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After the first greetings were over, and he had introduced Captain Turgot, he inquired after Pierre, expecting, through not seeing him, that he was still unable to leave his room. "He has gone out for a short walk, as the doctor tells him to be in the fresh air as much as possible, and he is well able to get along with the help of a stick," answered Mrs Crofton.
In 1787 the need for money became imperative, and, not daring to appeal to the nation, the King convoked an assembly of "notables," that is to say of the privileged. Calonne, the minister, proposed pretty much the measures of Turgot, and some of these measures the "notables" accepted, but the Parliament of Paris again intervened and declined to register the laws.
It was for no lack of competition that the ideas of the Social Contract, of Raynal's History of the two Indies, of the System of Nature, of the Philosophical Dictionary, made such astounding and triumphant way in men's minds. There was Montesquieu with a sort of historic method. There was Turgot, and the school of the economists.
It was not without great efforts that France had acquired the generous fame of securing to her allies blessings which she did not herself yet possess to their full extent; great hopes, and powers fresh and young had been exhausted in the struggle: at the close of the American war M. Necker was played out politically as well as M. Turgot.
I hope that time may not justify me, and that your reign may be as happy and as tranquil, for yourself and your people, as they flattered themselves it would be, in accordance with your principles of justice and beneficence." Useless wishes, belied in advance by the previsions of M. Turgot himself.
"Colonies are like fruits which remain on the tree only until they are ripe," said M. Turgot in 1750; "when they have become self-sufficing, they do as Carthage did, as America will one day do." It was in the war between England and France for the possession of Canada that the Americans made the first trial of their strength.
This is only an illustration of what is now a well-known fact, that revolution was made necessary less by despotism than by privilege on the one side, and by intense political distrust on the other side. Turgot was thoroughly awake to the necessity of penetrating public opinion.
We cannot tell how far the gulf between Turgot and the earlier band was fixed by the accident that he did not belong to their generation in point of time. The accident is in itself only worth calling attention to, in connection with his distance from them in other and more important points than time.
If the government would only let matters alone the grain would always go to those provinces where it was most needed, for there it would bring the best price. Turgot seized this and every similar opportunity to impress important economic truths upon the minds of the people.
The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly seventy years later . One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the schoolmate of Turgot and Loménie de Brienne, lived to think of many things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals.
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