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Turgot put down disturbances with a high hand, and persevered in his measures. He abolished the corvee on roads and public works throughout France. In truth it would have been better to modify and regulate it, for in poor countries many men had rather work on the roads than pay for them, but such considerations as this were foreign to his mind.
"There is no belief in Switzerland that land was made to administer to the perpetual elevation of a privileged class; but a widespread and positive sentiment, as Turgot puts it, that 'the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead, nor, it may be added, to the unborn."
It is very easy to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on Ireland by such humanity and justice as was practised by Turgot in his administration of the Generality of Limoges.
In the same spring in which Turgot died, Maurepas too came to his end, and Necker was dismissed. The last event was the signal at which the floods of the deluge fairly began to rise, and the revolutionary tide to swell. It will be observed, moreover, that Turgot was born half a generation after the first race of the speculative revolutionists.
The queen had small liking for M. Turgot, whose strict economy had cut down the expenses of her household; contrary to their usual practice, her most trusted servants abetted the animosity of M. de Maurepas. "I confess that I am not sorry for these departures," wrote Marie Antoinette to her mother, after the fall of M. Turgot, "but I have had nothing to do with them."
One can scarce wonder that men like Hugo and Balzac chose this quarter of the town to live in and Rachael, too! it having given such frequent shelter to so many of their fantastic creations, having been the real abode of a train of gallants and bravos, of saints and harlots from the days of Diane de Poitiers to the days of Pompadour and du Barry, and of statesmen and prelates likewise from Sully to Necker, from Colbert to Turgot.
Yet an able intendant could do much good. It was as intendant of Limoges that Turgot disclosed his great powers. The fatal weakness was scanty population. This Talon saw with perfect clearness, and he clamoured for immigrants till Colbert declared that he would not depopulate France to people Canada.
The same fury legitimate when directed against Terray and absurd when directed against Turgot. The destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of rails, the demolition of docks, the false routes of multitudes, the refusal by the people of justice to progress, Ramus assassinated by students, Rousseau driven out of Switzerland and stoned, that is revolt.
M. de Maurepas having, of set purpose, got up rather a serious quarrel with him, Malesherbes sent in his resignation to the king; the latter pressed him to withdraw it: the minister remained inflexible. "You are better off than I," said Louis XVI. at last, "you can abdicate." For a long while the king had remained faithful to M. Turgot.
This pernicious nonsense was mainly due, like nearly all his most serious errors, to Rousseau's want of a conception of improvement in human affairs. If he had been filled with that conception as Turgot, Condorcet, and others were, he would have been forced as they were, to meditate upon changes in the education and the recognition accorded to women, as one of the first conditions of improvement.
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