of the\nadventurer, to contract so serious an engagement on the strength of\ncommon hearsay and current usage, without deliberate personal reflection\nand inquiry.\n\nAt the close of his course at the Sorbonne, he wrote a letter to his\nfather giving the reasons for this resolution to abandon all idea of an\necclesiastical career and the advancement which it offered him, and\nseeking his consent for the change from Church to law. His father\napproved of the resolution, and gave the required consent. As Turgot had\nstudied law as well as theology, no time was lost, and he formally\nentered the profession of the law as Deputy-Counsellor of the\nProcureur-General at the beginning of 1752.\n\nHis college friends had remonstrated warmly at this surrender of a\nbrilliant prospect. A little deputation of young abbes, fresh from their\nvows, waited on him at his rooms; in that humour of blithe and sagacious\ngood-will which comes so naturally to men who believe they have just\nfound out Fortune's trick and yoked her fast for ever to the car, they\ndeclared that he was about to do something opposed to his own interest\nand inconsistent with his usual good sense. He was a younger son of a\nNorman house, and therefore poor; the law without a competency involved\nno consideration, and he could hope for no advancement in it: whereas in\nthe Church his family, being possessed of influence and credit, would\nhave no difficulty in procuring for him excellent abbeys and in good\ntime a rich bishopric; here he could realise all his fine dreams of\nadministration, and without ceasing to be a churchman could play the\nstatesman to his heart's content. In one profession he would waste his\ngenius in arguing trifling private affairs, while in the other he would\nbe of the highest usefulness to his country, and would acquire the\ngreatest reputation. Turgot, however, insisted on placing genius and\nreputation below the necessity of being honest. The object of an oath\nmight be of the least important kind, but he could neither allow himself\nto play with it, nor believe that a man could abase his profession in\npublic opinion, without at the same time abasing himself. '_You shall do\nas you will_,' he said; '_for my own part, it is impossible for me to\nwear a mask all my life_.'[16]\n\n[Footnote 16: Dupont de Nemours. Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_, pp. 8-10.]\n\nHis clear intelligence revolted from the dominant sophisms of that time,\nby which philosophers as well as ecclesiastics brought falsehood and\nhypocrisy within the four corners of a decent doctrine of truth and\nmorality. The churchman manfully argued that he could be most useful to\nthe world if he were well off and highly placed. The philosopher\ncontended that as the world would punish him if he avowed what he had\nwritten or what he believed, he was fully warranted in lying to the\nworld as to his writing and belief; for is not the right to have the\ntruth told to you, a thing forfeitable by tyranny and oppression?[17]\nTruth is not mocked, and these sophisms bore their fruit in due season.\nPerhaps if there had been found on either side in France a hundred\nrighteous men like Turgot, who would not fight in masks, the end might\nhave been other than it was. The lesson remains for those who dream that\nby reducing pretence to a nicely graduated system, and by leaving an\nexactly measured margin between what they really believe and what they\nfeign to believe, they are serving the great cause of order. French\nhistory informs us what becomes of social order so served. After all, no\nman can be sure that it is required of him to save society; every man\ncan be sure that he is called upon to keep himself clean from mendacity\nand equivoke. Such was Turgot's view.\n\n[Footnote 17: 'La necessite de mentir pour desavouer un ouvrage est une\nextremite qui repugne egalement a la conscience et a la noblesse du\ncaractere; mais le crime est pour les hommes injustes qui rendent ce\ndesaveu necessaire a la surete de celui qu'ils y forcent. Si vous avez\nerige en crime ce qui n'en est pas un, si vous avez porte atteinte, par\ndes lois absurdes ou par des lois arbitraires, au droit naturel qu'ont\ntous les hommes, non seulement d'avoir une opinion, mais de la rendre\npublique, alors vous meritez de perdre celui qu'a chaque homme\nd'entendre la verite de la bouche d'un autre, droit qui fonde seule\nl'obligation rigoureuse de ne pas mentir.'--Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_\n(_OEuv._ iv. 33, 34).]\n\nWe have said that Turgot disdained to fight under a mask. There was one\nexception, and only one. In 1754 there appeared two letters, nominally\nfrom an ecclesiastic to a magistrate, and entitled _Le Conciliateur_.\nHere it is enough to say that they were intended to enforce the\npropriety and duty of religious toleration. In a letter to a friend we\nfind Turgot saying, 'Although the _Conciliator_ is of my principles, and\nthose of our friend, I am astonished at your conjectures; _it is neither\nhis style nor mine_.'[18] Yet Turgot had written it. This is his one\npublic literary equivocation. Let us, at all events, allow that it was\nresorted to, not to break the law with safety, nor to cloak a malicious\nattack on a person, but to give additional weight by means of a harmless\nprosopopoeia, to an argument for the noblest of principles.[19]\n\n[Footnote 18: _OEuv._ ii. 685. Morellet says that it was written by\nLomenie de Brienne, 19.]\n\n[Footnote 19: See the note of Dupont de Nemours, _ad loc._]\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nBefore Turgot entered the great world, he had already achieved an amount\nof success in philosophic speculation, which placed him in the front\nrank of social thinkers. To that passion for study and the acquisition\nof knowledge which is not uncommon in youth, as it is one of the most\nattractive of youth's qualities, there was added in him what is\nunhappily not common in men and women of any age--an active impulse to\nuse his own intelligence upon the information which he gained from books\nand professors. He was no conceited or froward caviller at authority,\nnor born rebel against established teachers and governors. His\nunderstanding seriously craved a full and independent satisfaction, and\ncould draw this only from laborious meditation, which should either\ndisclose the inadequacy of the grounds for an opinion, or else establish\nit, with what would be to him a new and higher because an independently\nacquired, conclusiveness.\n\nHis letter to Buffon, to which we have already referred, is an\nillustration of this wise, and never captious nor ungracious, caution in\nreceiving ideas. Neither Buffon's reputation, nor the glow of his style,\nnor the dazzling ingenuity and grandeur of his conceptions--all of them\nso well calculated, at one-and-twenty, to throw even a vigilant\nintelligence off its guard--could divert Turgot from the prime\nscientific duty of confronting a theory with facts. Buffon was for\nexplaining the formation of the earth and the other planets, and their\nlateral movement, by the hypothesis that a comet had fallen obliquely on\nto the sun, driven off certain portions of its constituent matter in a\nstate of fusion, and that these masses, made spherical by the mutual\nattraction of their parts, were carried to different distances in\nproportion to their mass and the force originally impressed on them.\nBuffon may have been actuated, both here and in his other famous\nhypothesis of reproduction, by a desire, less to propound a true and\ndurable explanation, than to arrest by a bold and comprehensive\ngeneralisation that attention, which is only imperfectly touched by mere\ncollections of particular facts. The enormous impulse which even the\nmost unscientific of the speculations of Descartes had given to European\nthought, was a standing temptation to philosophers, not to discard nor\nrelax patient observation, but to bind together the results which they\narrived at by this process, by means of some hardy hypothesis. It might\nbe true or not, but it was at any rate sure to strike the imagination,\nwhich ever craves wholes; and to stimulate discussion and further\ndiscovery, by sending assailants and defenders alike in search of new\nfacts, to confirm or overthrow the position.[20]\n\n[Footnote 20: See Condorcet's eloge on Buffon (_OEuv._ iii. 335); and\na passage from Bourdon, quoted in Whewell's _Hist. Induct. Sci._ iii.\n348.]\n\nTurgot was less sensible of these possible advantages, than he was alive\nto the certain dangers of such a method. He perceived that to hold a\ntheory otherwise than as an inference from facts, is to have a strong\nmotive for looking at the facts in a predetermined light, or for\nignoring them; an involuntary predisposition most fatal to the discovery\nof truth, which is nothing more than the conformity of our conception of\nfacts to their adequately observed order. Why, he asks, do you replunge\nus into the night of hypotheses, justifying the Cartesians and their\nthree elements and their vortices? And whence comes your comet? Was it\nwithin the sphere of the sun's attraction? If not, how could it fall\nfrom the sphere of the other bodies, and fall on the sun, which was not\nacting on it? If it was, it must have fallen perpendicularly, not\nobliquely; and, therefore, if it imparted a lateral movement, this\ndirection must have been impressed on it. And, if so, why should not God\nhave impressed this movement upon the planets directly, as easily as\nupon the comet to communicate it to them? Finally, how could the planets\nhave left the body of the sun without falling back into it again? What\ncurve did they describe in leaving it, so as never to return? Can you\nsuppose that gravitation could cause the same body to describe a spiral\nand an ellipse? In the same exact spirit, Turgot brings known facts to\nbear on Buffon's theory of the arrangement of the terrestrial and marine\ndivisions of the earth's surface. The whole criticism he sent to Buffon\nanonymously, to assure him that the writer had no other motive than the\ninterest he took in the discovery of truth and the perfection of a great\nwork.[21]\n\n[Footnote 21: October, 1748. _OEuv._ ii. 782-784.]\n\nTurgot's is probably the only case where the biographer has, in emerging\nfrom the days of school and college, at once to proceed to expound and\ncriticise the intellectual productions of his hero, and straightway to\npresent fruit and flower of a time that usually does no more than\nprepare the unseen roots. There is, perhaps, a wider and more\nstimulating attraction of a dramatic kind in the study of characters\nwhich present a history of active and continuous growth; which, while\nabsolutely free from flimsy caprice and disordered eccentricity, are\never surprising our attention by an unsuspected word of calm judgment or\nfertile energy, a fresh interest or an added sympathy, by the\ndisappearance of some crudity or the assimilation of some new and richer\nquality. Of such gradual rise into full maturity we have here nothing to\nrecord. As a student Turgot had already formed the list of a number of\nworks which he designed to execute; poems, tragedies, philosophic\nromances, vast treatises on physics, history, geography, politics,\nmorals, metaphysics, and language.[22] Of some he had drawn out the\nplan, and even these plans and fragments possess a novelty and depth of\nview that belong even to the integrity of few works.\n\n[Footnote 22: Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_, 14.]\n\nBefore passing on to the more scientific speculations of this remarkable\nintelligence, it is worth while to notice his letter to Madame de\nGraffigny, both for the intrinsic merit and scope of the ideas it\ncontains and for the proof it furnishes of the interest, at once early\nand profound, which he took in moral questions lying at the very bottom,\nas well of sound character, as of a healthy society. Turgot's early\npassion for literature had made him seize an occasion of being\nintroduced to even so moderately renowned a professor of it as Madame de\nGraffigny. He happened to be intimate with her niece, who afterwards\nbecame the lively and witty wife of Helvetius, somewhat to the surprise\nof Turgot's friends. For although he persuaded Mademoiselle de\nLigniville to present him to her aunt, and though he assiduously\nattended Madame de Graffigny's literary gatherings, Turgot would\nconstantly quit the circle of men of letters for the sake of a game of\nbattledore with the comely and attractive niece. Hence the astonishment\nof men that from such familiarity there grew no stronger passion, and\nthat whatever the causes of such reserve, the only issue was a tender\nand lasting friendship.[23]\n\n[Footnote 23: Morellet, i. 140.]\n\nMadame de Graffigny had begged Turgot's opinion upon the manuscript of a\nwork composed, as so many others were, after the pattern of\nMontesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_,--now nearly thirty years old,--and\nbearing the accurately imitative title of _Lettres Peruviennes_. A\nPeruvian comes to Europe, and sends to a friend or mistress in Peru a\nseries of remarks on civilisation. Goldsmith's delightful _Citizen of\nthe World_ is the best known type in our own literature of this\nprimitive form of social criticism. The effect upon common opinion of\ncriticism cast in such a mould, presenting familiar habits,\ninstitutions, and observances, in a striking and unusual light, was to\ngive a kind of Socratic stimulus to people's ideas about education,\ncivilisation, conduct, and the other topics springing from a comparison\nbetween the manners of one community and another. That one of the two,\nwhether Peru, or China, or Persia, was a community drawn mainly from the\nimagination, did not render the contrast any the less effective in\nstirring men's minds.\n\nBy the middle of the century the air was full of ideas upon these social\nsubjects. The temptation was irresistible to turn from the confusion of\nsqualor, oppression, license, distorted organisation, penetrative\ndisorder, to ideal states comprising a little range of simple\ncircumstances, and a small number of types of virtuous and\nunsophisticated character. Much came of the relief thus sought and\nfound. It was the beginning of the subversive process, for it taught men\nto look away from ideas of practical amelioration. The genius of\nRousseau gave these dreams the shape which, in many respects, so\nunfortunately for France, finally attracted the bulk of the national\nsentiment and sympathy. But the vivid, humane, and inspiring pages of\n_Emile_ were not published until ten years after Turgot's letter to\nMadame de Graffigny:[24] a circumstance which may teach us that in moral\nas in physical discoveries, though one man may take the final step and\nreap the fame, the conditions have been prepared beforehand. It is\nalmost discouraging to think that we may reproduce such passages as the\nfollowing, without being open to the charge of slaying the slain, though\none hundred and twenty years have elapsed since it was written.\n\n[Footnote 24: Written in 1751. _OEuv._ ii. 785-794.]\n\n'Let Zilia show that our too arbitrary institutions have too often made\nus forget nature; that we have been the dupes of our own handiwork, and\nthat the savage who does not know how to consult nature knows how to\nfollow her. Let her criticise our pedantry, for it is this that\nconstitutes our education of the present day. Look at the Rudiments;\nthey begin by insisting on stuffing into the heads of children a crowd\nof the most abstract ideas. Those whom nature in her variety summons to\nher by all her objects, we fasten up in a single spot, we occupy them on\nwords which cannot convey any sense to them, because the sense of words\ncan only come with ideas, and ideas only come by degrees, starting from\nsensible objects.[25] But, besides, we insist on their acquiring them\nwithout the help that we have had, we whom age and experience have\nformed. We keep their imagination prisoner, we deprive them of the\nsight of objects by which nature gives to the savage his first notions\nof all things, of all the sciences even. We have not the coup-d'oeil\nof nature.\n\n[Footnote 25: 'On sera surpris que je compte l'etude des langues au\nnombre des inutilites de l'education,' etc.--_Emile_, bk. ii.]\n\n'It is the same with morality; general ideas again spoil all. People\ntake great trouble to tell a child that he must be just, temperate, and\nvirtuous; and has it the least idea of virtue? Do not say to your son,\n_Be virtuous_, but make him find pleasure in being so; develop within\nhis heart the germ of sentiments that nature has placed there.[26] There\nis often much more need for bulwarks against education, than against\nnature. Give him opportunities of being truthful, liberal,\ncompassionate; rely on the human heart; leave these precious seeds to\nbloom in the air which surrounds them; do not stifle them under a\nquantity of frames and network. I am not one of those who want to reject\ngeneral and abstract ideas; they are necessary; but I by no means think\nthem in their place in our method of instruction. I would have them come\nto children as they come to men, by degrees.\n\n[Footnote 26: See Locke, _Of Education_, Sec.Sec. 81, 184, etc.]\n\n'Another article of our education, which strikes me as bad and\nridiculous, is our severity towards these poor children. They do\nsomething silly; we take them up as if it were extremely important.\nThere is a multitude of these follies, of which they will cure\nthemselves by age alone. But people do not count on that; they insist\nthat the son should be well bred, and they overwhelm him with little\nrules of civility, often frivolous, which can only harass him, as he\ndoes not know the reason for them. I think it would be enough to hinder\nhim from being troublesome to the persons that he sees.[27] The rest\nwill come, little by little. Inspire him with the desire of pleasing; he\nwill soon know more of the art than all the masters could teach him.\nPeople wish again that a child should be grave; they think it wise for\nit not to run, and fear every moment that it will fall. What happens?\nYou weary and enfeeble it. We have especially forgotten that it is a\npart of education to form the body.'[28]\n\n[Footnote 27: 'La seule lecon de morale qui convienne a l'enfance, et la\nplus importante a tout age, est de ne jamais faire de mal a personne,'\netc. _Emile_, bk. ii. 'Never trouble yourself about these faults in\nthem, which you know age will cure. And therefore want of well-fashioned\ncivility in the carriage ... should be the parents' least care while\nthey are young. If his tender mind be filled with a veneration for his\nparents and teachers, which consists in love and esteem and a fear to\noffend them; and with respect and good-will to all people; that respect\nwill of itself teach these ways of expressing it, which he observes most\nacceptable,' etc.--Locke, _Of Education_, Sec.Sec. 63, 67, etc.]\n\n[Footnote 28: 'Vous donnez la science, a la bonne heure; moi je m'occupe\nde l'instrument propre a l'acquerir,' etc.--_Emile._]\n\nThe reader who remembers Locke's Thoughts concerning Education\n(published in 1690), and the particularly homely prescriptions upon the\nsubjects of the infant body with which that treatise opens, will\nrecognise the source of Turgot's inspiration. The same may be said of\nthe other wise passages in this letter, upon the right attitude of a\nfather towards his child. It was not merely the metaphysics of the sage\nand positive Locke which laid the revolutionary train in France. This\ninfluence extended over the whole field, and even Rousseau confesses the\nobligations of the imaginary governor of Emile to the real Locke.\n\nWe are again plainly in the Lockian atmosphere, when Turgot speaks of\nmen being the dupes of 'general ideas, which are true because drawn from\nnature, but which people embrace with a narrow stiffness that makes them\nfalse, because they no longer combine them with circumstances, taking\nfor absolute what is only the expression of a relation.' The merit of\nthis and the other educational parts of the piece, is not their\noriginality, but that kind of complete and finished assimilation which\nis all but tantamount to independent thought, and which in certain\nconditions may be much more practically useful.\n\nNot less important to the happiness of men than the manner of their\neducation, is their own cultivation of a wise spirit of tolerance in\nconduct. 'I should like to see explained,' Turgot says, 'the causes of\nalienation and disgust between people who love one another. I believe\nthat after living awhile with men, we perceive that bickerings,\nill-humours, teasings on trifles, perhaps cause more troubles and\ndivisions among them than serious things. How many bitternesses have\ntheir origin in a word, in forgetfulness of some slight observances. If\npeople would only weigh in an exact balance so many little wrongs, if\nthey would only put themselves in the place of those who have to\ncomplain of them, if they would only reflect how many times they have\nthemselves given way to humours, how many things they have forgotten! A\nsingle word spoken in disparagement of our intelligence is enough to\nmake us irreconcilable, and yet how often have we been deceived in the\nvery same matter. How many persons of understanding have we taken for\nfools? Why should not others have the same privilege as ourselves?...\nAh, what address is needed to live together, to be compliant without\ncringing, to expose a fault without harshness, to correct without\nimperious air, to remonstrate without ill-temper!' All this is wise and\ngood, but, alas, as Turgot had occasion by and by to say, little comes\nof giving rules instead of breeding habits.\n\nIt is curious that Turgot as early in his career as this should have\nprotested against one of the most dangerous doctrines of the\n_philosophe_ school. 'I have long thought,' he says, 'that our nation\nneeds to have marriage and true marriage preached to it. We contract\nmarriages ignobly, from views of ambition or interest; and as many of\nthem are unhappy in consequence, we may see growing up from day to day a\nfashion of thinking that is extremely mischievous to the community, to\nmanners, to the stability of families, and to domestic happiness and\nvirtue.'[29] Looseness of opinion as to the family and the conditions of\nits wellbeing and stability, was a flaw that ran through the whole\nperiod of revolutionary thought. It was not surprising that the family\nshould come in for its share of destructive criticism, along with the\nother elements of the established system, but it is a proof of the\nsolidity of Turgot's understanding that he should from the first have\ndetected the mischievousness of this side of the great social attack.\nNor did subsequent discussion with the champions of domestic license\nhave any effect upon his opinion.\n\n[Footnote 29: ii. 790.]\n\nHe makes the protest which the moralist makes, and has to make in every\nage, against the practice of determining the expediency of a marriage by\nconsiderations of money or rank. There is a great abuse, he says, in the\nmanner in which marriages are made without the two persons most\nconcerned having any knowledge of one another, and solely under the\nauthority of the parents, who are guided either by fortune, or else by\nstation, that will one day translate itself into fortune. 'I know,' he\nsays, 'that even marriages of inclination do not always succeed. So from\nthe fact that sometimes people make mistakes in their choice, it is\nconcluded that we ought never to choose.' Condorcet, we may remember,\nmany years after, insisted on the banishment by public opinion of\navaricious and mercenary considerations from marriage, as one of the\nmost important means of diminishing the great inequalities in the\naccumulation of wealth.[30]\n\n[Footnote 30: _OEuv. de Condorcet_, vi. 245.]\n\nIn the same letter he took sides by anticipation in another cardinal\ncontroversy of the epoch, by declaring a preference for the savage over\nthe civilised state to be a 'ridiculous declamation.' This strange and\nfatal debate had been opened by Rousseau's memorable first Discourse,\nwhich was given to the world in 1750. Preference for the savage state\nwas the peculiar form assumed by emotional protests against the existing\nsystem of the distribution of wealth. Turgot from first to last resisted\nthe whole spirit of such protests. In this letter, where he makes his\nfirst approach to the subject, he insists on inequality of conditions,\nas alike necessary and useful. It is necessary 'because men are not born\nequal; because their strength, their intelligence, their passions, would\nbe perpetually overthrowing that momentous equilibrium among them, which\nthe laws might have established.'\n\n'What would society be without this inequality of conditions? Each\nindividual would be reduced to mere necessaries, or rather there would\nbe very many to whom mere necessaries would be by no means assured. Men\ncannot labour without implements and without the means of subsistence,\nuntil the gathering in of the produce. Those who have not had\nintelligence enough, or any opportunity to acquire these things, have no\nright to take them away from one who has earned and deserved them by his\nlabour. If the idle and ignorant were to despoil the industrious and the\nskilful, all works would be discouraged, and misery would become\nuniversal. It is alike more just and more useful that all those who have\nfallen behind either in wit or in good fortune, should lend their right\narms to those who know how best to employ them, who can pay them a wage\nin advance, and guarantee them a share in the future profits.... There\nis no injustice in this, that a man who has discovered a productive kind\nof work, and who has supplied his assistants with sustenance and the\nnecessary implements, who for this has only made free contracts with\nthem, should keep back the larger part, and that as payment for his\nadvances he should have less toil and more leisure. It is this leisure\nwhich gives him a better chance of revolving schemes, and still further\nincreasing his lights; and what he can economise from his share of the\nproduce, which is with entire equity a larger share, augments his\ncapital, and adds to his power of entering into new undertakings....\n\n'What would become of society, if things were not so, and if each person\ntilled his own little plot? He would also have to build his own house,\nand make his own clothes. What would the people live upon, who dwell in\nlands that produce no wheat? Who would transport the productions of one\ncountry to another country? The humblest peasant enjoys a multitude of\ncommodities often got together from remote climes.... This distribution\nof professions necessarily leads to inequality of conditions.'\n\nSo early was the rational answer ready for those socialistic sophisms\nwhich for so many years misled the most generous part of French\nintelligence. We may regret perhaps that in demolishing the vision of\nperfect social equality, Turgot did not show a more lively sense of the\nneed for lessening and softening unavoidable inequalities of condition.\nHowever capable these inequalities may be of scientific defence, they\nare none the less on that account in need of incessant and strenuous\npractical modification; and it is one of the most serious misfortunes of\nsociety, and is unhappily long likely to remain so, that since the\nabsorbing question of the reformation of the economic conditions of the\nsocial union has come more and more prominently to the front, gradually\nbut irresistibly thrusting behind both its religious and its political\nconditions, zeal for the amelioration of the common lot has in so few\nauspicious instances been according to knowledge; while the professors\nof science have been more careful to compose narrow apologies for\nindividual selfishness, than to extend as widely as possible the limits\nset by demonstrable principle to the improvement of the common life.\n\nWe may notice too in this Letter, what so many of Turgot's allies and\nfriends were disposed to complain of, but what will commend him to a\nless newly emancipated and therefore a less fanatical generation. There\nis a conspicuous absence of that peculiar boundlessness of hope, that\nzealous impatience for the instant realisation and fruition of all the\ninspirations of philosophic intelligence, which carried others\nimmediately around him so excessively far in the creed of\nPerfectibility. 'Liberty! I answer with a sigh, maybe that men are not\nworthy of thee! Equality! They would yearn after thee, but cannot\nattain!' Compared with the confident exultation and illimitable sense of\nthe worth of man which distinguished that time, there is something like\ndepression here, as in many other places in Turgot's writings. It is\nusually less articulate, and is rather conveyed by a running undertone,\nwhich so often reveals more of a writer's true mood and temper than is\nseen in his words, giving to them, by some unconscious and inscrutable\nprocess, living effects upon the reader's sense like those of eye and\nvoice and accompanying gesture.\n\nDejection, however, is perhaps not the most proper word for the humour\nof reserved and grave suspense, natural in those rare spirits who have\nrecognised how narrow is the way of truth and how few there be that\nenter therein, and what prolonged concurrence of favouring hazards with\ngigantic endeavour is needed for each smallest step in the halting\nadvancement of the race. With Turgot this was not the result of mere\nsentimental brooding. It had a deliberate and reasoned foundation in\nhistorical study. He was patient and not hastily sanguine as to the\nspeedy coming of the millennial future, exactly because history had\ntaught him to measure the laggard paces of the past. The secret of the\nintense hopefulness of that time lay in the mournfully erroneous\nconviction that the one condition of progress is plenteous increase of\nlight. Turgot saw very early that this is not so. '_It is not error_,'\nhe wrote, in a saying that every champion of a new idea should have\never in letters of flame before his eyes, '_which opposes the progress\nof truth: it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, everything\nthat favours inaction_.'[31]\n\n[Footnote 31: _OEuv._ ii. 672.]\n\nThe others left these potent elements of obstruction out of calculation\nand account. With Turgot they were the main facts to be considered, and\nthe main forces to be counteracted. It is the mark of the highest kind\nof union between sagacious, firm, and clear-sighted intelligence, and a\nwarm and steadfast glow of social feeling, when a man has learnt how\nlittle the effort of the individual can do either to hasten or direct\nthe current of human destiny, and yet finds in effort his purest\npleasure and his most constant duty. If we owe honour to that social\nendeavour which is stimulated and sustained by an enthusiastic\nconfidence in speedy and full fruition, we surely owe it still more to\nthose, who knowing how remote and precarious and long beyond their own\ndays is the hour of fruit, yet need no other spur nor sustenance than\nbare hope, and in this strive and endeavour and still endeavour. Here\nlies the true strength, and it was the possession of this strength and\nthe constant call and strain upon it, which gave Turgot in mien and\nspeech a gravity that revolted the frivolous or indifferent, and seemed\ncold and timorous to the enthusiastic and urgent. Turgot had discovered\nthat there was a law in the history of men, and he knew how this law\nlimited and conditioned progress.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nIn 1750 Turgot, then only in his twenty-fourth year, was appointed to\nthe honorary office of Prior of the Sorbonne, an elective distinction\nconferred annually, as it appears, on some meritorious or highly\nconnected student. It was held in the following year by Lomenie de\nBrienne. In this capacity Turgot read two Latin dissertations, one at\nthe opening of the session, and the other at its close. The first of\nthese was upon 'The Advantages that the Establishment of Christianity\nhas conferred upon the Human Race.'\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nIts value, as might well have been expected from the circumstances of\nits production, is not very high. It is pitched in a tone of exaltation\nthat is eminently unfavourable to the permanently profitable treatment\nof such a subject. There are in it too many of those eloquent and\nfamiliar commonplaces of orthodox history, by which the doubter tries to\nwarm himself into belief, and the believer dreams that he is\ncorroborating faith by reason. The assembly for whom his discourse was\nprepared, could hardly have endured the apparition in the midst of them\nof what both rigorous justice and accurate history required to have\ntaken into account on the other side. It was not to be expected that a\nyoung student within the precincts of the Sorbonne should have any eyes\nfor the evil with which the forms of the Christian religion, like other\ngrowths of the human mind, from the lowest forms of savage animism\nupwards, have ever alloyed its good. The absence of all reference to one\nhalf of what the annals of the various Christian churches have to teach\nus, robs the first of Turgot's discourses of that serious and durable\nquality which belongs to all his other writings.\n\nIt is fair to point out that the same vicious exclusiveness was\npractised by the enemies of the Church, and that if history was to one\nof the two contending factions an exaggerated enumeration of the\nblessings of Christianity, it was to their passionate rivals only a\nmonotonous catalogue of curses. Of this temper we have a curious\nillustration in the circumstance that Dupont, Turgot's intimate friend\nof later years, who collected and published his works, actually took the\ntrouble to suppress the opening of this very Discourse, in which Turgot\nhad replied to the reproach often made against Christianity, of being\nuseful only for a future life.[32]\n\n[Footnote 32: _OEuv._ ii. 586, _n._]\n\nIn the first Discourse, Turgot considers the influence of Christianity\nfirst upon human nature, and secondly on political societies. One\nfeature at least deserves remark, and this is that in spite both of a\nsettled partiality, and a certain amount of the common form of theology,\nyet at bottom and putting some phrases apart, religion is handled, and\nits workings traced, much as they would have been if treated as\nadmittedly secular forces. And this was somewhat. Let us proceed to\nanalyse what Turgot says.\n\n1. Before the preaching and acceptance of the new faith, all nations\nalike were plunged into the most extravagant superstitions. The most\nfrightful dissoluteness of manners was encouraged by the example of the\ngods themselves. Every passion and nearly every vice was the object of a\nmonstrous deification. A handful of philosophers existed, who had learnt\nno better lesson from their reason, than to despise the multitude of\ntheir fellows. In the midst of the universal contagion, the Jews alone\nremained pure. Even the Jews were affected with a narrow and sterile\npride, which proved how little they appreciated the priceless treasure\nthat was entrusted to their keeping. What were the effects of the\nappearance of Christ, and the revelation of the gospel? It inspired men\nwith a tender zeal for the truth, and by establishing the necessity of a\nbody of teachers for the instruction of nations, made studiousness and\nintellectual application indispensable in a great number of persons.\n\nConsider, again, the obscurity, incertitude, and incongruousness, that\nmarked the ideas of the wisest of the ancients upon the nature of man\nand of God, and the origin of creation; the Ideas of Plato, for\ninstance, the Numbers of Pythagoras, the theurgic extravagances of\nPlotinus and Porphyry and Iamblichus; and then measure the contributions\nmade by the scholastic theologians, whose dry method has undergone so\nmuch severe condemnation, to the instruments by which knowledge is\nenlarged and made accurate. It was the Church, moreover, which\ncivilised the Northern barbarians, and so preserved the West from the\nsame barbarism and desolation with which the triumphs of Mahometanism\nreplaced the knowledge and arts and prosperity of the East. It is to the\nservices of the Church that we owe the perpetuation of a knowledge of\nthe ancient tongues, and if this knowledge, and the possession of the\nmasterpieces of thought and feeling and form, the flower of the ancient\nEuropean mind, remained so long unproductive, still religious\norganisation deserves our gratitude equally for keeping these great\ntreasures for happier times. They survived, as trees stripped by winter\nof their leaves survive through frost and storm, to give new blossoms in\na new spring.\n\nThis much on the intellectual side; but how can we describe the moral\ntransformation which the new faith brought to pass? Men who had hitherto\nonly regarded gods as beings to be entreated to avert ill or bestow\nblessing, now learnt the nobler emotion of devout love for a divinity of\nsupreme power and beneficence. The new faith, besides kindling love for\nGod, inflamed the kindred sentiment of love for men, all of whom it\ndeclared to be the children of God, one vast family with a common\nfather. Julian himself bore witness to the fidelity with which the\nChristians, whose faith he hated or despised, tended the sick and fed\nthe poor, not only of their own association, but those also who were\nwithout the fold. The horrible practice of exposing new-born infants,\nwhich outraged nature, and yet did not touch the heart nor the\nunderstanding of a Numa, an Aristotle, a Confucius, was first proscribed\nby the holy religion of Christ. If shame and misery still sometimes, in\nthe hearts of poor outcast mothers, overpower the horror which\nChristianity first inspired, it is still the same religion which has\nopened sheltering places for the unhappy victims of such a practice, and\nprovided means for rearing foundlings into useful citizens.\n\nChristian teaching, by reviving the principles of sensibility within the\nbreast, may be said 'to have in some sort unveiled human nature to\nherself.' If the cruelty of old manners has abated, do we not owe the\nimprovement to such courageous priests as Ambrose, who refused admission\ninto the church to Theodosius, because in punishing a guilty city he had\nhearkened to the voice rather of wrath than of justice; or as that Pope\nwho insisted that Lewis the Seventh should expiate by a rigorous penance\nthe sack and burning of Vitry.[33] It is not to a Titus, a Trajanus, an\nAntoninus, that we owe the abolition of the bloody gladiatorial games;\nit is to Jesus Christ. Virtuous unbelievers have not seldom been the\napostles of benevolence and humanity, but we rarely see them in the\nasylums of misery. Reason speaks, but it is religion that makes men act.\nHow much dearer to us than the splendid monuments of antique taste,\npower, and greatness, are those Gothic edifices reared for the poor and\nthe orphan, those far nobler monuments of the piety of Christian\nprinces and the power of Christian faith. The rudeness of their\narchitecture may wound the delicacy of our taste, but they will be ever\nbeloved by feeling hearts. 'Let others admire in the retreat prepared\nfor those who have sacrificed in battle their lives or their health for\nthe State, all the gathered riches of the arts, displaying in the eyes\nof all the nations the magnificence of Lewis the Fourteenth, and\ncarrying our renown to the level of that of Greece and Rome. What I will\nadmire is such a use of those arts; the sublime glory of serving the\nweal of men raises them higher than they had ever been at Rome or at\nAthens.'\n\n[Footnote 33: See Martin's _Hist. de la France_, iii. 422. Or Morison's\n_Life of Saint Bernard_, bk. iii. ch. vi.]\n\n2. Let us turn from the action of the Christian faith in modifying the\npassions of the individual, to its influence upon societies of men. How\nhas Christianity ameliorated the great art of government, with reference\nto the two characteristic aims of that art, the happiness of\ncommunities, and their stability? 'Nature has given all men the right of\nbeing happy,' but the old lawgivers abandoned nature's wise economy, by\nwhich she uses the desires and interests of individuals to fulfil her\ngeneral plans and ensure the common weal. Men like Lycurgus destroyed\nall idea of property, violated the laws of modesty, and annihilated the\ntenderest ties of blood. A false and mischievous spirit of system\nseduced them away from the true method, the feeling after\nexperience.[34] A general injustice reigned in the laws of all nations;\namong all of them what was called the public good was confined to a\nsmall number of men. Love of country was less the love of\nfellow-citizens than a common hatred towards strangers. Hence the\nbarbarities practised by the ancients upon their slaves, hence that\ncustom of slavery once spread over the whole earth, those horrible\ncruelties in the wars of the Greeks and the Romans, that barbarous\ninequality between the two sexes which still reigns in the East; hence\nthe tyranny of the great towards the common people in hereditary\naristocracies, the profound degradation of subject peoples. In short,\neverywhere the stronger have made the laws and have crushed the weak;\nand if they have sometimes consulted the interests of a given society,\nthey have always forgotten those of the human race. To recall right and\njustice, a principle was necessary that could raise men above themselves\nand all around them, that could lead them to survey all nations and all\nconditions with an equitable gaze, and in some sort with the eyes of God\nhimself. This is what religion has done. What other principle could have\nfought and vanquished both interests and prejudice united?\n\n[Footnote 34: _Les hommes en tout ne s'eclairent que par le tatonnement\nde l'experience._ P. 593.]\n\nNothing but the Christian religion could have worked that general\nrevolution in men's minds, which brought the rights of humanity out into\nfull day, and reconciled an affectionate preference for the community of\nwhich one makes a part, with a general love for mankind. Even the\nhorrors of war were softened, and humanity began to be spared such\nfrightful sequels of triumph, as towns burnt to ashes, populations put\nto the sword, the wounded massacred in cold blood, or reserved to give a\nghastly decoration to triumph. Slavery, where it was not abolished, was\nconstantly and effectively mitigated by Christian sentiment, and the\nfact that the Church did not peremptorily insist on its universal\nabolition was due to a wise reluctance to expose the constitution of\nsociety to so sudden and violent a shock. Christianity without formal\nprecepts, merely by inspiring a love of justice and mercy in men's\nhearts, prevented the laws from becoming an instrument of oppression,\nand held a balance between the strong and the feeble.\n\nIf the history of the ancient republics shows that they hardly knew the\ndifference between liberty and anarchy, and if even the profound\nAristotle seemed unable to reconcile monarchy with a mild government, is\nnot the reason to be found in the fact that before the Christian era,\nthe various governments of the world only presented either an ambition\nwithout bound or limit, or else a blind passion for independence? a\nperpetual balance between oppression on the one side, and revolt on the\nother? In vain did lawgivers attempt to arrest this incessant struggle\nof conflicting passions by laws which were too weak for the purpose,\nbecause they were in too imperfect an accord with opinions and manners.\nReligion, by placing man under the eyes of an all-seeing God, imposed on\nhuman passions the only rein capable of effectually bridling them. It\ngave men internal laws, that were stronger than all the external bonds\nof the civil laws. By means of this internal change, it has everywhere\nhad the effect of weakening despotism, so that the limits of\nChristianity seem to mark also the limits of mild government and public\nfelicity. Kings saw the supreme tribunal of a God who should judge them\nand the cause of their people. Thus the distance between them and their\nsubjects became as nothing in the infinite distance between kings and\nsubjects alike, and the divinity that was equally elevated above either.\nThey were both in some sort equalised by a common abasement. 'Ye\nnations, be subject to authority,' cried the voice of religion to the\none; and to the other it cried, 'Ye kings, who judge the earth, learn\nthat God has only entrusted you with the image of power for the\nhappiness of your peoples.'\n\nAn eloquent description of the efficacy of Christianity in raising human\nnature, and impressing on kings the obligation of pursuing above all\nthings the wellbeing of their subjects, closes with a courtly official\nsalutation of the virtues of that Very Christian King, Lewis the\nFifteenth.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\n'It is ill reasoning against religion,' an illustrious contemporary of\nTurgot's had said, in a deprecatory sentence that serves to mark the\nspirit of the time; 'to compile a long list of the evils which it has\ninflicted, without doing the same for the blessings which it has\nbestowed.'[35] Conversely we may well think it unphilosophical and\nunconvincing to enumerate all the blessings without any of the evils; to\ntell us how the Christian doctrine enlarged the human spirit, without\nobserving what narrowing limitations it imposed; to dwell on all the\nmitigating influences with which the Christian churches have been\nassociated, while forgetting all the ferocities which they have\ninspired. The history of European belief offers a double record since\nthe decay of polytheism, and if for a certain number of centuries this\nrecord shows the civilisation of men's instincts by Christianity, it\nreveals to us in the centuries subsequent, the reverse process of the\ncivilisation of Christianity by men's instincts. Turgot's piece treats\nhalf the subject as if it were the whole. He extends down to the middle\nof the eighteenth century a number of propositions and implied\ninferences, which are only true up to the beginning of the fourteenth.\n\n[Footnote 35: _Esprit des Lois_, bk. xxiv. ch. ii.]\n\nEven within this limitation there are many questions that no student of\nTurgot's capacity would now overlook, yet of which he and the most\nreasonable spirits of his age took no cognisance. The men of neither\nside in the eighteenth century knew what the history of opinion meant.\nAll alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what\nthey counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness. A perfect method\nplaces a man where he can command one point of view as well as the\nother, and can discern not only how far an idea is true and convenient,\nbut also how, whether true and convenient or otherwise, it came into its\nplace in men's minds. We ought to be able to separate in thought the\nquestion of the grounds and evidence for a given dogma being true, from\nthe distinct and purely historic question of the social and intellectual\nconditions which made men accept it for true.\n\nWhere, however, there was any question of the two religions whose\ndocument and standards are professedly drawn from the Bible, there the\nFrenchmen of that time assumed not a historic attitude, but one\nexclusively dogmatic. Everybody was so anxious to prove, that he had\nneither freedom nor humour to observe. The controversy as to the exact\nmeasure of the supernatural force in Judaism and its Christian\ndevelopment was so overwhelmingly absorbing, as to leave without light\nor explanation the wide and independent region of their place as simply\nnatural forces. It may be said, and perhaps it is true, that people\nnever allow the latter side of the inquiry to become prominent in their\nminds until they have settled the former, and settled it in one way:\nthey must be indifferent to the details of the natural operations of a\nreligion, until they are convinced that there are none of any other\nkind. Be this as it may, we have to record the facts. And it is\ndifficult to imagine a Frenchman of the era of the Encyclopaedia asking\nhimself the sort of questions which now present themselves to the\nstudent in such abundance. For instance, has one effect of Christianity\nbeen to exalt a regard for the Sympathetic over the AEsthetic side of\naction and character? And if so, to what elements in the forms of\nChristian teaching and practice is this due? And is such a transfer of\nthe highest place from the beauty to the lovableness of conduct to be\naccounted a gain, when contrasted with the relative position of the two\nsides among the Greeks and Romans?\n\nAgain, we have to draw a distinction between the Christian idea and the\noutward Christian organisation, and between the consequences to human\nnature and society which flowed from the first, and the advantages which\nmay be traced to the second. There was on the one hand a doctrine,\nstirring dormant spiritual instincts, and satisfying active spiritual\nneeds; on the other an external institution, preserving, interpreting,\ndeveloping, and applying the doctrine. Each of the two has its own\norigin, its own history, its own destiny in the memories of the race. We\nmay attempt to estimate the functions of the one, without pronouncing on\nthe exact value of the other. If the idea was the direct gift of heaven,\nthe policy was due to the sagacity and mother-wit of the great\necclesiastical statesmen. If the doctrine was a supernatural boon, at\nleast the forms in which it came gradually to overspread Europe were to\nbe explained on rational and natural grounds. And if historical\ninvestigation of these forms and their influences should prove that they\nare the recognisable roots of most of the benign growths which are\nvaguely styled results of Christianity, then such a conclusion would\nseriously attenuate the merits of the supernatural Christian doctrine in\nfavour of the human Christian policy.\n\nIf there had been in the Christian idea the mysterious self-sowing\nquality so constantly claimed for it, how came it that in the Eastern\npart of the Empire it was as powerless for spiritual or moral\nregeneration as it was for political health and vitality, while in the\nWestern part it became the organ of the most important of all the past\ntransformations of the civilised world? Is not the difference to be\nexplained by the difference in the surrounding medium, and what is the\neffect of such an explanation upon the supernatural claims of the\nChristian idea? Does such an explanation reduce that idea to the rank of\none of the historic forces, which arise and operate and expand\nthemselves in accordance with strictly natural conditions? The\nChristianity of the East was probably as degraded a form of belief, as\nlowering for human character, and as mischievous to social wellbeing, as\nhas ever been held by civilised peoples. Yet the East, strangely enough,\nwas the great home and nursery of all that is most distinctive in the\nconstituent ideas of the Christian faith. Why, in meditating on\nChristianity, are we to shut our eyes to the depravation that overtook\nit when placed amid unfavourable social conditions, and to confine our\ngaze to the brighter qualities which it developed in the healthier\natmosphere of the West?\n\nFurther, Turgot might have asked with much profit to the cause of\nhistoric truth, and perhaps in more emancipated years he did ask,\nwhether economic circumstances have not had more to do with the\ndissolution of slavery than Christian doctrines:--whether the rise of\nrent from free tenants over the profits to be drawn from slave-labour by\nthe landowner, has not been a more powerful stimulant to emancipation,\nthan the moral maxim that we ought to love one another, or the Christian\nproposition that we are all equals before the divine throne and co-heirs\nof salvation:--whether a steady and permanent fall in the price of\nslave-raised productions had not as much to do with the decay of slavery\nin Europe, as the love of God or the doctrine of human brotherhood.[36]\nThat the influence of Christianity, so far as it went, and, so far as it\nwas a real power, tended both to abolish slavery, and, where it was too\nfeeble to press in this direction, at any rate tended to mitigate the\nharshness of its usages, is hardly to be denied by any fair-minded\nperson. The true issue is what this influence amounted to. The orthodox\nhistorian treats it as single and omnipotent. His heterodox brother--in\nthe eighteenth century they both usually belonged to one family--leaves\nit out.\n\n[Footnote 36: See on this subject Finlay's _Mediaeval Greece and\nTrebizond_, p. 197; and also, on the other hand, p. 56.]\n\nThe crowded annals of human misology, as well as the more terrible\nchronicle of the consequences when misology has impatiently betaken\nitself to the cruel arm of flesh, show the decisive importance of the\nprecise way in which a great subject of debate is put. Now the whole\nquestion of religion was in those days put with radical incompleteness,\nand Turgot's dissertation was only in a harmony that might have been\nexpected with the prevailing error. The champions of authority, like the\nleaders of the revolt, insisted on inquiring absolutely, not relatively;\non judging religion with reference to human nature in the abstract,\ninstead of with reference to the changing varieties of social\ninstitution and circumstance. We ought to place ourselves where we can\nsee both lines of inquiry to be possible. We ought to place ourselves\nwhere we can ask what the tendencies of Christian influence have been,\nwithout mixing up with that question the further and distinct inquiry\nwhat these tendencies are now, or are likely to be. The nineteenth\ncentury has hitherto leaned to the historical and relative aspect of the\ngreat controversy. The eighteenth was characteristically dogmatic, and\nthe destroyers of the faith were not any less dogmatic in their own way,\nthan those who professed to be its apologists.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nProbably it was not long after the composition of this apologetic\nthesis, before Turgot became alive to the precise position of a creed\nwhich had come to demand apologetic theses. This was, indeed, one of the\nmarked and critical moments in the great transformation of religious\nfeeling and ecclesiastical order in Europe, of which our own age, four\ngenerations later, is watching a very decisive, if not a final stage.\nTurgot's demonstration of the beneficence of Christianity was delivered\nin July 1750--almost the exact middle of the eighteenth century. The\ndeath of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, ten years before, had given the\nsignal for the break-up of the European system. The iron army of Prussia\nmade its first stride out of the narrow northern borders, into the broad\narena of the West, and every new illustration of the fortitude and depth\nand far-reaching power of Prussia has been a new blow to the old\nCatholic organisation. The first act of this prodigious drama closed\nwhile Turgot was a pupil at the Sorbonne. The court of France had\nblundered into alliances against the retrograde and Catholic house of\nAustria, while England, with equal blindness, had stumbled into\nfriendship with it. Before the opening of the second act or true\nclimax--that is, before the Seven Years' War began--interests and forces\nbecame more naturally adjusted. France, Spain, and Austria, Bourbons and\nHapsburgs, the great pillars of the Church, were ranged against England\nand Prussia, the half-conscious representatives of those industrial and\nindividualist principles which replaced, whether for a time or\npermanently, the decaying system of aristocratic caste in temporal\nthings, and an ungrowing Catholicism in things spiritual. In 1750\necclesiastical far-sightedness, court intrigue, and family ambitions,\nwere actively preparing the way for the Austrian alliance in the\nmephitic air of Versailles. The issue at stake was the maintenance of\nthe supremacy of the Church, and the ancient Christian organisation of\nFrance and of Europe.\n\nWe now know how this long battle has gone. The Jesuit Churchmen lost\ntheir lead, and were thrown back out of the civil and political sphere.\nWe know, too, what effect these blows to the Catholic organisation have\nhad upon the activity of the Catholic idea. With the decline and\nextermination of the predominance of Churchmen in civil affairs, there\nbegan a tendency, which has since become deeper and stronger, in the\nChurch to withdraw herself and her sons from a sphere where she could no\nlonger be sovereign and queen. Religion, since the Revolution, isolates\nthe most devout Catholics from political action and political interests.\nThis great change, however, this return of the leaders of the Christian\nsociety upon the original conceptions of the Christian faith, did not\ncome to pass in Turgot's time. He watched the struggle of the Church for\nthe maintenance of its temporal privilege and honour, and for the\ncontinued protection by secular power of its spiritual supremacy. The\noutcome of the struggle was later.\n\nWe may say, in fine, that if this first public composition of Turgot's\nis extremely imperfect, it was better to exaggerate the services of\nChristianity, alike as an internal faith and as a peculiar form of\nsocial organisation, than to describe Gregory the Great and Innocent,\nHildebrand and Bernard, as artful and vulgar tyrants, and Aquinas and\nRoger Bacon as the products of a purely barbarous, stationary, and dark\nage. There is at first sight something surprising in the respect which\nTurgot's ablest contemporaries paid to the contributions made to\nprogress by Greece and Rome, compared with their angry disparagement of\nthe dark ages. The reason of this contrast we soon discover to be that\nthe passions of present contests gave their own colour to men's\ninterpretation of the circumstances of the remote middle time, between\nthe Roman Empire and the commencement of the revolutionary period.\nTurgot escaped these passions more completely than any man of his time\nwho was noble enough to be endowed with the capacity for passion. He\nnever forgot that it is as wise and just to confess the obligations of\nmankind to the Catholic monotheism of the West, as it is shallow and\nunjust in professors of Christianity to despise or hate the lower\ntheological systems which guide the humbler families of mankind.\n\nLet us observe that only three years after this academic discourse in\npraise of the religion of the time, Turgot was declaring that 'the\ngreatest of the services of Christianity to the world was that it had\nboth enlightened and propagated _natural religion_.'[37]\n\n[Footnote 37: _Lettres sur la Tolerance_, II. vol. ii. 687.]\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nTurgot's inquiry into the extent and quality of the debt of European\ncivilisation to Christianity was marked by a certain breadth and\nlargeness, in spite of the bonds of circumstance and subject--for who,\nafter all, can consider Christianity to any purpose, apart from other\nconditions of general progress, or without free comparison with other\ndogmatic systems? It is not surprising, then, to find the same valuable\ngifts of vision coming into play with a thousand times greater liberty\nand power, when the theme was widened so as to comprehend the successive\nsteps of the advancement of the human mind in all its aspects. The\nSecond and more famous of the two Discourses at the Sorbonne was read in\nDecember 1750, and professes to treat the Successive Advances of the\nHuman Mind.[38] The opening lines are among the most pregnant, as they\nwere among the most original, in the history of literature, and reveal\nin an outline, standing clear against the light, a thought which\nrevolutionised old methods of viewing and describing the course of human\naffairs, and contained the germs of a new and most fruitful philosophy\nof society.\n\n[Footnote 38: Sur les progres successifs de l'esprit humain. _OEuv._\nii. 597-611.]\n\n'The phenomena of nature, subjected as they are to constant laws, are\nenclosed in a circle of revolutions that remain the same for ever. All\ncomes to life again, all perishes again; and in these successive\ngenerations, by which vegetables and animals reproduce themselves, time\ndoes no more than bring back at each moment the image of what it has\njust dismissed.\n\n'The succession of men, on the contrary, offers from age to age a\nspectacle of continual variations. Reason, freedom, the passions, are\nincessantly producing new events. _All epochs are fastened together by a\nsequence of causes and effects, linking the condition of the world to\nall the conditions that have gone before it._ The gradually multiplied\nsigns of speech and writing, giving men an instrument for making sure of\nthe continued possession of their ideas, as well as of imparting them to\nothers, have formed out of the knowledge of each individual a common\ntreasure, which generation transmits to generation, as an inheritance\nconstantly augmented by the discoveries of each age; and the human race,\nobserved from its first beginning, seems in the eyes of the philosopher\nto be one vast whole, which, like each individual in it, has its infancy\nand its growth.'\n\nThis was not a mere casual reflection in Turgot's mind, taking a\nsolitary and separate position among those various and unordered ideas,\nwhich spring up and go on existing without visible fruit in every active\nintelligence. It was one of the systematic conceptions which shape and\nrule many groups of facts, fixing a new and high place of their own for\nthem among the great divisions of knowledge. In a word, it belonged to\nthe rare order of truly creative ideas, and was the root or germ of a\nwhole body of vigorous and connected thought. This quality marks the\ndistinction, in respect of the treatment of history, between Turgot, and\nboth Bossuet and the great writers of history in France and England in\nthe eighteenth century. Many of the sayings to which we are referred for\nthe origin of the modern idea of history, such as Pascal's for instance,\nare the fortuitous glimpses of men of genius into a vast sea, whose\nextent they have not been led to suspect, and which only make a passing\nand momentary mark. Bossuet's talk of universal history, which has been\nso constantly praised, was fundamentally, and in substance, no more than\na bit of theological commonplace splendidly decorated. He did indeed\nspeak of 'the concatenation of human affairs,' but only in the same\nsentence with 'the sequence of the counsels of God.' The gorgeous\nrhetorician of the Church was not likely to rise philosophically into\nthe larger air of universal history, properly so called. His famous\nDiscourse is a vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely\nnarrow survey of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent\nwith the deity's fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation\nto men. No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human\ncircumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely\nthe ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all\nthe ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic\nChurch, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence\nand many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, but\nwhose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is that he\ndid in a small and rhetorical way what Montesquieu and Voltaire\nafterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he\npressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements\nof the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the\nbare chronicler's road so far as to declare, for example, the general\nprinciple, inadequate and over-stated as it is, that 'religion and civil\ngovernment are the two points on which human things revolve,'--even this\nwas a clear step in advance. The dismissal of the long series of\nemperors from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to\nshow a ripe sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet's\nexpressions of 'the concatenation of the universe,' of the\ninterdependence of the parts of so vast a whole, of there coming no\ngreat change without having its causes in foregoing centuries, and of\nthe true object of history being to observe, in connection with each\nepoch, those secret dispositions of events which prepared the way for\ngreat changes, as well as the momentous conjunctures which more\nimmediately brought them to pass[39]--all these phrases seem to point to\na true and philosophic survey. But they end in themselves, and lead\nnowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and one-sided collection of facts.\nThe writer does not cautiously follow and feel after the successive\nlinks, but forges and chooses and arrays them after a pattern of his\nown, which was fixed independently of them. A scientific term or two is\nnot enough to disguise the purely theological essence of the treatise.\n\n[Footnote 39: _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle_, part iii. ch. ii.]\n\nMontesquieu and Voltaire were both far enough removed from Bossuet's\npoint of view, and the _Spirit of Laws_ of the one, and the _Essay on\nthe Manners and Character of Nations_ of the other, mark a very\ndifferent way of considering history from the lofty and confident method\nof the orthodox rhetorician. The _Spirit of Laws_ was published in 1748,\nthat is to say a couple of years before Turgot's Discourse at the\nSorbonne. Voltaire's _Essay on Manners_ did not come out until 1757, or\nseven years later than the Discourse; but Voltaire himself has told us\nthat its composition dates from 1740, when he prepared this new\npresentation of European history for the service of Madame du\nChatelet.[40] We may hence fairly consider the cardinal work of\nMontesquieu, and the cardinal historical work of Voltaire, as virtually\nbelonging to the same time. And they possess a leading character in\ncommon, which separates them both from Turgot, and places them\nrelatively to his idea in a secondary rank. In a word, Montesquieu and\nVoltaire, if we have to search their most distinctive quality,\nintroduced into history systematically, and with full and decisive\neffect, a broad generality of treatment. They grouped the facts of\nhistory; and they did not group them locally or in accordance with mere\ngeographical or chronological division, but collected the facts in\nsocial classes and orders from many countries and times. Their work was\na work of classification. It showed the possibility of arranging the\nmanifold and complex facts of society, and of the movements of\ncommunities, under heads and with reference to definite general\nconditions.\n\n[Footnote 40: Preface to _Essai sur les Moeurs_, _OEuv._ xx.]\n\nThere is no need here to enter into any criticism of Montesquieu's great\nwork, how far the merits of its execution equalled the merit of its\ndesign, how far his vicious confusion of the senses of the word 'law'\nimpaired the worth of his book, as a contribution to inductive or\ncomparative history. We have only to seek the difference between the\nphilosophic conception of Montesquieu and the philosophic conception of\nTurgot. The latter may be considered a more liberal completion of the\nformer. Turgot not only sees the operation of law in the movements and\ninstitutions of society, but he interprets this law in a positive and\nscientific sense, as an ascertainable succession of social states, each\nof them being the cause and effect of other social states. Turgot gives\nits deserved prominence to the fertile idea of there being an ordered\nmovement of growth or advance among societies; in other words, of the\ncivilisation of any given portion of mankind having fixed conditions\nanalogous to those of a physical organism. Finally, he does not limit\nhis thought by fixing it upon the laws and constitutions only of\ncountries, but refers historical philosophy to its veritable and widest\nobject and concern, the steps and conditions of the progression of the\nhuman mind.\n\nHow, he inquires, can we seize the thread of the progress of the human\nmind? How trace the road, now overgrown and half-hidden, along which the\nrace has travelled? Two ideas suggest themselves, which lay foundations\nfor this inquiry. For one thing, the resources of nature and the\nfruitful germ of all sorts of knowledge are to be found wherever men are\nto be found. 'The sublimest attainments are not, and cannot be, other\nthan the first ideas of sense developed or combined, just as the edifice\nwhose height most amazes the eye, of necessity reposes on the very earth\nthat we tread; and the same senses, the same organs, the spectacle of\nthe same universe, have everywhere given men the same ideas, as the same\nneeds and the same dispositions have everywhere taught them the same\narts.' Or it might be put in other words. There is identity in human\nnature, and repetition in surrounding circumstance means the\nreproduction of social consequences. For another thing, 'the actual\nstate of the universe, by presenting at the same moment on the earth all\nthe shades of barbarism and civilisation, discloses to us as in a single\nglance the monuments, the footprints of all the steps of the human mind,\nthe measure of the whole track along which it has passed, the history of\nall the ages.'\n\nThe progress of the human mind means to Turgot the progress of\nknowledge. Its history is the history of the growth and spread of\nscience and the arts. Its advance is increased enlightenment of the\nunderstanding. From Adam and Eve down to Lewis the Fourteenth, the\nrecord of progress is the chronicle of the ever-increasing additions to\nthe sum of what men know, and the accuracy and fulness with which they\nknow. The chief instrument in this enlightenment is the rising up from\ntime to time of some lofty and superior intelligence; for though human\ncharacter contains everywhere the same principle, yet certain minds are\nendowed with a peculiar abundance of talent that is refused to others.\n'Circumstances develop these superior talents, or leave them buried in\nobscurity; and from the infinite variety of these circumstances springs\nthe inequality among nations.' The agricultural stage goes immediately\nbefore a decisively polished state, because it is then first that there\nis that surplus of means of subsistence, which allows men of higher\ncapacity the leisure for using it in the acquisition of knowledge,\nproperly so called.\n\nOne of the greatest steps was the precious invention of writing, and one\nof the most rapid was the constitution of mathematical knowledge. The\nsciences that came next matured more slowly, because in mathematics the\nexplorer has only to compare ideas among one another, while in the\nothers he has to test the conformity of ideas to objective facts.\nMathematical truths, becoming more numerous every day, and increasingly\nfruitful in proportion, lead to the development of hypotheses at once\nmore extensive and more exact, and point to new experiments, which in\ntheir turn furnish new problems to solve. 'So necessity perfects the\ninstrument; so mathematics finds support in physics, to which it lends\nits lamp; so all knowledge is bound together; so, notwithstanding the\ndiversity of their advance, all the sciences lend one another mutual\naid; and so, by force of feeling a way, of multiplying systems, of\nexhausting errors, so to speak, the world at length arrives at the\nknowledge of a vast number of truths.' It might seem as if a prodigious\nconfusion, as of tongues, would arise from so enormous an advance along\nso many lines. 'The different sciences, originally confined within a few\nsimple notions common to all, can now, after their advance into more\nextensive and difficult ideas, only be surveyed apart. But an advance,\ngreater still, brings them together again, because that mutual\ndependence of all truths is discovered, which, while it links them one\nto another, throws light on one by another.'\n\nAlas, the history of opinion is, in one of its most extensive branches,\nthe history of error. The senses are the single source of our ideas, and\nfurnish its models to the imagination. Hence that nearly incorrigible\ndisposition to judge what we are ignorant of by what we know; hence\nthose deceptive analogies to which the primitive rudeness of men\nsurrenders itself. '_As they watched nature, as their eyes wandered to\nthe surface of a profound ocean, instead of the far-off bed hidden under\nthe waters, they saw nothing but their own likeness._ Every object in\nnature had its god, and this god formed after the pattern of men, had\nmen's attributes and men's vices.'[41] Here, in anthropomorphism, or the\ntransfer of human quality to things not human, and the invention of\nspiritual existences to be the recipients of this quality, Turgot justly\ntouched the root of most of the wrong thinking that has been as a\nmanacle to science.\n\n[Footnote 41: P. 601.]\n\nHis admiration for those epochs in which new truths were most\nsuccessfully discovered, and old fallacies most signally routed, did not\nprevent Turgot from appreciating the ages of criticism and their\nservices to knowledge. He does full justice to Alexandria, not only for\nits astronomy and geometry, but for that peculiar studiousness 'which\nexercises itself less on things than on books; whose strength lies less\nin producing and discovering, than in collecting and comparing and\nestimating what has been produced and discovered; which does not press\nforward, but gazes backward along the road that has already been\ntraversed. The studies that require most genius, are not always those\nwhich imply most progress in the mass of men. There are minds to which\nnature has given a memory capable of comparing truths, of suggesting an\narrangement that places these truths in the fullest light; but to which,\nat the same time, she has refused that ardour of genius which insists on\ninventing and opening out for itself new lines of discovery. Made to\nunite former discoveries under a single point of view, to surround them\nwith light, and to exhibit them in entire perfection, if they are not\nluminaries that burn and sparkle of themselves, at least they are like\ndiamonds that reflect with dazzling brilliance a borrowed light.'\n\nThus Turgot's conception of progress regards it mainly, if not entirely,\nas a gradual dawn and diffusion of light, the spreading abroad of the\nrays of knowledge. He does not assert, as some moderns have crudely\nasserted, that morality is of the nature of a fixed quantity; still he\nhints something of the kind. 'Morality,' he says, speaking of Greece in\nthe time of its early physical speculation, 'though still imperfect,\nstill kept fewer relics of the infancy of reason. Those everspringing\nnecessities which so incessantly recall man to society, and force him to\nbend to its laws, that instinct, that sentiment of what is good and\nright, which Providence has engraved in all hearts, and which precedes\nreason, all lead the thinkers of every time back to the same fundamental\nprinciples of the science of morals.'\n\nWe meet with this limitation of the idea of progress in every member of\nthe school to which, more than to any other, Turgot belonged. Even in\nthe vindication of the claims of Christianity to the gratitude of\nmankind, he had forborne from laying stress on any original\ncontribution, supposed to be made by that religion to the precious stock\nof ethical ideas. He dwells upon the 'tender zeal for the progress of\ntruth that the Christian religion inspired,' and recounts the various\ncircumstances in which it spread and promoted the social and political\nconditions most favourable to intellectual or scientific activity.\nWhatever may be the truth or the value of Christianity as a dogmatic\nsystem, there can be little doubt that its weight as a historic force is\nto be looked for, not so much in the encouragement it gave to science\nand learning, in respect of which Western Europe probably owes more to\nMahometanism, as in the high and generous types of character which it\ninspired. A man of rare moral depth, warmth, or delicacy, may be a more\nimportant element in the advance of civilisation, than the newest and\ntruest deduction from what Turgot calls 'the fundamental principles of\nthe science of morals.' The leading of souls to do what is right and\nhumane, is always more urgent than mere instruction of the intelligence\nas to what exactly is the right and the humane. The saint after all has\na place in positive history; but the men of the eighteenth century\npassionately threw him out from their calendar, as the mere wooden idol\nof superstition. They eagerly recognised the genius of scientific\ndiscovery; but they had no eyes for the genius of moral holiness.\nTurgot, far as he was from many of the narrownesses of his time, yet did\nnot entirely transcend this, the worst of them all. And because he could\nnot perceive there to be any new growths in moral science, he left out\nfrom a front place among the forces that have given strength and\nripeness to the human mind, the superior capacity of some men for\nkindling, by word and example, the glowing love and devout practice of\nmorality in the breasts of many generations of their fellows.\n\nThe mechanical arts, Turgot says, were preserved in the dark ages by the\nnecessities of existence, and because 'it is impossible but that out of\nthe crowd of artisans practising them, there should arise from time to\ntime one of those men of genius who are found mingled with other men, as\ngold is found mingled with the earth of a mine.' Surely in the same way\nholy men arose, with keener feeling for the spiritual necessities of the\ntime, and finer knowledge to train and fit the capacities of human\nnature to meet these needs, and make their satisfaction the basis for\nyet loftier standards and holier aspirations and nobler and more careful\npractice. The work of all such men deserved a place in an outline of the\nprogressive forces of the human mind, as much as the work of those who\ninvented bills of exchange, the art of musical notation, windmills,\nclocks, gunpowder, and all the other material instruments for\nmultiplying the powers of man and the conveniences of life.\n\nEven if we give Turgot the benefit of the doubt whether he intended to\ndescribe more than the progress of the human intelligence, or the\nknowing part of the mind, the omission of the whole moral side is still\na defect. For as he interprets knowledge to be the conformity of our\nideas to facts, has there not been a clearly recognisable progress in\nthe improved conformity of our ideas to the most momentous facts of all,\nthe various circumstances of human action, its motives and\nconsequences? No factor among the constituents of a progressive\ncivilisation deserves more carefully to be taken into account, than the\ndegree in which the current opinion and usage of a society recognise the\ncomprehensiveness of moral obligation. More than upon anything else,\ndoes progress depend on the kinds of conduct which a community\nclassifies as moral or immoral, and upon the wider or narrower\ninclusiveness within rigid ethical boundaries of what ought or ought not\nto be left open and indifferent. The conditions which create and modify\nthese ethical regulations,--their law in a word,--form a department of\nthe history of the human mind, which can be almost less readily\ndispensed with than any other. What sort of a history of Europe would\nthat be, which should omit, for example, to consider the influence of\nthe moral rigour of Calvinism upon the growth of the nations affected by\nit?\n\nMoreover, Turgot expressly admits the ever-present wants of society to\nbe the stimulating agents, as well as the guides, of scientific energy.\nHe expressly admits, too, that they are constantly plucking men by the\nskirt, and forcing them back to social rules of conduct. It is certain,\ntherefore, that as the necessities of society increase in number and\ncomplexity, morality will be developed to correspond with them, and the\nway in which new applications of ethical sentiments to the demands of\nthe common weal are made, is as interesting and as deserving of a place\nin any scientific inquiry into social progress, as the new applications\nof physical truths to satisfy material needs and to further material\nconvenience. Turgot justly points to the perfecting of language as one\nof the most important of the many processes that go to the general\nadvancement of the race.[42] Not less, but more, important is the\nanalogous work of perfecting our ideas of virtue and duty. Surely this\nchamber, too, in the great laboratory deserves that the historian should\nunseal its door and explore its recesses.\n\n[Footnote 42: P. 603.]\n\nThe characteristic merits of the second of the two discourses at the\nSorbonne may be briefly described in this way. It recognises the idea of\nordered succession in connection with the facts of society. It considers\nthis succession as one, not of superficial events, but of working\nforces. Thus Bolingbroke, writing fifteen years before, had said that\n'as to events that stand recorded in history, we see them all, we see\nthem as they followed one another, or as they produced one another,\ncauses or effects, immediate or remote.'[43] But it is very evident from\nhis illustrations that by all this he understood no more than the\nimmediate connection between one transaction and another. He thought,\nfor example, of the Revolution of 1688 being a consequence of the bad\ngovernment of James the Second; of this bad government springing from\nthe king's attachment to popery; this in turn being caused by the exile\nof the royal family; this exile having its source in Cromwell's\nusurpation; and so forth, one may suppose, down to the Noachian flood,\nor the era when the earth was formless and void. It is mere futility to\ntalk of cause and effect in connection with a string of arbitrarily\nchosen incidents of this sort. Cause and effect, in Turgot's sense of\nhistory, describe a relation between certain sets or groups of\ncircumstances, that are of a peculiarly decisive kind, because the\nsurface of events conforms itself to their inner working. His account of\nthese deciding circumstances was not what we should be likely to accept\nnow, because he limited them too closely to purely intellectual\nacquisitions, as we have just seen, and because he failed to see the\nnecessity of tracing the root of the whole growth to certain principles\nin the mental constitution of mankind. But, at all events, his\nconception of history rose above merely individual concerns, embraced\nthe successive movements of societies and their relations to one\nanother, and sought the spring of revolutions in the affairs of a\ncommunity in long trains of preparing conditions, internal and external.\nAbove all, history was a whole. The fortunes and achievements of each\nnation were scrutinised for their effect on the growth of all mankind.\n\n[Footnote 43: _Study of History_, Letter ii.]\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nIn the year 1761, Turgot, then in his thirty-fourth year, was appointed\nto the office of Intendant in the Generality of Limoges. There were\nthree different divisions of France in the eighteenth century: first and\noldest, the diocese or ecclesiastical circumscription; second, the\nprovince or military government; and third, the Generality, or a\ndistrict defined for fiscal and administrative purposes. The Intendant\nin the government of the last century was very much what the Prefect is\nin the government of our own time. Perhaps, however, we understand\nTurgot's position in Limousin best, by comparing it to that of the Chief\nCommissioner of some great district in our Indian Empire. For example,\nthe first task which Turgot had to perform was to execute a new\nland-assessment for purposes of imperial revenue. He had to construct\nroads, to build barracks, to administer justice, to deal with a famine,\njust as the English civilian has to do in Orissa or Behar. Much of his\ntime was taken up in elaborate memorials to the central government, and\nthe desk of the controller-general at Versailles was loaded with minutes\nand reports exactly like the voluminous papers which fill the mahogany\nboxes of the Members of Council and the Home Secretary at Calcutta. The\nfundamental conditions of the two systems of government were much alike;\nabsolute political authority, and an elaborately centralised civil\nadministration for keeping order and raising a revenue. The direct\nauthority of an Intendant was not considerable. His chief functions were\nthe settlement of detail in executing the general orders that he\nreceived from the minister; a provisional decision on certain kinds of\nminor affairs; and a power of judging some civil suits, subject to\nappeal to the Council. But though the Intendant was so strictly a\nsubordinate, yet he was the man of the government, and thoroughly in its\nconfidence. The government only saw with his eyes, and only acted on the\nfaith of his reports, memorials, and requisitions; and this in a country\nwhere the government united in itself all forms of power, and was\nobliged to be incessantly active and to make itself felt at every point.\n\nOf all the thirty-two great districts in which the authority of the\nIntendant stood between the common people and the authority of the\nminister at Versailles, the Generality of Limoges was the poorest, the\nrudest, the most backward, and the most miserable. To the eye of the\ntraveller with a mind for the picturesque, there were parts of this\ncentral region of France whose smiling undulations, delicious\nwater-scenes, deep glens extending into amphitheatres, and slopes hung\nwith woods of chestnut, all seemed to make a lovelier picture than the\ncheerful beauty of prosperous Normandy, or the olive-groves and\norange-gardens of Provence. Arthur Young thought the Limousin the most\nbeautiful part of France. Unhappily for the cultivator, these gracious\nconformations belonged to a harsh and churlish soil. For him the roll of\nthe chalk and the massing of the granite would have been well exchanged\nfor the fat loams of level Picardy. The soil of the Limousin was\ndeclared by its inhabitants to be the most ungrateful in the whole\nkingdom, returning no more than four net for one of seed sown, while\nthere was land in the vale of the Garonne that returned thirty-fold. The\ntwo conditions for raising tolerable crops were abundance of labour and\nabundance of manure. But misery drove the men away, and the stock were\nsold to pay the taxes. So the land lacked both the arms of the tiller,\nand the dressing whose generous chemistry would have transmuted the dull\nearth into fruitfulness and plenty. The extent of the district was\nestimated at a million and a half of hectares, equivalent to nearly four\nmillions of English acres: yet the population of this vast tract was\nonly five hundred thousand souls. Even to-day it is not more than eight\nhundred thousand.\n\nThe common food of the people was the chestnut, and to the great\nmajority of them even the coarsest rye-bread was a luxury that they had\nnever tasted. Maise and buckwheat were their chief cereals, and these,\ntogether with a coarse radish, took up hundreds of acres that might\nunder a happier system have produced fine wheat and nourished\nfruit-trees. There had once been a certain export of cattle, but that\nhad now come to an end, partly because the general decline of the\ndistrict had impaired the quality of the beasts, and partly because the\nParisian butchers, who were by much the greatest customers, had found\nthe markets of Normandy more convenient. The more the trade went down,\nthe heavier was the burden of the cattle-tax on the stock that remained.\nThe stock-dealer was thus ruined from both sides at once. In the same\nway, the Limousin horses, whose breed had been famous all over France,\nhad ceased to be an object of commerce, and the progressive increase of\ntaxation had gradually extinguished the trade. Angoumois, which formed\npart of the Generality of Limoges, had previously boasted of producing\nthe best and finest paper in the world, and it had found a market not\nonly throughout France, but all over Europe. There had been a time when\nthis manufacture supported sixty mills; at the death of Lewis XIV. their\nnumber had fallen from sixty to sixteen. An excise duty at the mill, a\nduty on exportation at the provincial frontier, a duty on the\nimportation of rags over the provincial frontier,--all these vexations\nhad succeeded in reducing the trade with Holland, one of France's best\ncustomers, to one-fourth of its previous dimensions. Nor were paper and\ncattle the only branches of trade that had been blighted by fiscal\nperversity. The same burden arrested the transport of saffron across the\nborders of the province, on its way to Hungary and Prussia and the other\ncold lands where saffron was a favourite condiment. Salt which came up\nthe Charente from the marshes by the coast, was stripped of all its\nprofit, first by the duty paid on crossing from the Limousin to Perigord\nand Auvergne, and next by the right possessed by certain of the great\nlords on the banks of the Charente to help themselves at one point and\nanother to portions of the cargo. Iron was subject to a harassing excise\nin all those parts of the country that were beyond the jurisdiction of\nthe parlement of Bordeaux. The effect of such positive hindrances as\nthese to the transit of goods was further aided, to the destruction of\ntrade, by the absence of roads. There were four roads in the province,\nbut all of them so bad that the traveller knew not whether to curse more\nlustily the rocks or the swamps that interrupted his journey\nalternately. There were two rivers, the Vienne and the Vezere, and these\nmight seem to an enthusiast for the famous argument from Design, as if\nNature had intended them for the transport of timber from the immense\nforests that crowned the Limousin hills. Unluckily, their beds were so\nthickly bestrewn with rock that neither of them was navigable for any\nconsiderable part of its long course through the ill-starred province.\n\nThe inhabitants were as cheerless as the land on which they lived. They\nhad none of the fiery energy, the eloquence, the mobility of the people\nof the south. Still less were they endowed with the apt intelligence,\nthe ease, the social amiability, the openness, of their neighbours on\nthe north. 'The dwellers in Upper Limousin,' said one who knew them,\n'are coarse and heavy, jealous, distrustful, avaricious.' The dwellers\nin Lower Limousin had a less repulsive address, but they were at least\nas narrowly self-interested at heart, and they added a capacity for\ntenacious and vindictive hatred. The Limousins had the superstitious\ndoctrines of other semi-barbarous populations, and they had their vices.\nThey passed abruptly and without remorse from a penitential procession\nto the tavern and the brothel. Their Christianity was as superficial as\nthat of the peasant of the Eifel in our own day, or of the Finnish\nconverts of whom we are told that they are even now not beyond\nsacrificing a foal in honour of the Virgin Mary. Saint Martial and Saint\nLeonard were the patron saints of the country, and were the objects of\nan adoration in comparison with which the other saints, and even God\nhimself, were thrust into a secondary place.\n\nIn short, the people of the Generality of Limoges represented the most\nunattractive type of peasantry. They were deeply superstitious, violent\nin their prejudices, obstinate withstanders of all novelty, rude, dull,\nstupid, perverse, and hardly redeeming a narrow and blinding\ncovetousness by a stubborn and mechanical industry. Their country has\nbeen fixed upon as the cradle of Celtic nationality in France, and there\nare some who believe that here the old Gaulish blood kept itself purer\nfrom external admixture than was the case anywhere else in the land. In\nour own day, when an orator has occasion to pay a compliment to the\ntownsmen of Limoges, he says that the genius of the people of the\ndistrict has ever been faithful to its source; it has ever held the\nbalance true between the Frank tradition of the north, and the Roman\ntradition of the south. This makes an excellent period for a\nrhetorician, but the fact which it conveys made Limousin all the severer\na task for an administrator. Almost immediately after his appointment,\nTurgot had the chance of being removed to Rouen, and after that to\nLyons. Either of these promotions would have had the advantages of a\nconsiderable increase of income, less laborious duties, and a much more\nagreeable residence. Turgot, with a high sense of duty that probably\nseemed quixotic enough to the Controller-General, declined the\npreferment, on the very ground of the difficulty and importance of the\ntask that he had already undertaken. '_Poor peasants, poor kingdom!_'\nhad been Quesnay's constant exclamation, and it had sunk deep into the\nspirit of his disciple. He could have little thought of high salary or\npersonal ease, when he discerned an opportunity of improving the hard\nlot of the peasant, and softening the misfortunes of the realm.\n\nTurgot was one of the men to whom good government is a religion. It\nmight be said to be the religion of all the best men of that century,\nand it was natural that it should be so. The decay of a theology that\nplaces our deepest solicitudes in a sphere beyond this, is naturally\naccompanied by a transfer of these high solicitudes to a nearer scene.\nBut though the desire for good government, and a right sense of its\ncardinal importance, were common ideas of the time in all the best heads\nfrom Voltaire downwards, yet Turgot had a patience which in them was\nuniversally wanting. There are two sorts of mistaken people in the\nworld: those who always think that something could and ought to have\nbeen done to prevent disaster, and those who always think that nothing\ncould have been done. Turgot was very far removed indeed from the latter\nclass, but, on the other side, he was too sagacious not to know that\nthere are some evils of which we do well to bear a part, as the best\nmeans of mitigating the other part. Though he respected the writings of\nRousseau and confessed his obligations to them, Turgot abhorred\ndeclamation. He had no hope of clearing society of the intellectual and\nmoral debris of ages at a stroke. Nor had he abstract standards of human\nbliss. The keyword to his political theory was not Pity nor Benevolence,\nbut Justice. 'We are sure to go wrong,' he said once, when pressed to\nconfer some advantage on the poor at the cost of the rich, 'the moment\nwe forget that _justice alone can keep the balance true among all rights\nand all interests_.' Let us proceed to watch this principle actively\napplied in a field where it was grievously needed.\n\nAs everybody knows, the great fiscal grievance of old France was the\n_taille_, a tax raised on property and income, but only on the property\nand income of the unprivileged classes. In the Limousin Turgot's\npredecessor tried to substitute for the arbitrary _taille_, a tax\nsystematically assessed in proportion to the amount of the person's\nproperty. Such a design involved a complete re-measurement and\nre-valuation of all the land of the Generality, and this was a task of\nimmense magnitude and difficulty. It was very imperfectly performed, and\nTurgot found the province groaning under a mass of fiscal anomalies and\ndisorders. Assessment, collection, exemption, were all alike conducted\nwithout definite principles or uniform system. Besides these abuses, the\ntotal sum demanded from the Generality by the royal government was\ngreatly in excess of the local resources. The district was heavily\novercharged, relatively to other districts around it. No deduction had\nbeen made from the sum exacted by the treasury, though the falling off\nin prosperity was great and notorious. Turgot computed that 'the king's\nshare' was as large as that of the proprietors; in other words, taxation\nabsorbed one half of the net products of the land. The government\nlistened to these representations, and conceded to the Generality about\nhalf of the remissions that Turgot had solicited. A greater operation\nwas the re-adjustment of the burden, thus lightened, within the\nprovince. The people were so irritated by the disorders which had been\nintroduced by the imperfect operation of the proportional _taille_, that\nwith the characteristic impatience of a rude and unintelligent\npopulation, they were heedlessly crying out for a return to the more\nfamiliar, and therefore more comfortable, disorders of the arbitrary\n_taille_. Turgot, as was natural, resisted this slovenly reaction, and\napplied himself with zealous industry to the immense and complex work of\neffecting a complete revision and settlement of the regulations for\nassessment, and, what was a more gigantic enterprise, of carrying out a\nnew survey and new valuation of lands and property, to serve as a true\nbase for the application of an equitable assessment. At the end of\nthirteen years of indomitable toil the work was still unfinished,\nchiefly owing to want of money for its execution. The court wasted more\nin a fortnight in the easy follies of Versailles, than would have given\nto the Limousin the instrument of a finished scheme of fiscal order.\nTurgot's labour was not wholly thrown away. The worst abuses were\ncorrected, and the most crying iniquities swept away, save that iniquity\nof the exemption of the privileged orders, which Turgot could not yet\nventure to touch.\n\nLet us proceed to another of the master abuses of the old system. The\nintroduction of the _Corvee_, in the sense in which we have to speak of\nit, dates no further back than the beginning of the eighteenth century.\nIt was an encroachment and an innovation on the part of the bureaucracy,\nand the odd circumstance has been remarked that the first mention of the\nroad _corvees_ in any royal Act is the famous edict of 1776, which\nsuppressed them. Until the Regency this famous word had described only\nthe services owed by dependents to their lords. It meant so many days'\nlabour on the lord's lands, and so many offices of domestic duty. When,\nin the early part of the century, the advantages of a good system of\nhigh-roads began to be perceived by the government, the convenient idea\ncame into the heads of the more ingenious among the Intendants of\nimposing, for the construction of the roads, a royal or public _corvee_\nanalogous to that of private feudalism. Few more mischievous imposts\ncould have been devised.\n\nThat undying class who are contented with the shallow presumptions of _a\npriori_ reasoning in economic matters, did, it is true, find specious\npleas even for the road _corvee_. There has never been an abuse in the\nhistory of the world, for which something good could not be said. If men\nearned money by labour and the use of their time, why not require from\nthem time and labour instead of money? By the latter device, are we not\nassured against malversation of the funds? Those who substitute words\nfor things, and verbal plausibilities for the observation of experience,\ncould prolong these arguments indefinitely. The evils of the road\n_corvee_, meanwhile remained patent and indisputable. In England at the\nsame period, it is true, the country people were obliged to give six\ndays in the year to the repair of the highways, under the management of\nthe justices of the peace. And in England the business was performed\nwithout oppression. But then this only illustrates the unwisdom of\narguing about economic arrangements in the abstract. All depends on the\nconditions by which the given arrangement is surrounded, and a practice\nthat in England was merely clumsy, was in France not only clumsy but a\ngross cruelty. There the burden united almost all the follies and\niniquities with which a public service could be loaded. The French\npeasant had to give, not six, but twelve or fifteen days of labour every\nyear for the construction and repair of the roads of his neighbourhood.\nIf he had a horse and cart, they too were pressed into the service. He\ncould not choose the time, and he was constantly carried away at the\nmoment when his own poor harvest needed his right arm and his\nsupervision. He received no pay, and his days on the roads were days of\nhunger to himself and his family. He had the bitterness of knowing that\nthe advantage of the high-road was slight, indirect, and sometimes null\nto himself, while it was direct and great to the town merchants and the\ncountry gentlemen, who contributed not an hour nor a sou to the work. It\nwas exactly the most indigent upon whose backs this slavish load was\nplaced. There were a hundred abuses of spite or partiality, of\nfavouritism or vengeance, in the allotment of the work. The wretch was\nsent to the part of the road most distant from his own house; or he was\nforced to work for a longer time than fell fairly to his share; or he\nsaw a neighbour allowed to escape on payment of a sum of money. And at\nthe end of all the roads were vile. The labourers, having little heart\nin work for which they had no wage, and weakened by want of food, did\nbadly what they had to do. There was no scientific superintendence, no\nskilled direction, no system in the construction, no watchfulness as to\nthe maintenance. The rains of winter and the storms of summer did damage\nthat one man could have repaired by careful industry from day to day,\nand that for lack of this one man went on increasing, until the road\nfell into holes, the ditches got filled up, and deep pools of water\nstood permanently in the middle of the highway. The rich disdained to\nput a hand to the work; the poor, aware that they would be forced to the\nhated task in the following autumn or spring, naturally attended to\ntheir own fields, and left the roads to fall to ruin.\n\nIt need not be said that this barbarous slovenliness and disorder meant\nan incredible waste of resources. It was calculated that a contractor\nwould have provided and maintained fine roads for little more than\none-third of the cost at which the _corvee_ furnished roads that were\nexecrable. Condorcet was right in comparing the government in this\nmatter to a senseless fellow, who indulges in all the more lavish riot,\nbecause by paying for nothing, and getting everything at a higher price\non credit, he is never frightened into sense by being confronted with a\nbudget of his prodigalities.\n\nIt takes fewer words to describe Turgot's way of dealing with this\noriental mixture of extravagance, injustice, and squalor. The Intendant\nof Caen had already proposed to the inhabitants of that district the\nalternative plan of commuting the _corvee_ into a money payment. Turgot\nadopted and perfected this great transformation. He substituted for\npersonal service on the roads a yearly rate, proportional in amount to\nthe _taille_. He instituted a systematic survey and direction of the\nroads, existing or required in the Generality, and he committed the\nexecution of the approved plans to contractors on exact and\nbusiness-like principles. The result of this change was not merely an\nimmense relief to the unfortunate men who had been every year harassed\nto death and half-ruined by the old method of forced labour, but so\nremarkable an improvement both in the goodness and extension of the\nroads, that when Arthur Young went over them five and twenty years\nafterwards, he pronounced them by far the noblest public ways to be\nfound anywhere in France.\n\nTwo very instructive facts may be mentioned in connection with the\nsuppression of the _corvees_ in the Limousin. The first is that the\ncentral government assented to the changes proposed by the young\nIntendant, as promptly as if it had been a committee of the Convention,\ninstead of being the nominee of an absolute king. The other is that the\npeople in the country, when Turgot had his plans laid before them in\ntheir parish meetings held after mass on Sundays, listened with the\nkeenest distrust and suspicion to what they insisted on regarding as a\nsinister design for exacting more money from them. Well might Condorcet\nsay that very often it needs little courage to do men harm, for they\nconstantly suffer harm tranquilly enough; but when you take it into your\nhead to do them some service, then they revolt and accuse you of being\nan innovator. It is fair, however, to remember how many good grounds the\nFrench countryman had for distrusting the professions of any agent of\nthe government. For even in the case of this very reform, though Turgot\nwas able to make an addition to the _taille_ in commutation of the work\non the roads, he was not able to force a contribution, either to the\n_taille_ or any other impost, from the privileged classes, the very\npersons who were best able to pay. This is only an illustration of what\nis now a well-known fact, that revolution was made necessary less by\ndespotism than by privilege on the one side, and by intense political\ndistrust on the other side.\n\nTurgot was thoroughly awake to the necessity of penetrating public\nopinion. The first principle of the school of Economists was an\n'enlightened people.' Nothing was to be done by them; everything was to\nbe done for them. But they were to be trained to understand the grounds\nof the measures which a central authority conceived, shaped, and carried\ninto practice. Rousseau was the only writer of the revolutionary school\nwho had the modern democratic faith in the virtue and wisdom of the\ncommon people. Voltaire habitually spoke of their bigotry and prejudice\nwith the natural bitterness of a cultivated man towards the incurable\nvices of ignorance. The Economists admitted Voltaire's view as true of\nan existing state of things, but they looked to education, meaning by\nthat something more than primary instruction, to lead gradually to the\ndevelopment of sound political intelligence. Hence when Turgot come into\nfull power as the minister of Lewis XVI., twelve years after he first\nwent to his obscure duties in the Limousin, he introduced the method of\nprefacing his edicts by an elaborate statement of the reasons on which\ntheir policy rested. And on the same principle he now adopted the only\nmeans at his disposal for instructing and directing opinion. The\nbook-press was at that moment doing tremendous work among the classes\nwith education and leisure. But the newspaper press hardly existed, and\neven if it had existed, however many official journals Turgot might have\nhad under his inspiration, the people whose minds he wished to affect\nwere unable to read. There was only one way of reaching them, and that\nwas through the priests. Religious life among the Limousins was, as we\nhave seen, not very pure, but it is a significant law of human nature\nthat the less pure a religion is, the more important in it is the place\nof the priest and his office. Turgot pressed the cures into friendly\nservice. It is a remarkable fact, not without a parallel in other parts\nof modern history, that of the two great conservative corporations of\nsociety, the lawyers did all they could to thwart his projects, and the\npriests did all they could to advance them. In truth the priests are\nusually more or less sympathetic towards any form of centralised\nauthority; it is only when the people take their own government into\ntheir own hands that the clergy are sure to turn cold or antipathetic\ntowards improvement. There is one other reservation, as Turgot found out\nin 1775, when he had been transferred to a greater post, and the clergy\nhad joined his bitterest enemies. Then he touched the corporate spirit,\nand perceived that for authority to lay a hand on ecclesiastical\nprivilege is to metamorphose goodwill into the most rancorous malignity.\nMeanwhile, the letters in which Turgot explained his views and wishes to\nthe cures, by them to be imparted to their parishes, are masterpieces of\nthe care, the patience, the interest, of a good ruler. Those impetuous\nand peremptory spirits who see in Frederick or Napoleon the only born\nrulers of men, might find in these letters, and in the acts to which\nthey refer, the memorials of a far more admirable and beneficent type.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe _corvee_, vexatious as it was, yet excited less violent heats and\ninflicted less misery than the abuses of military service. There had\nbeen a militia in the country as far back as the time of the\nMerovingians, but the militia-service with which Turgot had to deal only\ndated from 1726. Each parish was bound to supply its quota of men to\nthis service, and the obligation was perhaps the most odious grievance,\nthough not the most really mischievous, of all that then afflicted the\nrealm. The hatred which it raised was due to no failure of the military\nspirit in the people. From Frederick the Great downwards, everybody was\nwell aware that the disasters to France which had begun with the\nshameful defeat of Rossbach and ended with the loss of Canada in the\nwest and the Indies in the east (1757-1763), were due to no want of\nvalour in the common soldier. It was the generals, as Napoleon said\nfifty years afterwards, who were incapable and inept. And it was the\nineptitude of the administrative chiefs that made the militia at once\nineffective and abhorred. First, they allowed a great number of\nclassified exemptions from the ballot. The noble, the tonsured clerk,\nthe counsellor, the domestic of noble, tonsured clerk, and counsellor,\nthe eldest son of the lawyer and the farmer, the tax collector, the\nschoolmaster, were all exempt. Hence the curse of service was embittered\nby a sense of injustice. This was one of the many springs in the old\nregime that fed the swelling and vehement stream of passion for social\nequality, until at length when the day came, it made such short and\nfurious work with the structure of envious partition between citizen and\ncitizen.\n\nAgain, by a curious perversity of official pedantry, the government\ninsisted on each man who drew the black ticket in the abhorred lottery,\nperforming his service in person. It forbade substitution. Under a\nmodern system of universal military service, this is perfectly\nintelligible and just. But, as we have seen, military service was only\nmade obligatory on those who were already ground down by hardships. As a\nconsequence of this prohibition, those who were liable to be drawn lived\nin despair, and as no worse thing than the black ticket could possibly\nbefall them, they had every inducement to run away from their own homes\nand villages. At the approach of the commissary of the government, they\nfled into the woods and marshes, as if they had been pursued by the\nplague. This was a signal for a civil war on a small scale. Those who\nwere left behind, and whose chance of being drawn was thus increased,\nhastened to pursue the fugitives with such weapons as came to their\nhands. In the Limousin the country was constantly the scene of murderous\ndisorders of this kind. What was worse, was not only that the land was\ninfested by vagabonds and bad characters, but that villages became half\ndepopulated, and the soil lost its cultivators. Finally, as is uniformly\nthe case in the history of bad government, an unjust method produced a\nworthless machine. The _milice_ supplied as bad troops as the _corvee_\nsupplied bad roads. The force was recruited from the lowest class of the\npopulation, and as soon as its members had learned a little drill, they\nwere discharged and their places taken by raw batches provided at random\nby blind lot.\n\nTurgot proposed that a character both of permanence and locality should\nbe given to the provincial force; that each parish or union of parishes\nshould be required to raise a number of men; that these men should be\nleft at home and in their own districts, and only called out for\nexercise for a certain time each year; and that they should be retained\nas a reserve force by a small payment. In this way, he argued that the\ngovernment would secure a competent force, and by stimulating local\npride and point of honour would make service popular instead of hateful.\nAs the government was too weak and distracted to take up so important a\nscheme as this, Turgot was obliged to content himself with evading the\nexisting regulations; and it is a curious illustration of the pliancy of\nVersailles, that he should have been allowed to do so openly and without\nofficial remonstrance. He permitted the victim of the ballot to provide\na voluntary substitute, and he permitted the parish to tempt\nsubstitutes by payment of a sum of money on enrolment. This may seem a\nvery obvious course to follow; but no one who has tried to realise the\nstrength and obstinacy of routine, will measure the service of a\nreformer by the originality of his ideas. In affairs of government, the\npriceless qualities are not merely originality of resource, but a sense\nfor things that are going wrong, and a sufficiently vigorous will to set\nthem right.\n\nOne general expression serves to describe this most important group of\nTurgot's undertakings. The reader has probably already observed that\nwhat Turgot was doing, was to take that step which is one of the most\ndecisive in the advance of a society to a highly organised industrial\nstage. He displaced imposts in kind, that rudest and most wasteful form\nof contribution to the public service, and established in their stead a\nsystem of money payments, and of having the work of the government done\non commercial principles. Thus, as if it were not enough to tear the\npeasant away from the soil to serve in the militia, as if it were not\nenough to drag away the farmer and his cattle to the public highways,\nthe reigning system struck a third blow at agriculture by requiring the\npeople of the localities that happened to be traversed by a regiment on\nthe march, to supply their waggons and horses and oxen for the purposes\nof military transport. In this case, it is true, a certain compensation\nin money was allowed, but how inadequate was this insignificant\nallowance, we may easily understand. The payment was only for one day,\nbut the day's march was often of many miles, and the oxen, which in the\nLimousin mostly did the work of horses, were constantly seen to drop\ndown dead in the roads. There was not only the one day's work. Often\ntwo, three, or five days were needed to reach the place of appointment,\nand for these days not even the paltry twenty sous were granted. Nor\ncould any payment of this kind recompense the peasant for the absence of\nhis beasts of burden on the great days when he wanted to plough his\nfields, to carry the grain to the barns, or to take his produce to\nmarket. The obvious remedy here, as in the _corvees_ was to have the\ntransport effected by a contractor, and to pay him out of a rate levied\non the persons liable. This was what Turgot ordered to be done.\n\nOf one other burden of the same species he relieved the cultivator. This\nunfortunate being was liable to be called upon to collect, as well as to\npay, the taxes. Once nominated, he became responsible for the amount at\nwhich his commune was assessed. If he did not produce the sum, he lost\nhis liberty. If he advanced it from his own pocket, he lost at least the\ninterest on the money. In collecting the money from his fellow\ntaxpayers, he not only incurred bitter and incessant animosities, but,\nwhat was harder to bear, he lost the priceless time of which his own\nland was only too sorely in need. In the Limousin the luckless creature\nhad a special disadvantage, for here the collector of the _taille_ had\nalso to collect the twentieths, and the twentieths were a tax for which\neven the privileged classes were liable. They, as might be supposed,\ncavilled, disputed, and appealed. The appeal lay to a sort of county\nboard, which was composed of people of their own kind, and before which\nthey too easily made out a plausible case against a clumsy collector,\nwho more often than not knew neither how to read nor to write. Turgot's\nreform of a system which was always harassing and often ruinous to an\ninnocent individual, consisted in the creation of the task of collection\ninto a distinct and permanent office, exercised over districts\nsufficiently large to make the poundage, out of which the collectors\nwere paid, an inducement to persons of intelligence and spirit to\nundertake the office as a profession. However moderate and easy each of\nthese reforms may seem by itself, yet any one may see how the sum of\nthem added to the prosperity of the land, increased the efficiency of\nthe public service, and tended to lessen the grinding sense of injustice\namong the common people.\n\nApart from these, the greatest and most difficult of all Turgot's\nadministrative reforms, we may notice in passing his assiduity in\nwatching for the smaller opportunities of making life easier to the\npeople of his province. His private benevolence was incessant and\nmarked. One case of its exercise carries our minds at a word into the\nvery midst of the storm of fire which purified France of the evil and\nsordid elements, that now and for his life lay like a mountain of lead\non all Turgot's aims and efforts. A certain foreign contractor at\nLimoges was ruined by the famine of 1770. He had a clever son, whom\nTurgot charitably sent to school, and afterwards to college in Paris.\nThe youth grew up to be the most eloquent and dazzling of the Girondins,\nthe high-souled Vergniaud. It was not, however, in good works of merely\nprivate destination that Turgot mostly exercised himself. In 1767 the\ndistrict was infested by wolves. The Intendant imposed a small tax for\nthe purpose of providing rewards for the destruction of these\ntormentors, and in reading the minutes on the subject we are reminded of\nthe fact, which was not without its significance when the peasants rose\nin vengeance on their lords two and twenty years later, that the\ndispersion of the hamlets and the solitude of the farms had made it\ncustomary for the people to go about with fire-arms. Besides encouraging\nthe destruction of noxious beasts, Turgot did something for the\npreservation of beasts not noxious. The first veterinary school in\nFrance had been founded at Lyons in 1762. To this he sent pupils from\nhis province, and eventually he founded a similar school at Limoges. He\nsuppressed a tax on cattle, which acted prejudicially on breeding and\ngrazing; and he introduced clover into the grass-lands. The potato had\nbeen unknown in Limousin. It was not common in any part of France; and\nperhaps this is not astonishing when we remember that the first field\ncrop even in agricultural Scotland is supposed only to have been sown in\nthe fourth decade of that century. People would not touch it, though\nthe experiment of persuading them to cultivate this root had been\nfrequently tried. In the Limousin the people were even more obstinate in\ntheir prejudice than elsewhere. But Turgot persevered, knowing how\nuseful potatoes would be in a land where scarcity of grain was so\ncommon. The ordinary view was that they were hardly fit for pigs, and\nthat in human beings they would certainly breed leprosy. Some of the\nEnglish Puritans would not eat potatoes because they are not mentioned\nin the Bible, and that is perhaps no better a reason than the other.\nWhen, however, it was seen that the Intendant had the hated vegetable\nserved every day at his own table, the opposition grew more faint; men\nwere at last brought to consent to use potatoes for their cattle, and\nafter a time even for themselves.\n\nIt need scarcely be said that among Turgot's efforts for agricultural\nimprovement, was the foundation of an agricultural society. This was the\ntime when the passion for provincial academies of all sorts was at its\nheight. When we consider that Turgot's society was not practical but\ndeliberative, and what themes he proposed for discussion by it, we may\nbelieve that it was one of the less useful of his works. What the\nfarmers needed was something much more directly instructive in the\nmethods of their business, than could come of discussions as to the\neffects of indirect taxation on the revenues of landowners, or the right\nmanner of valuing the income of land in the different kinds of\ncultivation. 'In that most unlucky path of French exertion,' says Arthur\nYoung, 'this distinguished patriot was able to do nothing. This society\ndoes like other societies; they meet, converse, offer premiums, and\npublish nonsense. This is not of much consequence, for the people\ninstead of reading their memoirs are not able to read at all. They can,\nhowever, _see_, and if a farm was established in that good cultivation\nwhich they ought to copy, something would be presented from which they\n_might_ learn. I asked particularly if the members of this society had\nland in their own hands, and was assured that they had; but the\nconversation presently explained it. They had _metayers_ round their\ncountry seats, and this was considered as farming their own lands, so\nthat they assume something of a merit from the identical circumstance,\nwhich is the curse and ruin of the whole country.'\n\nThe record of what Turgot did for manufacturing industry and commerce is\nnaturally shorter than that of his efforts for the relief of the land\nand its cultivators. In the eyes of the modern economist, with his\nhorror of government encouragement to industry, no matter in what time,\nplace, or circumstance, some of Turgot's actions will seem of doubtful\nwisdom. At Brives, for example, with all the authority of an Intendant,\nhe urged the citizens to provide buildings for carrying on a certain\nmanufacture which he and others thought would be profitable to the town;\nand, as the money for the buildings did not come in very readily, he\nlevied a rate both on the town and on the inhabitants of the suburbs.\nHis argument was that the new works would prove indirectly beneficial to\nthe whole neighbourhood. He was not long, however, in finding out, as\nthe authors of such a policy generally find out, how difficult it is to\nreconcile the interests of aided manufactures with those of the\ntaxpayers. It is characteristic, we may remark, of the want of public\nspirit in the great nobles, that one of Turgot's first difficulties in\nthe affair was to defeat an unjust claim made by no less a personage\nthan the Marshal de Noailles, to a piece of public land on which the\nproposed works were to be built. A more important industry in the\nhistory of Limoges sprang from the discovery, during Turgot's tenure of\noffice, of the china clay which has now made the porcelain of Limoges\nonly second among the French potteries to that of Sevres itself. The\nmodern pottery has been developed since the close of the Revolution,\nwhich checked the establishments and processes that had been directed,\nencouraged, and supervised by Turgot.\n\nTo his superior enlightenment in another part of the commercial field we\nowe one of the most excellent of Turgot's pieces, his Memorial on Loans\nof Money. This plea for free trade in money has all the sense and\nliberality of the brightest side of the eighteenth century illumination.\nIt was suggested by the following circumstance. At Angouleme four or\nfive rogues associated together, and drew bills on one another. On these\nbills they borrowed money, the average rate of interest being from\neight to ten per cent. When the bills fell due, instead of paying them,\nthey laid informations against the lenders for taking more than the\nlegal rate of interest. The lenders were ruined, persons who had money\nwere afraid to make advances, bills were protested, commercial credit\nwas broken, and the trade of the district was paralysed. Turgot\nprevailed upon the Council of State to withdraw the cases from the local\njurisdiction; the proceedings against the lenders were annulled, and the\ninstitution of similar proceedings forbidden. This was a characteristic\ncourse. The royal government was generally willing in the latter half of\nthe eighteenth century to redress a given case of abuse, but it never\nfelt itself strong enough, or had leisure enough, to deal with the\ngeneral source from which the particular grievance sprang. Turgot's\nMemorial is as cogent an exposure of the mischief of Usury Laws to the\npublic prosperity, as the more renowned pages either of Bentham or J. B.\nSay on the same subject, and it has the merit of containing an\nexplanation at once singularly patient and singularly intelligent, of\nthe origin of the popular feeling about usury and its adoption by the\nlegislator.\n\nAfter he had been eight years at his post, Turgot was called upon to\ndeal with the harassing problems of a scarcity of food. In 1770 even the\nmaize and black grain, and the chestnuts on which the people supported\nlife, failed almost completely, and the failure extended over two years.\nThe scarcity very speedily threatened to become a famine, and all its\nconditions were exasperated by the unwisdom of the authorities, and the\nselfish rapacity of the landlords. It needed all the firmness and all\nthe circumspection of which Turgot was capable, to overcome the\ndifficulties which the strong forces of ignorance, prejudice, and\ngreediness raised up against him.\n\nHis first battle was on an issue which is painfully familiar to our own\nIndian administrators at the present time. In 1764, an edict had been\npromulgated decreeing free trade in grain, not with foreign countries,\nbut among the different provinces of the kingdom. This edict had not\nmade much way in the minds either of the local officials or of the\npeople at large, and the presence of famine made the free and\nunregulated export of food seem no better than a cruel and outrageous\nparadox. The parlement of Bordeaux at once suspended the edict of 1764.\nThey ordered that all dealers in grain, farmers of land, owners of land,\nof whatever rank, quality, or condition, should forthwith convey to the\nmarkets of their district '_a sufficient quantity_' of grain to\nprovision the said markets. The same persons were forbidden to sell\neither by wholesale or retail any portion of the said grain at their own\ngranaries. Turgot at once procured from the Council at Versailles the\nproper instrument for checking this impolitic interference with the free\ncirculation of grain, and he contrived this instrument in such\nconciliatory terms as to avoid any breach with the parlement, whose\nmotives, for that matter, were respectable enough. In spite, however,\nof the action of the government, popular feeling ran high against free\nmarkets. Tumultuous gatherings of famishing men and women menaced the\nunfortunate grain-dealers. Waggoners engaged in carrying grain away from\na place where it was cheaper, to another place where it was dearer, were\nviolently arrested in their business, and terrified from proceeding.\nHunger prevented people from discerning the unanswerable force of the\nargument that if the grain commanded a higher price somewhere else, that\nwas a sure sign of the need there being more dire. The local officials\nwere as hostile as their humbler neighbours. At the town of Turenne,\nthey forbade grain to be taken away, and forced the owners of it to sell\nit on the spot at the market rate. At the town of Angouleme the\nlieutenant of police took upon himself to order that all the grain\ndestined for the Limousin should be unloaded and stored at Angouleme.\nTurgot brought a heavy hand to bear on these breakers of administrative\ndiscipline, and readily procured such sanction as his authority needed\nfrom the Council.\n\nOne of the most interesting of the measures to which Turgot resorted in\nmeeting the destitution of the country, was the establishment of the\nCharitable Workshops. Some of the advocates of the famous National\nWorkshops of 1848 have appealed to this example of the severe patriot,\nfor a sanction to their own economic policy. It is not clear that the\nlogic of the Socialist is here more remorseless than usual. If the State\nmay set up workshops to aid people who are short of food because the\nharvest has failed, why should it not do the same when people are short\nof food because trade is bad, work scarce, and wages intolerably low? Of\ncourse Turgot's answer would have been that remorseless logic is the\nmost improper instrument in the world for a business of rough\nexpedients, such as government is. There is a vital difference in\npractice between opening a public workshop in the exceptional emergency\nof a famine, and keeping public workshops open as a normal interference\nwith the free course of industrial activity. For the moment the\nprinciple may appear to be the same, but in reality the application of\nthe principle means in the latter case the total disorganisation of\nindustry; in the former it means no more than a temporary breach of the\nexisting principles of organisation, with a view to its speedier\nrevival. To invoke Turgot as a dabbler in Socialism because he opened\n_ateliers de charite_, is as unreasonable as it would be to make an\nEnglish minister who should suspend the Bank Charter Act in a crisis,\ninto the champion of an inconvertible paper currency. Turgot always\nregarded the sums paid in his works, not as wages, but as alms. All that\nhe urged was that 'the best and most useful kind of alms consists in\nproviding means for earning them.' To prevent the workers from earning\naid with as little trouble to themselves as possible, he recommended\npayment by the piece and not by the day. To check workers from flocking\nin from their regular employments, he insisted on the wages being kept\nbelow the ordinary rate, and he urged the propriety of driving as sharp\nbargains as possible in fixing the price of the piece of work. To\nprevent the dissipation of earnings at the tavern, he paid not in money,\nbut in leathern tokens, that were only current in exchange for\nprovisions. All these regulations mark a wide gulf between the Economist\nof 1770 and the Socialist of 1848. Nobody was sterner than Turgot\nagainst beggars, the inevitable scourge of every country where the evils\nof vicious economic arrangements are aggravated by the mischievous views\nof the Catholic clergy, first, as to the duties of promiscuous\nalmsgiving, and second, as to the virtue of improvident marriages. In\n1614 the States General had been for hanging all mendicants, and Colbert\nhad sent them to the galleys. Turgot was less rigorous than that, but he\nwould not suffer his efforts for the economic restoration of his\nprovince to be thwarted by the influx of these devouring parasites, and\nhe sent every beggar on whom hands could be laid to prison.\n\nThe story of the famine in the Limousin brings to light some instructive\nfacts as to the temper of the lords and rich proprietors on the eve of\nthe changes that were to destroy them. Turgot had been specially anxious\nthat as much as possible of what was necessary for the relief of\ndistress should be done by private persons. He knew the straits of the\ngovernment. He knew how hard it would be to extract from it the means of\nrepairing a deficit in his own finances. Accordingly he invited the\nlandowners, not merely to contribute sums of money in return for the\npublic works carried on in their neighbourhood, but also, by way of\nproviding employment to their indigent neighbours, to undertake such\nworks as they should find convenient on their own estates. The response\nwas disappointing. 'The districts,' he wrote in 1772, 'where I have\nworks on foot, do not give me reason to hope for much help on the side\nof the generosity of the nobles and the rich landowners. The Prince de\nSoubise is so far the only person who has given anything for the works\nthat have been executed in his duchy.' Nor was abstinence from\ngenerosity the worst part of this failure in public spirit. The same\nnobles and landowners who refused to give, did not refuse to take away.\nMost of them proceeded at once to dismiss their _metayers_, the people\nwho farmed their lands in consideration of a fixed proportion of the\nproduce. Turgot, in an ordinance of admirable gravity, remonstrated\nagainst this harsh and impolitic proceeding. He pointed out that the\nunfortunate wretches, thus stripped of every resource, would have to\nleave the district, abandoning their wives and children to the charity\nof villages that were already overburdened with the charge of their own\npeople. To cast this additional load on the villages was all the more\nunjust, because the owners of land had been exempted from one-half of\nthe taxes levied on the owners of other property, exactly because the\nformer were expected to provide for their own peasants. It was a claim\nless of humanity than of bare justice, that the landowners should do\nsomething for men with whom their relations had been so close as to be\nalmost domestic, and to whose hard toil their masters owed all that they\npossessed. As a mere matter of self-interest, moreover, apart alike from\nboth justice and humanity, the death or flight of the labourers would\nleave the proprietors helpless when the next good season came, and for\nwant of hands the land would be doomed to barrenness for years to come,\nto the grievous detriment no less of the landowners than of the whole\npeople of the realm. Accordingly, Turgot ordered all those who had\ndismissed their _metayers_ to take them back again, and he enacted\ngenerally that all proprietors, of whatever quality or condition, and\nwhether privileged or not, should be bound to keep and support until the\nnext harvest all the labourers who had been on their land in the\nprevious October, as well women and children as men.\n\nTurgot's policy in this matter is more instructive as to the social\nstate of France, than it may at first sight appear. At first sight we\nare astonished to find the austere economist travelling so far from the\northodox path of free contract as to order a landowner to furnish at his\nown cost subsistence for his impoverished tenants. But the truth is that\nthe _metayer_ was not a free tenant in the sense which we attach to the\nword. '_In Limousin_,' says Arthur Young, '_the metayers are considered\nas little better than menial servants_.' And it is not going beyond the\nevidence to say that they were even something lower than menial\nservants; they were really a kind of serf-caste. They lived in the\nlowest misery. More than half of them were computed to be deeply in debt\nto the proprietors. In many cases they were even reduced every year to\nborrow from their landlord, before the harvest came round, such coarse\nbread of mixed rye and barley as he might choose to lend them. What\nTurgot therefore had in his mind was no relation of free contract,\nthough it was that legally, but a relation which partly resembled that\nof a feudal lord to his retainer, and partly--as Sir Henry Maine has\nhinted--that of a planter to his negroes. It is less surprising, then,\nthat Turgot should have enforced some of the responsibilities of the\nlord and the planter.\n\nThe nobles had resort to a still more indefensible measure than the\nexpulsion of their _metayers_. Most of the lands in the Generality of\nLimoges were charged with dues in kind payable to the lords. As the\ncultivators had for the most part no grain even for their own bread,\nthey naturally had no grain for the lord's dues. The lords then insisted\non payment in cash, and they insisted on estimating this payment at the\nfamine price of the grain. Most of them were really as needy as they\nwere idle and proud, and nothing is so inordinately grasping as the\nindigence of class-pride. The effect of their proceedings now was to\nincrease their revenue fourfold and fivefold out of public calamity and\nuniversal misery. And unfortunately the liability of the cultivators in\na given manor was _solidaire_; they were jointly and severally\nresponsible, and the effect of this was that even those who were in\ncircumstances to pay the quadrupled dues, were ruined and destroyed\nwithout mercy in consequence of having also to pay the quadrupled dues\nof their beggared neighbours. Turgot arrested this odious process by\nmeans of an old and forgotten decree, which he prevailed upon the\nparlement of Bordeaux to revive in good and due form, to the effect that\nthe arrears of dues in kind for 1769 should be paid at the market price\nof grain when the dues were payable; that is, before the scarcity had\ndeclared itself.\n\nWhen we consider the grinding and extortionate spirit thus shown in face\nof a common calamity, we may cease to wonder at the ferocity with which,\nwhen the hour struck, the people tore away privilege, distinction, and\nproperty itself from classes that had used all three only to ruin the\nland and crush its inhabitants into the dust. And the moment that the\nlord had thus transformed himself into a mere creditor, and a creditor\nfor goods delivered centuries ago, and long since consumed and\nforgotten, then it was certain that, if political circumstances favoured\nthe growing economic sentiment, there would be heard again the old cry\nof the Roman plebs for an agrarian law and _novae tabulae_. Nay, something\nwas heard that is amazingly like the cry of the modern Irish peasant. In\n1776 two noteworthy incidents happened. A certain Marquis de Vibraye\nthrew into prison a peasant who refused to pay the _droit de cens_.\nImmediately between thirty and forty peasants came to the rescue, armed\nthemselves, besieged the chateau, took it and sacked it, and drove the\nMarquis de Vibraye away in terror. Still more significant is the second\nincident, which happened shortly after. A relative of the Duke of\nMortemart, shooting on his property, was attacked by peasants who\ninsisted that he should cease his sport. They treated him with much\nbrutality, and even threatened to fire on him and his attendants,\n'_claiming to be free masters of their lands_.' Here was the main root\nof the great French Revolution. A fair consideration of the details of\nsuch an undertaking as Turgot's administration of the Limousin helps us\nto understand two things: first, that all the ideas necessary for the\npacific transformation of French society were there in the midst of it;\nsecond, that the system of privilege had fostered such a spirit in one\nclass, and the reaction against the inconsiderate manifestation of that\nspirit was so violent in the other class, that good political ideas were\nvain and inapplicable.\n\nIt is curious to find that, in the midst of his beneficent\nadministration, Turgot was rating practical work very low in comparison\nwith the achievements of the student and the thinker. 'You are very\nfortunate,' Condorcet said to him, 'in having a passion for the public\ngood, and in being able to satisfy it; it is a great consolation, and of\na very superior order to the consolation of mere study.' 'Nay,' replied\nTurgot, in his next letter, 'whatever you may say, I believe that the\nsatisfaction derived from study is superior to any other kind of\nsatisfaction. I am perfectly convinced that one may be, through study, a\nthousand times more useful to men than in any of our subordinate posts.\nThere we torment ourselves, and often without any compensating success,\nto secure some small benefits, while we are the involuntary instrument\nof evils that are by no means small. All our small benefits are\ntransitory, while the light that a man of letters is able to diffuse\nmust, sooner or later, destroy all the artificial evils of the human\nrace, and place it in a position to enjoy all the goods that nature\noffers.' It is clear that we can only accept Turgot's preference, on\ncondition that the man of letters is engaged on work that seriously\nadvances social interests and adds something to human stature. Most\nliterature, nearly all literature, is distinctly subordinate and\nsecondary; it only serves to pass the time of the learned or cultured\nclass, without making any definite mark either on the mental habits of\nmen and women, or on the institutions under which they live. Compared\nwith such literature as this, the work of an administrator who makes\nlife materially easier and more hopeful to the half-million of persons\nliving in the Generality of Limoges or elsewhere, must be pronounced\nemphatically the worthier and more justly satisfactory.[44]\n\n[Footnote 44: See vol. i. p. 290.]\n\nTurgot himself, however, found time, in his industry at Limoges, to make\na contribution to a kind of literature which has seriously modified the\npractical arrangements and social relations of the western world. In\n1766 he published his Essay on the Formation and Distribution of\nWealth--a short but most pithy treatise, in which he anticipated some of\nthe leading economic principles of that greater work by Adam Smith,\nwhich was given to the world ten years later. Turgot's Essay has none of\nthe breadth of historic outlook, and none of the amplitude of concrete\nillustrations from real affairs, which make the Wealth of Nations so\ndeeply fertile, so persuasive, so interesting, so thoroughly alive, so\ngenuinely enriching to the understanding of the judicious reader. But\nthe comparative dryness of Turgot's too concise form does not blind the\nhistorian of political economy to the merit of the substance of his\npropositions. It was no small proof of originality and enlightenment to\nprecede Adam Smith by ten years in the doctrines of free trade, of free\nindustry, of loans on interest, of the constitutive elements of price,\nof the effects of the division of labour, of the processes of the\nformation of capital. The passage on interest will bear reproducing once\nmore:--'We may regard the rate of interest as a kind of level, below\nwhich all labour, all cultivation, all industry, all commerce ceases. It\nis like a sea spreading out over a vast district; the tops of the\nmountains rise above the waters and form fertile and cultivated islands.\nIf the sea by any chance finds an outlet, then in proportion as it goes\ndown, first the slopes, next the plains and valleys, appear and clothe\nthemselves with productions of every kind. It is enough that the sea\nrises or falls by a foot, to inundate vast shores, or to restore them to\ncultivation and plenty.' There are not many illustrations at once so apt\nand so picturesque as this, but most of the hundred paragraphs that make\nup the Reflections are, notwithstanding one or two of the characteristic\ncrotchets of Quesnai's school, both accurate and luminous.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nIn May 1774 Lewis XV. died. His successor was only twenty years old; he\nwas sluggish in mind, vacillating in temper, and inexperienced in\naffairs. Maurepas was recalled, to become the new king's chief adviser;\nand Maurepas, at the suggestion of one of Turgot's college friends,\nsummoned the Intendant from Limoges, and placed him at the head of the\ndepartment of marine. This post Turgot only held for a couple of months;\nhe was then preferred to the great office of Controller-General. The\ncondition of the national finance made its administration the most\nimportant of all the departments of the government. Turgot's policy in\nthis high sphere belongs to the general history of France, and there is\nno occasion for us to reproduce its details here. It was mainly an\nattempt to extend over the whole realm the kind of reforms which had\nbeen tried on a small scale in the Limousin. He suppressed the\n_corvees_, and he tacked the money payment which was substituted for\nthat burden on to the Twentieths, an impost from which the privileged\nclass was not exempt. 'The weight of this charge,' he made the king say\nin the edict of suppression, 'now falls and must fall only on the\npoorest classes of our subjects.' This truth only added to the\nexasperation of the rich, and perhaps might well have been omitted.\nAlong with the _corvees_ were suppressed the jurandes, or exclusive\nindustrial corporations or trade-guilds, whose monopolies and\nrestrictions were so mischievous an impediment to the wellbeing of the\ncountry. In the preamble to this edict we seem to be breathing the air,\nnot of Versailles in 1775, but of the Convention in 1793:--'God, when he\nmade man with wants, and rendered labour an indispensable resource, made\nthe right of work the property of every individual in the world, and\nthis property is the first, the most sacred, and the most\nimprescriptible of all kinds of property. We regard it as one of the\nfirst duties of our justice, and as one of the acts most of all worthy\nof our benevolence, to free our subjects from every infraction of that\ninalienable right of humanity.'\n\nAgain, Turgot removed a tax from certain forms of lease, with a view to\npromote the substitution of a system of farming for the system of\n_metayers_. He abolished an obstructive privilege by which the Hotel\nDieu had the exclusive right of selling meat during Lent. The whole of\nthe old incoherent and vexatious police of the corn-markets was swept\naway. Finally, he inspired the publication of a short but most\nimportant writing, Boncerf's _Inconvenients des Droits Feodaux_, in\nwhich, without criticising the origin of the privileges of the nobles,\nthe author showed how much it would be to the advantage of the lords to\naccept a commutation of their feudal dues. What was still more\nexasperating both to nobles and lawyers, was the author's hardy\nassertion that if the lords refused the offer of their vassals, the king\nhad the power to settle the question for them by his own legislative\nauthority. This was the most important and decisive of the\npre-revolutionary tracts.\n\nEqually violent prejudices and more sensitive interests were touched by\ntwo other sets of proposals. The minister began to talk of a new\nterritorial contribution, and a great survey and re-assessment of the\nland. Then followed an edict restoring in good earnest the free\ncirculation of corn within the kingdom. Turgot was a partisan of free\ntrade in its most entire application; but for the moment he contented\nhimself with the free importation of grain and its free circulation at\nhome, without sanctioning its exportation abroad. Apart from changes\nthus organically affecting the industry of the country, Turgot dealt\nsternly with certain corruptions that had crept into the system of\ntax-farming, as well as with the monstrous abuses of the system of\ncourt-pensions.\n\nThe measures we have enumerated were all excellent in themselves, and\nthe state of the kingdom was such as urgently to call for them. They\nwere steps towards the construction of a fabric of freedom and justice.\nBut they provoked a host of bitter and irreconcilable enemies, while\nthey raised up no corresponding host of energetic supporters. The reason\nof the first of these circumstances is plain enough, but the second\ndemands a moment's consideration. That the country clergy should\ndenounce the Philosopher, as they called him, from the pulpit and the\nsteps of the altar, was natural enough. Many even of his old colleagues\nof the Encyclopaedia had joined Necker against the minister. The greatest\nof them all, it is true, stood by Turgot with unfailing staunchness; a\nshower of odes, diatribes, dialogues, allegories, dissertations, came\nfrom the Patriarch of Ferney to confound and scatter the enemies of the\nnew reforms. But the people were unmoved. If Turgot published an\nexplanation of the high price of grain, they perversely took explanation\nfor gratulation, and thought the Controller preferred to have bread\ndear. If he put down seditious risings with a strong hand, they insisted\nthat he was in nefarious league with the corn-merchants and the bakers.\nHow was it that the people did not recognise the hand of a benefactor?\nThe answer is that they suspected the source of the new reforms too\nvirulently to judge them calmly. For half a century, as Condorcet says\npregnantly, they had been undergoing the evils of anarchy, while they\nsupposed that they were feeling those of despotism. The error was grave,\nbut it was natural, and one effect of it was to make every measure that\nproceeded from the court odious. Hence, when the parlements took up\ntheir judicial arms in defence of abuses and against reforms, the common\npeople took sides with them, for no better reason than that this was to\ntake sides against the king's government. Malesherbes in those days, and\ngood writers since, held that the only safe plan was to convoke the\nStates-General. They would at least have shared the responsibility with\nthe crown. Turgot rejected this opinion. By doctrine, no less than by\ntemperament, he disliked the control of a government by popular bodies.\nEverything for the people, nothing by the people: this was the maxim of\nthe Economists, and Turgot held it in all its rigour. The royal\nauthority was the only instrument that he could bring himself to use.\nEven if he could have counted on a Frederick or a Napoleon, the\ninstrument would hardly have served his purposes; as things were, it was\na broken reed, not a fine sword, that he had to his hand.\n\nThe National Assembly and the Convention went to work exactly in the\nsame stiff and absolute spirit as Turgot. They were just as little\ndisposed to gradual, moderate, and compromising ways as he. But with\nthem the absolute authority on which they leaned was real and most\npotent; with him it was a shadow. We owe it to Turgot that the\nexperiment was complete: he proved that the monarchy of divine right was\nincapable of reform.[45] As it has been sententiously expressed, 'The\npart of the sages was now played out; room was now for the men of\ndestiny.'\n\n[Footnote 45: Foncin's _Ministere de Turgot_, p. 574.]\n\nIf the repudiation of a popular assembly was the cardinal error in\nTurgot's scheme of policy, there were other errors added. The\npublication of Boncerf's attack on the feudal dues, with the undisguised\nsanction of the minister, has been justly condemned as a grave\nimprudence, and as involving a forgetfulness of the true principles of\ngovernment and administration, that would certainly not have been\ncommitted either by Colbert, in whom Turgot professed to seek his model,\nnor by Gournai, who had been his master. It was a broad promise of\nreforms which Turgot was by no means sure of being able to persuade the\nking and his council to adopt. By prematurely divulging his projects, it\naugmented the number of his adversaries, without being definite enough\nto bring new friends.[46] Again, Turgot did nothing to redeem it by\npersonal conciliatoriness in carrying out the designs of a benevolent\nabsolutism. The Count of Provence, afterwards Lewis XVIII., wrote a\nsatire on the government during Turgot's ministry, and in it there is a\npicture of the great reformer as he appeared to his enemies: 'There was\nthen in France an awkward, heavy, clumsy creature; born with more\nrudeness than character, more obstinacy than firmness, more impetuosity\nthan tact; a charlatan in administration no less than in virtue, exactly\nformed to get the one decried and to disgust the world with the other;\nmade harsh and distant by his self-love, and timid by his pride; as much\na stranger to men, whom he had never known, as to the public weal, which\nhe had never seen aright; this man was called Turgot.'\n\n[Footnote 46: See Mauguin's _Etudes Historiques sur l'Administration de\nl'Agriculture_, i. 353.]\n\nIt is a mistake to take the word of political adversaries for a man's\ncharacter, but adversaries sometimes only say out aloud what is already\nsuspected by friends. The coarse account given by the Count of Provence\nshows us where Turgot's weakness as a ruler may have lain. He was\ndistant and stiff in manner, and encouraged no one to approach him. Even\nhis health went against him, for at a critical time in his short\nministry he was confined to bed by gout for four months, and he could\nsee nobody save clerks and secretaries. The very austerity, loftiness,\nand purity, which make him so reverend and inspiring a figure in the\npages of the noble-hearted Condorcet, may well have been impediments in\ndealing with a society that, in the fatal words of the Roman historian,\ncould bear neither its disorders nor their remedies.\n\nThe king had once said pathetically: 'It is only M. Turgot and I who\nlove the people.' But even with the king, there were points at which the\nminister's philosophic severity strained their concord. Turgot was the\nfriend of Voltaire and Condorcet; he counted Christianity a form of\nsuperstition; and he, who as a youth had refused to go through life\nwearing the mask of the infidel abbe, had too much self-respect in his\nmanhood to practise the rites and uses of a system which he considered\na degradation of the understanding. One day the king said to Maurepas:\n'You have given me a Controller-general who never goes to mass.' 'Sire,'\nreplied that ready worldling, 'the Abbe Terray always went'--and Terray\nhad brought the government to bankruptcy. But Turgot hurt the king's\nconscience more directly than by staying away from mass and confession.\nFaithful to the long tradition of his ancestors, Lewis XVI. wished the\nceremony of his coronation to take place at Rheims. Turgot urged that it\nshould be performed at Paris, and as cheaply as possible. And he\nadvanced on to still more delicate ground. In the rite of consecration,\nthe usage was that the king should take an oath to pursue all heretics.\nTurgot demanded the suppression of this declaration of intolerance. It\nwas pointed out to him that it was only a formality. But Turgot was one\nof those severe and scrupulous souls, to whom a wicked promise does not\ncease to be degrading by becoming hypocritical. And he was perfectly\njustified. It was only by the gradual extinction of the vestiges of her\nancient barbarisms, as occasion offered, that the Church could have\nescaped the crash of the Revolution. Meanwhile, the king and the priests\nhad their own way: the king was crowned at Rheims, and the priests\nexacted from him an oath to be unjust, oppressive, and cruel towards a\nportion of his subjects. Turgot could only remonstrate; but the\nphilosophic memorial in which he protested in favour of religious\nfreedom and equality, gave the king a serious shock.\n\nWe have no space, nor would it be worth while, to describe the intrigues\nwhich ended in the minister's fall. Already in the previous volume, we\nhave referred to the immediate and decisive share which, the queen had\nin his disgrace.[47] He was dismissed in the beginning of May 1776,\nhaving been in power little more than twenty months. 'You are too\nhurried,' Malesherbes had said to him. 'You think you have the love of\nthe public good; not at all; you have a rage for it, for a man must be\nnothing short of enraged to insist on forcing the hand of the whole\nworld.' Turgot replied, more pathetically perhaps than reasonably,\n'What, you accuse me of haste, and you know that in my family we die of\ngout at fifty!'\n\n[Footnote 47: See vol. i. p. 31.]\n\nThere is something almost tragic in the joy with which Turgot's\ndismissal was received on all sides. 'I seem,' said Marmontel, 'to be\nlooking at a band of brigands in the forest of Bondy, who have just\nheard that the provost-marshal has been discharged.' Voltaire and\nCondorcet were not more dismayed by the fall of the minister, than by\nthe insensate delight which greeted the catastrophe. 'This event,' wrote\nCondorcet, 'has changed all nature in my eyes. I have no longer the same\npleasure in looking at those fair landscapes over which he would have\nshed happiness and contentment. The sight of the gaiety of the people\nwrings my heart. They dance and sport, as if they had lost nothing. Ah,\nwe have had a delicious dream, but it has been all too short.' Voltaire\nwas equally inconsolable, and still more violent in the expression of\nhis grief. When he had become somewhat calmer, he composed those\nadmirable verses,--_To a Man_:\n\n\n    Philosophe indulgent, ministre citoyen,\n    Qui ne cherchas le vrai que pour faire le bien,\n    Qui d'un peuple leger et trop ingrat peut-etre\n    Preparais le bonheur et celui de son maitre,\n    Ce qu'on nomme disgrace a paye tes bienfaits.\n    Le vrai prix de travail n'est que de vivre en paix.\n\n\nTurgot at first showed some just and natural resentment at the levity\nwith which he had been banished from power, and he put on no airs of\ntheatrical philosophy. He would have been untrue to the sincerity of his\ncharacter, if he had affected indifference or satisfaction at seeing his\nbeneficent hopes for ever destroyed. But chagrin did not numb his\nindustry or his wide interests. Condorcet went to visit him some months\nafter his fall. He describes Turgot as reading Ariosto, as making\nexperiments in physics, and as having forgotten all that had passed\nwithin the last two years, save when the sight of evils that he would\nhave mitigated or removed, happened to remind him of it. He occupied\nhimself busily with chemistry and optics, with astronomy and mechanics,\nand above all with meteorology, which was a new science in those days,\nand the value of which to the study of the conditions of human health,\nof the productions of the earth, of navigation, excited his most ardent\nanticipations. Turgot also was so moved by the necessity for a new\nsynthesis of life and knowledge as to frame a plan for a great work 'on\nthe human soul, the order of the universe, the Supreme Being, the\nprinciples of societies, the rights of men, political constitutions,\nlegislation, administration, physical education, the means of perfecting\nthe human race relatively to the progressive advance and employment of\ntheir forces, to the happiness of which they are susceptible, to the\nextent of the knowledge to which they may attain, to the certainty,\nclearness, and simplicity of the principles of conduct, to the purity of\nthe feelings that spring up in men's souls.' While his mind was moving\nthrough these immense spaces of thought, he did not forget the things of\nthe hour. He invented a machine for serving ship's cables. He wrote a\nplea for allowing Captain Cook's vessel to remain unmolested during the\nAmerican war. With Adam Smith, with Dr. Price, with Franklin, with Hume,\nhe kept up a grave and worthy correspondence. Of his own countrymen,\nCondorcet was his most faithful friend and disciple, and it is much to\nCondorcet's credit that this was so, for Turgot never gave way to the\npassionate impulses of the philosophic school against what Voltaire\ncalled the Infamous, that is to say, against the Church, her doctrines,\nher morality, her history.\n\nWe have already said that the keyword to Turgot's political aims and\nsocial theory was not Pity nor Benevolence, but Justice. It was Justice\nalso, not temporary Prejudice nor Passion, that guided his judgment\nthrough the heated issues of the time. This justice and exact\nreasonableness it was impossible to surprise or throw off its guard. His\nsublime intellectual probity never suffered itself to be tempted. He\nprotested against the doctrines of Helvetius's book, _de l'Esprit_, and\nof D'Holbach's _Systeme de la Nature_, at a moment when some of his best\nfriends were enthusiastic in admiration, for no better reason than that\nthe doctrines of the two books were hateful to the ecclesiastics and\ndestructive of the teaching of the Church. In the course of a\ndiscussion, Condorcet had maintained that in general scrupulous persons\nare not fit for great things: a Christian, he said, will waste in\nsubduing the darts of the flesh time that he might have employed upon\nthings that would have been useful to humanity; he will never venture to\nrise against tyrants, for fear of having formed a hasty judgment, and so\nforth in other cases. 'No virtue,' replies Turgot, 'in whatever sense\nyou take the word, can dispense with justice; and I think no better of\nthe people who do your _great things_ at the cost of justice, than I do\nof poets who fancy that they can produce great wonders of imagination\nwithout order and regularity. I know that excessive precision tends to\ndeaden the fire alike of action and of composition; but there is a\nmedium in everything. There has never been any question in our\ncontroversy of a capuchin wasting his time in quenching the darts of the\nflesh, though, by the way, in the whole sum of time wasted, the term\nexpressing the time lost in satisfying the appetites of the flesh would\nprobably be found to be decidedly the greater of the two.' This\nparenthesis is one of a hundred illustrations of Turgot's habitual\nrefusal to be carried out of the narrow path of exact rationality, or to\ntake for granted a single word of the common form of the dialect even of\nhis best friends and closest associates. And the readiness with which\nmen fall into common form, the levity with which they settle the most\ncomplex and difficult issues, stirred in Turgot what Michelet calls\n_ferocite_, and Mr. Matthew Arnold calls _soeva indignatio_. 'Turgot\nwas filled with an astonished, awful, oppressive sense of the _immoral\nthoughtlessness_ of men; of the heedless, hazardous way in which they\ndeal with things of the greatest moment to them; of the immense,\nincalculable misery which is due to this cause' (_M. Arnold_).\n\nTurgot died on the 20th of March 1781, leaving to posterity the memory\nof a character which was more perfect and imposing than his\nperformances. Condorcet saw in this harmonious union and fine balance of\nqualities the secret of his unpopularity. 'Envy,' he says, 'seems more\nclosely to attend a character that approaches perfection, than one that,\nwhile astonishing men by its greatness, yet by exhibiting a mixture of\ndefects and vices, offers a consolation that envy seeks.'\n\n\nTranscribers' Notes:\n\nMinor printer errors (omitted or incorrect punctuation) have been\namended without note. Minor inconsistencies in hyphenation have been\nresolved where possible, or retained where there was no way to determine\nwhich was correct, again without note. Other errors have been amended,\nand are listed below.\n\nOE/oe ligatures have not been retained in this version.\n\n\nList of Amendments:\n\nPage 50--superstitution amended to superstition--\"... treated as\nsuperstition by those ...\"\n\nPage 126--devolopment amended to development--\"... lead gradually to the\ndevelopment of sound ...\"","title":"Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3), Essay 2: Turgot","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":32034}