Among the illustrious names of France few equal that of Turgot. He
was a philosopher among ministers, and a minister among philosophers.
Malesherbes said of him, that he had the heart of L’Hôpital and the
head of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an epoch for his
country and for the human race. Had his spirit prevailed, the bloody
drama of the French Revolution would not have occurred, or it would at
least have been postponed: I think it could not have occurred. He was
a good man, who sought to carry into government the rules of goodness.
His career from beginning to end was one continuous beneficence. Such a
nature was essentially prophetic, for he discerned the natural laws by
which the future is governed.
He was of an ancient Norman family, whose name suggests the god Thor.
He was born at Paris, 1727, and died, 1781. Being a younger son, he
was destined for the Church, and began his studies as an ecclesiastic
at the ancient Sorbonne. Before registering an irrevocable vow, he
announced his repugnance to the profession, and turned aside to
other pursuits. Law, literature, science, humanity, government, now
engaged his attention. He associated himself with the authors of the
“Encyclopédie,” and became one of its contributors. In other writings
he vindicated especially the virtue of Toleration. Not merely a
theorist, he soon arrived at the high post of Intendant of Limoges,
where he developed talent for administration and sympathy with the
people. The potato came into Limousin through him. But he continued
to employ his pen, particularly on questions of political economy,
which he treated as a master. On the accession of Louis the Sixteenth
he was called to the Cabinet as Minister of the Marine, and shortly
afterwards gave up this place to be the head of the Finances. Here he
began a system of rigid economy, founded on curtailment of expenses
and enlargement of resources. The latter was obtained especially by
removal of disabilities from trade, whether at home or abroad, and the
substitution of a single tax on land for a complex multiplicity of
taxes. The enemies of progress were too strong at that time, and the
King dismissed the reformer. Good men in France became anxious for the
future; Voltaire, in his distant retreat, gave a shriek of despair, and
addressed to Turgot remarkable verses entitled “Épître à un Homme.”
Worse still, the good edicts of the minister were rescinded, and
society was put back.
The discarded minister gave himself to science, literature, and
friendship. He welcomed Franklin to France and to immortality in
a Latin verse of marvellous felicity. He was already the companion
of the liberal spirits who were doing so much for knowledge and
for reform. By writing and by conversation he exercised a constant
influence. His “ideas” seem to illumine the time. We may be content
to follow him in saying, “The glory of arms cannot compare with the
happiness of living in peace.”[333] He anticipated our definition of
a republic, when he said “it was founded upon _the equality of all
the citizens_,”[334]--good words, not yet practically verified in all
our States. Such a government he, living under a monarchy, bravely
pronounced “the best of all”; but he added, that he “never had known
a constitution truly republican.”[335] With similar plainness he
announced that “the destruction of the Ottoman Empire would be a real
good for all the nations of Europe,” and he added, still further,
for humanity also, because it would involve the abolition of negro
slavery, and because “to despoil an oppressor is not to attack, but to
vindicate, the common rights of humanity.”[336] With such thoughts and
aspirations the prophet died.
But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even a character. All
that I intend is an introduction to Turgot’s prophetic words. When only
twenty-three years of age, while still an ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne,
the future minister delivered a discourse on the Progress of the Human
Mind, in which, after describing the commercial triumphs of the
ancient Phœnicians, covering the coasts of Greece and Asia with their
colonies, he lets drop these remarkable words:--
“Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent à l’arbre
que jusqu’à leur maturité: devenues suffisantes à elles-mêmes,
elles firent ce que fit depuis Carthage,--_ce que fera un jour
l’Amérique_.”
“Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until
their maturity: when sufficient for themselves, they did that
which Carthage afterwards did,--_that which some day America
will do_.”[337]
On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de Nemours, the editor of
Turgot’s works in 1808, remarks in a note:--
“It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty-three
years old, and devoted in a seminary to the study of theology,
divined, foresaw, the revolution which has formed the United
States,--which has detached them from the European power
apparently the most capable of retaining its colonies under its
dominion.”
At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French possession; but his words
are as applicable to this colony as to the United States. When will the
fruit be ripe?
* * * * *
In contrast with this precise prediction, and yet in harmony with it,
are the words of Montesquieu, in his ingenious work, which saw the
light in 1748, two years before the discourse of Turgot. In the famous
chapter, “How the laws contribute to form the manners, customs, and
character of a nation,” we have a much-admired picture of “a free
nation” “inhabiting an island,” where, without naming England, it is
easy to recognize her greatness and glory. And here we meet a Delphic
passage, also without a name, pointing to the British Colonies:--
“If this nation sent out colonies, it would do so more to
extend its commerce than its dominion.
“As people like to establish elsewhere what is found
established at home, it would give to the people of its
colonies its own form of government; and this government
carrying with it prosperity, _we should see great peoples
formed in the very forests which it should send to
inhabit_.”[338]
The future greatness of the Colonies is insinuated rather than
foretold, and here the prophetic voice is silent. Nothing is said of
the impending separation, and the beginning of a new nation; so that,
plainly, Montesquieu saw our future less than Turgot.
* * * * *
The youthful prophet did not lose his penetrating vision with years.
In the same spirit and with immense vigor he wrote to the English
philosopher, Josiah Tucker, September 12, 1770:--
“As a citizen of the world, I see with joy the approach of
an event which, more than all the books of the philosophers,
will dissipate the phantom of commercial jealousy. _I speak
of the separation of your colonies from the mother country_,
WHICH WILL SOON BE FOLLOWED BY THAT OF ALL AMERICA FROM EUROPE.
It is then that the discovery of this part of the world will
become truly useful to us. It is then that it will multiply our
enjoyments much more abundantly than when we purchased them
with torrents of blood. The English, the French, the Spaniards,
etc., will use sugar, coffee, indigo, and will sell their
products, precisely as the Swiss do to-day; and they will also,
like the Swiss people, have the advantage, that this sugar,
this coffee, this indigo will no longer serve as a pretext for
intriguers to precipitate their nation into ruinous wars and to
oppress them with taxes.”[339]
It is impossible not to feel in this passage the sure grasp of our
American destiny. How clearly and courageously he announces the
inevitable future! But the French philosopher-statesman again took the
tripod.
This was in the discharge of his duties as minister of the Crown, and
in reply to a special application. His noble opinion is dated 6th
April, 1776. Its character appears in a few sentences:--
“The present war will probably end in the absolute independence
of the Colonies, and that event will certainly be _the epoch of
the greatest revolution in the commerce and politics, not of
England only, but of all Europe_.… When the English themselves
shall recognize the independence of their colonies, _every
mother country will be forced_ in like manner to exchange
its dominion over its colonies for bonds of friendship and
fraternity.… When _the total separation of America_ shall have
cured the European nations of commercial jealousy, there will
exist among men one great cause of war the less; and it is very
difficult not to desire an event which is to accomplish this
good for the human race.”[340]
His letter to the English Dr. Price, on the American Constitutions,
abounds in profound observations and in prophecy. It was written
just at the time when France openly joined against England in our
War of Independence, and is dated March 22, 1778, but did not see
the light until 1784, some years after the death of the author, when
it was published by Dr. Price.[341] Its criticism of the American
Constitutions aroused John Adams to his elaborate work in their
“Defence.”[342]
Of our Union before the adoption of the National Constitution he
writes:--
“In the general union of the provinces among themselves I do
not see a coalition, a fusion of all the parts, making but one
body, one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregation of parts
always too much separated, and preserving always a tendency to
division, by the diversity of their laws, their manners, their
opinions,--by the inequality of their actual forces,--still
more by the inequality of their ulterior progress. It is only
a copy of the Dutch Republic: but this Republic had not to
fear, as the American Republic has, the possible enlargement of
some of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported
hitherto on the false basis of the very ancient and very
vulgar policy: on the prejudice that nations and provinces, as
bodies, can have interests other than that which individuals
have to be free and to defend their property against brigands
and conquerors; a pretended interest to carry on more commerce
than others,--not to buy the merchandise of the foreigner, but
to force the foreigner to consume their productions and their
manufactures; a pretended interest to have a vaster territory,
to acquire such or such a province, such or such an island,
such or such a village; an interest to inspire fear in other
nations; an interest to surpass them in the glory of arms, and
in that of arts and sciences.”[343]
Among the evils to be overcome are, in the Southern Colonies, too
great an inequality of fortunes, and especially the large number of
black slaves, whose slavery is incompatible with a good political
constitution, and who, even when restored to liberty, will cause
embarrassment by forming two nations in the same State. In all the
Colonies he deprecates prejudice, attachment to established forms,
a habit of certain taxes, fear of those which it might be necessary
to substitute, the vanity of the Colonies who deem themselves most
powerful, and the wretched beginning of national pride. Happily he
adds: “I think the Americans destined to aggrandizement, not by war,
but by husbandry.”[344] And he then proceeds to his aspirations:--
“It is impossible not to desire earnestly that this people may
attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They
are the hope of the human race. They can become its model. They
are to prove to the world, by the fact, that men can be free
and tranquil, and can dispense with the chains of all kinds
which the tyrants and charlatans of every cloth have pretended
to impose under the pretext of the public good. They are to
give the example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of
commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum which they open
to all the oppressed of all nations is to console the earth.
The facility thereby afforded for escape from a bad government
will force the European governments to be just and enlightened.
The rest of the world, little by little, will open their eyes
to the nothingness of the illusions in which politicians have
indulged. To this end it is necessary that America should guard
against them, and should not again become, as your ministerial
writers have so often repeated, an image of our Europe, _a mass
of divided powers_, disputing about territory or commercial
profits, and continually cementing the slavery of the peoples
with their own blood.”[345]
After these admirable thoughts, so full of wisdom and prophecy, Turgot
alludes to the impending war between France and England:--
“Our two nations are going to do each other reciprocally much
evil, probably without either of them obtaining any real
advantage. The increase of debts and charges and the ruin of a
great many citizens will be, perhaps, the only result. England
seems to me even nearer to this than France. If instead of
this war you had been able to yield with good grace from the
first moment,--if it had been given to policy to do in advance
what infallibly it will be forced to do later,--if national
opinion could have permitted your Government to anticipate
events,--and, supposing that it had foreseen them, it had
been able to consent at once to the independence of America
without making war on anybody,--I firmly believe that your
nation would have lost nothing by this change. It will lose now
what it has already expended, and what it shall yet expend.
It will experience for some time a great falling off in its
commerce, great domestic disturbances, if it is forced to
bankruptcy, and, whatever may happen, a great diminution of
political influence abroad. But this last matter is of very
small importance to the real welfare of a people; and I am not
at all of the opinion of the Abbé Raynal in your motto.[346] I
do not believe that this will make you a contemptible nation,
and throw you into slavery. On the contrary, your troubles
will perhaps have the effect of a necessary amputation; they
are perhaps the only means of saving you from the gangrene
of luxury and corruption. If in your agitations you could
correct your Constitution by rendering the elections annual,
by apportioning the right of representation in a manner
more equal and more proportioned to the interests of those
represented, you would gain from this revolution as much,
perhaps, as America; for your liberty would remain to you, and
with this and by this your other losses would be very speedily
repaired.”[347]
Reading such words, the heart throbs and the pulse beats. Government
inspired by such a spirit would become divine, nations would live at
peace together, and people everywhere be happy.