Introduction

TURGOT. I 1'1 T R () n IT c: T ION A and hiding, whilst yet a child, under the arm <hairs, in order to avoid, out of sheer tlfaidity, the visits which his mother received; we have been told hO\v.. latcr on in his youth, he was wont to play at games of battled ore and shuttle cockJ dressed in his clerical cassock.. with the handsome young Irirl known then as ~Iinette .and who was after \vards to become l\fadame Helvetius. \Ve still possess the speeches he delivered as Prior of the House of Soroonne at the opening and at the closing of the S()r/J()niquesof 1750. 'Ve know what reasonsdetermined him to give up the Church, and how he filled offices in the magistracy, first as deputy..councillor to the solicitor- (pr()curtur)general, then as councillor to the parliament, then as malfn des requetes. \Ve have been asked to witness his first quarrel with the parliament; in 1754, on the day when he con· sented to becomea memberof a RoyalChamber,ordered to deliver justice in the place of the exiled parliament.

B 10 TlIrgot. \Ve have heard the 1II0tS of his friends, joyful at his appointment to the Intendance of Limoges, in 1761 ; and we have been rcminded of thc hopes which this appoint~ ment suggested to Voltaire: "One of our fellow-members has just written to me to say that an intendant is ~mly fit to do mischief; you will, I trust, prove that he c.an do a great deal of good." He remained thirtcen years at Limoges, and during the quarter of a century which elapsed between his admission at the Sorbonne and his departure {rom Limoges, he was the idol of the Elt&yc/{;pedistcsand the ·economists. He knew, in succession, Quesnay, Goumay, Dupont de Nemours, Voltaire, llume, Adam Smith, Condorcet. His correspondence is very extensive. He was the real chief of a school; and although the Due de Choiseul, alluding to him in 1769, said that "he had not a ministerial head," his master, his friends, his disciples already looked upon him as the only minister capable of restoring order to the administration and to the finances of the tottering monarchy.

The letters, plans, memoirs, opinions, decrees, circu~ lars, statements-··all that he wrote during the first part of his life, all has been preserved. \Ve can follow him, almost day by day, for the whole time during which he was in office from J7.~~ to 1774. At last, when forty-sel·en years of age, he became a cabinet-minister, prepared by a whole life of thought, study, and practice as an administrator. He wa.c; then ready to realise the widest and most fruitful reforms.

11tlroductiol1. II He re-established freedom in the corn trade, and con~ jured up popular anger by this measure, nevertheless so justified. He succeeded, to the astonishment of many people, in putting an end to the 1'1'("'( des jan·IIf.S, and crowned his work by prO<.~laiming the freedom of labour. The suppressionof the /lIralldes and mallrist! was the great act of his life, and, as it were, his economic will and testament. His memoirsaddressed to the king have been preserved, also his notes, the decrees of the council which he drew up, the preambles which he wrote at the head of his edicts during the course of his ministry. 'Ve know all that he thought, wrote, and did during an administra~ tion of twenty months-very short, as we sec, but the most admirable, the busiest that can be imagined. He fell at last, after a vigorous struggle, defeated by the coalition of interests and prejudices·~·-the coalition, says Voltaire, of financiers, courtiers (/a/(ms TOUgU), and magis~ trates (bonnt/scon-h) ,; then those who spoke of hi mdis n cussed endlesslythe (~uses of,his (ailure.

Turgot's downfallhas been ascribed to the threefoldfact that he undertook too many things at once; that he was too unbending, and that he was animated by a sectarian spirit. Critics have endeavoured to find out what are the qualities of a statesman which he needed to get on. His biographers follow him in his retreat, in order to understand him better; there they find him busy with scientific experiment.~, resuming the works on prosody which interested him in his early youth. B2 12 Ttt1~ot. He dies at last, at the age of fjfty~four, from an nttack of gout-·a mnlady which for more than twenty years had never ceased troubling him, and which made him answer to :hfalesherbes, who blamed him for being too much in a hurry: U I cannot help it! The needs of the people are immense; and in my family gout carries us off at fifty." For an those who have related to us his life, who have collected with a pious care his most trifling sayings, his slightest writings, TurgQt. isa...great mind, one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century, the greatestJ perhapsl next to ~Iontesquieu; but they all look upon him as an unlucky reformer, who died at his work under the attacks of adversaries, weaker than himself, it is true, but more cunning; men who were no doubt less anxious' to know and to apply the great truths of political economy, but who were admirably trained to set in motion, for their own profit, aU the springs of court intrigues.

'Ve cannot conceal the fact that an utterance escapes from the bosom of those even who have most constantly lived near him, who have never ceased loving and admiring him. They all say, repeat, and write: Turgot did not possess the qualities which insure victory. ~1)' aim is to deduce from his life and his work a very different conclusion; and whilst speaking of him, I would treat him, not as a defeated man, but as a glorious. The fact is, that if he failed one hundred years ago, he has in reality lorded it over the present day. He has founded the political economy of the nineteenth century, 1'lirodllctiOll. 13 and, thanks to the freedom of labour which he has bequeathed to us, he has stamped upon the nineteenth century the mark which wi11 be its chief characteristic in history. Thanks to the freedom of work, the nineteenth century has been the age of industry on a large scale, the age of the application to the development of work and of riches of the great scientific, geographical, and economic discoveries. By causing the principles of the freedom of work to penetrate deeply into the conscience of France 'and of Europe, Turgot has opened the way to the conquest of the world by the civilisation of the 'Vest, and it is the nineteenth century which has accomplished that conquest.

A very remarkable indication of Turgot's individual action in the movement which has taken place during our own times is this: his inspiration seems still necessary at the present time to keep alive the principles of which he recommended the application. In order to prevent the present century from abandoning the track marked for it by Turgot, we are compelled to cling more than ever to his person, to his life, and to his actions; supported by him, we are obliged to engage once more in struggles very similar to those in which he was en gaged nearly one hundred and twenty years ago. Freedom of work, which was (or him the Alpha and Omega of all economiclaws, is to"day the object of the most spiritedattacks. It is no longer the privileged members of society, the Turgot. rich, the parliamentarians, the directing classes, as they were commonly designated, who, like in ancient times, are coalesced against Turgot.

The present reaction appears among the workmen, the sons of those who were, so to say, mad with joy when he proclaimed the decree abolishing the maUrises and the juranaes. The workmen are doing their best to clutch their broken fetters, in order to fasten them again upon themselves, thinking that they will find a protection in what was in days gone by (but they have forgotten it) the instrument of their oppression. The nineteenth century is Turgot's own, because it is the one during which his ideas have been applied, and where he has manifestly reigned over ideas and things. 'Vill it have been the only century during which Turgot's ideas have received so brilliant a satisfaction? \Vill the next century burn what we have worshipped? Dismal pro phets are not wanting to threaten us with that destiny. Those prophets of evil shall be belied by the events. Turgot has entered into his glory; he has entered into it for ever, and French political economy, of which he has been the true founder, does not yet feel disarmed. It is not on the point of striking its colours.