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Updated: May 7, 2025
The person of whom I speak, seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the wild doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet of exemplifying, by individual instance, what has been deemed the mere chimera of the perfectionists.
Proscribed amid the Terror for his moderation and independence, learning daily in the garret where he hid of the violent deaths of friends and comrades, witnessing, as it must have seemed to him, the ruin of his work and the frustration of his brightest hopes, Condorcet, solitary and disguised, sat down to write that sketch of human destinies which is, perhaps, the most confident statement of a reasoned optimism in European literature.
I answered by writing on the frontispiece, 'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness." And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read, while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its departments as the éloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more modest philosophy in it, though bold."
Such vanity, however, is not pardonable: a man has a right to ruin himself, or to make himself ridiculous; but when his vanity becomes baneful to others, as it has all the effect, so does it merit the punishment, of vice. Of all the rest, Condorcet has most powerfully disgusted me.
Necker; and that I should wait upon him, accompanied by a deputation consisting of the Marquis de Condorcet, Monsieur de Bourge, and Brissot de Warville: secondly, that the committee should write to the president of the National Assembly, and request the favour of him to appoint a day for hearing the cause of the Negroes; and thirdly, that it should be recommended to the committee in London to draw up a petition to the National Assembly of France, praying for the abolition of the Slave Trade by that country.
The emperor, according to this account, had carried with him, ever since the retreat from Moscow, a packet containing a preparation of opium, made up in the same manner with that used by Condorcet for self-destruction. His valet-de-chambre, in the night betwixt the 12th and 13th of April, heard him arise and pour something into a glass of water, drink, and return to bed.
Brissot, Gorsas, Carra, Prudhomme, Fréron, Danton, Fauchet, Condorcet, edited democratic journals: they began by demanding the abolition of royalty, "the greatest scourge," said the Revolutions de Paris, "which has ever dishonoured the human species."
Turgot was of later stock and comes midway between these fathers of the new church, between Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, and the generation of its fiery practical apostles, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Robespierre. The only other illustrious European of this decade was Adam Smith, who was born in 1723, and between whose labours and some of the most remarkable of Turgot's there was so much community.
It was evident that a party, already formed, took possession of the tribune, and was about to arrogate to itself the dominion of the assembly. Brissot was its conspirator, Condorcet its philosopher, Vergniaud its orator. Vergniaud mounted the tribune, with all the prestige of his marvellous eloquence.
"They did not disdain any charge, however humble it might be, when it was assigned them by the people: they spoke seldom; they did not flatter demagogues; they never denounced without proofs! The calumniators did not spare Phocion. He was the victim of an adulator of the people! Ah! this reminds me of the horrible calumny uttered against Condorcet! Who are you who dare to slander this great man?
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