CHAPTER II - Turgot Leaves the Sorbonne

CHAPTER II. TURGOT LEAVES THE SORBONNE.-HE IS NAMED MAtTRE DES REQUtTES.-FREQUENTS THE COMPANY OF THE 'c PHILOSOPHES" AND TilE ECONOMlSTS.-\VRITES IN THE "ENCYCLO" PEDIE. tt T URGOT was twenty-three years old when he left the Sorbonne. His judgment \Vas formed and his method settled. He sought for natural laws, and in order to attain this object he applied himself to dis~ tinguish in phenomenn of every kind causes from effects, convinced, as he W3S, th3t all the errors committed by man are the result of the confusion which people are con~ stantly making between causes and effects. Thus he had arrh'ed, )'oung as he was, to unravel, with an accuracy altogether wonderful and a reall)' incredible quickness, the general reasons of aU the particular facts he had to appreciate. One might have said that, whilst he was )'et at the Sorbonne, he had already in his mind everything which came out of it afterwards; so that the only work which occupied the last thirty years of his life was simply to produce in the broad daylight what he had acquired 30 Tttrgot.

during the eighteen months he spent in that celebrated house. A consummate philosopher--considering nature and man from the highest standpoints-he had promised to himself, when he was barely twenty years old, that he would write the history of the human mind and of its progress. He had even made of that history, with the view of developing it in a book, a plan which we have still, and of which some of his ulterior works are only part expansions. He was thus, notwithstanding his extreme youth, already armed for life and its struggles; and his years of apprenticeship had made of himone of the men most capable of producing usefully one day fresh truths, in an age when prejudices seemed, however, to possess an irresistible strength. 'Vhen we study Turgot on the threshold of his active life, and when we think of the influence he exercised afterwards over the economic destinies of his country, we ask ourselves at once to whom he is like; in what mould he has been cast; to what intellectual family he' belongs; and, contrary to what generally takes place, we find no answer, for the simple reason that he proceeds, so to say, from no one. 'Ve see very well that he is a man of his own century; but he has known how to issue from it, to penetrate into our own times, by an energy which belongs to him, and without having had any other guide except his reason. The strength of his genius owes its development, not to the action of those who directed his studies, but to the conscientious and philosophical cateTUY.fot a1zd A da11t ~<;'1tith. 31 chising of his faculties by himself. He is the son of his meditations. He was hom a master; so much so, that those of whom he was considered the disciple have sur \'ived only, thanks to him; and they are a.dmitted by us only because he forces them, so to say, upon us as belonging to his company.

He has, however, with Adam Smith, a resemblance which manifests itself very carly. They were about the same age. Adam Smith was born in 1723. The one studied at Paris, the other at Edinburgh, and they pondered over their thoughts independently of each other, for they were not acquainted; and they (ormed their doctrines by reflection, each one for himself. They both prepared to play the great part which has made their names illustrious, and they did so by the same method, treading with equal steps the road on which they were destined to meet one day. After having completed their studies, both abandoned for philosophy the Church to which they were originally destined; both held the same views on the progress of the human mind; both sought the 13\V of that progress at the same time, and by the same method-·~in metaphysics, in moral philosophy, and in political economy. There fore, it is not astonishing that they s,hould have been alternately one another's inspirer and precursor.

Adam Smith, like Turgot, had thought of writing the history -of civilisation and progress, and, in order to accomplish that task, he had never ceased studying man, as Turgot did himself,in his conscience, his language, 32 Turgot. and his moral, social, economic life. They thus met later on the philosophical and metaphysical ground, but they met there consciously, a circumstance which had not marked their first meditations. They had been informed of their mutual existence; they k~ew one another, and we may sayJ without fear of makin~ a mistake, that from the day on which they became acquainted with one another they helped each other, and both profited by their own works and those of their masters. Turgot's philosophy is much indebted to the Scottish school, to IIutcheson, the master of Adam Smith, and to Adam Smith himself. But Adam Smith's political economy owes quite as much to France, to the economists of the jJhys;ocrateschool, and to Turgot.

Quesnay, Gournay, and Turgot, above all, exercised an evident and happy influence over the author of the 1Vea//1zof Nations. Turgot's small work, entitled Slir la forma/ion e/ 10 dis/tibution des rkhesses, is ten years anterior to the publication of Adam Smith's great treatise on political economy; and these ten years mark precisely the epoch during which Turgot and Adam Smith knew one another, and corresponded on economic subjects. Speaking of Turgot, Condorcet says, "He kept up an active correspondence with Adam Smith." Finally, we can say of both, that they have been more masters of the nineteenth century which followed their death than of the eighteenth during which they lived. In a speech on the bank of England, delivered before the House of Commons, I\lay 30, 1797, Pulteney was Turgot u l11aftrt' ties RCtjucles." 33 able to say of Adam Smith, that he would persuade the present generation and govern the next. The same opinion might have been passed on Turgot, for he has persuaded the enlightened minds of the day, without succeeding,however,in ruling over his age, whereas, by his ideas, after his death he has governed, and still go,·erns, French society.

On the 5th of January, 1752, Turgot was called to dis.. charge the duties of deputy solicitor~general ; on the 30th o( December of the same year he became councillor in the parliament ,; but it W:::iS merely a passage there, or, rather, he was soon connected with it only by the loose ties which still united the maUns des ret/lIlits to the parliament. Named maitre dts requeleson the 28th of ~tarch, 1753, he exercised exclusivelythe functions belonging to that post till'" 1761, upon which he W<1S sent to l.imoges as inttndallt / but during the whole time of his lnttmlallcl, from 1761 to 1774, he ne"<erthelessretained the title and prerogatives of the other 1IIaUresdes rtqllNts, taking part in their labours, if he thought proper, and sitting amongst them, whene,,·erhe happened to be in Paris. The matins dts requItesdischarged duties both adminisft trative and judicial. They submitted reports to the council in the presence of the committee of state, and sometimes even of the king. They were members of the parliament~ and could sit there, provided they were not more th~\n (our at a time. The four who arrived first took the places reserved for the body of which they formed a. part.

34 Turgot. They took a stand in the jurisdiction of the king's council for the affairs submitted to it, and, besides, they constituted a kind of spedal jurisdiction, that of the rt9uelts de fho/tl. It is the council which took up for reconsideration the case of CaIas, but it is the Cltam/Jredes reqzdtu de rhole', that is to say, the assembly of the maUres dtS ,.f.ljueles alone, which pronounced the sentence. Turgot was one of those who sat on that case. "He was one of the judges," says Dupont de Nemours, i' and on that occasion he spoke with a vehemence which was not his wont." His address, unfortunately, has not been pre" sen"ed. There is no report of the deliberation. Turgot had been received with open arms by the society of the jhilosophcs, the literati, and the econo· mists. His functions allowed him a great deal of leisure, and he spent the time at his disposal in cultivating his mind and conversing with his friends. It is at ~Madame Geotrrin's house that he made the acquaintance of D'Alembert.t ~lademoiselle de Lespinasse1 Condorcet; Helvetius, and many others. l\'ladame Helvetius was for him an older friend. She was l\fadame de Graffigny's niece, and he had often seen her at her aunt's before her marriage, and when he was still at the Sorbo nne.

~ladame de Graffigny, who had the habit of giving nicknames to everybody ....-we remember Panpan, that was his friend Devaux; AfarolJuin, his other friend Desmarcts; Ie Pelit SaitU, Saint-Lambert--:Madame de Graffigny, we say, never spoke to her niece, Mademoiselle I1trgol and "illinelte.·' 35 de LignevHle,without <:allingher A/inti/e. S.he..w01s..~~ery fond of l\linette; she was likewise very fond of the Joung Abbe de L:mlne} as Turgot was then called; and the t\Vo young people entertained a tender friendship (or one another. The good !\{orellet feels disturbed that this intimacy did not end by a marriage. The marriage, he \Vas convinced of it, would have made the happiness, in the first place, of the young people, and then, in the second, his own. Between the two beings whom he loved most, and who fully reciprocated his affection, he "ould have Jived delightfully, without the necessity of going from the one to the other. "I ha\'c often fdt astonished," says he, U that the familiarity did not lead to rcaI passion; but whatcver may have been the cause o( so great a resen"c, there had survived from this liaison a tender friendship between them!' Some persons have wished to make of ~Iorenet's regret on this mariagf. 1I1alltJUf. a kind of historical problem, and treasures or erudition have been spent in endea,"ours to solve it. ~{any writers Aavc busied themselves with it. If Turgot has kept the resen'e for which !\forellet seems to blame him, and if he has allowed the occasion o( so thoroughly suitable a marriage to slip :lv-'a)', the reason, some say, is that. he was already in holy orders.

Such is, at any rate, Delort's opinion, the author of an JIistojn ae /a tlelenllon ties plzi/osopltes d des gells tie It/Ins a10 1l0s1t71e. But this opinion has for its founda tion first a very questionable document,besides several others which are of a contradictorynature. It is ccrmin Tttrgot. that in several deeds of the Sorbonne Turgot is culled diacre Parisi'tll (a deacon of the diocese of Paris). It is equally certain that in other documents, quite as authentic, he is classed amongst the simple acolytes. In the former cuse he must huve been ordained; in the latter, he might have remained free. Other writers do not make so much fuss about all this; they find that he was too busy, and they have some difficulty in supposing that he could have divided his time between the serious occu pation which already filled his life, and the thousand cares of a household and a family of children. Finally, believing himself to be threatened with hereditary gout, and persuaded that no member of his family lived beyond fifty, Turgot might have dreaded (such is a third version) associating a wife and children to so precarious an ex istence as his own. At any rate, Turgot did not marr)' ; he left the beautiful ~Iinette at liberty to become ~Iadame Helvetius, and remained, up to the day of ·his death, her most devoted friend.

At Quesnay's house he saw :Mirabeau, cc the friend of mankind," Dupont de Nemours, Daudeau, and the Econo11listes. It is also at the house of the leader of the EC0110l1listesthat he met Adam Smith,about the year 1762, when the celebrated writer, not yet known by his works on political economy, came for the first time to France with the young Duke of Bucc1eugh. Morellet says in his memoirs: ce Turgot, who was fond of metaphysics, set a high value on the talent of Adam Smith. 'Ve saw him several times." Dupon t de Nemours also gives an TlIt;l{ot and his Friellds. 37 account of this meeting,:1nd speaks of Adam Smith, of Turgot, and of himself as having been ce fellow··disciples at Quesnay's." Together with Gournay, fin:111y, Turgot b~'came aCA quainted with both Trudaines; Alben, who was since intendantof the Boardof Tr:1de, and lieutenantAgeneral of police in Paris; he knew all these talented and courageous administrators, who maintained liberal doc trines against the councillors of st:lte and the ministers of the day, belonging nearl)" all, as tht~y did, to the school of Colbert.

He..wns.receivedat ~ladame du DelIh.nd~s. but. nevel. bec.'\meintimatewith her. He very soon forsook her to (ollow :Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, when she, with drawing from the house of her protectress, founded, in her turn, a society and a sa/oN. lIe had, besides, very little liking for the friend of the marchioness, the Duke de Choiseul, who was to become, later on, his most formidable adversary. lIe was already considered, not without reason, as hostile to the parliaments, although he numbered amongst them rel:ltives and personal friends to whom he always remained faithful. In 1754 he accepted to become member of a "royal chamber," that is to say, a kind of commissioninstituted after the exile of the members belonging to one of the courts of parliament,for the purpose of judging, in its stead, the cases wllich would naturally have come under its cognizance. This circumstance definitely set against him the parl1amentarinns and the Choiseulcoterie.

Tterg"ot. Then he was, as a matter of principle-and we have already noticed this point"",,,a gtJ11enlmcll/~11la'l; and his respect for authority kept him aloof from opposition of every kind. :Madame du Hausset relates in her memoirs that, dining one day with Quesnay in Paris, she met there "a )'oung maUre du requites, good-looking, <".aIled by the name of an estate which I do not recollect (the estate of nrucourt), hut who was son of Turgot, the prh.1(Jtdes mardraltds. There was a great deal of talk about administration, which did not much amuse me at first, then the love of the F'rench for their king was alluded to; whereupon ~{. Turgot said: ' That love is not blind j it is a deep sense, and a confused remembrance of great benefits received. The nations, and I shall say Europe and the whole of mankind, are indebted for liberty to a king of France (I (orget his name); he established the ((J1Il11Ilt1US,and gave civil existence to an innumerable multitude of men • . •• I requested M.

Quesnay to write down what young Turgot had said, and I showed it to ~.fadame (de Pompadour). She then spoke much in praise of that maUre ties requetes, a.nd having mentioned him to the king, he remarked, 'He comes from a good stock. J " \Ve must acknowledge that the t((Jnolllistes were often excessively inclined to seek the support of authority. In order to realise their ideas, some amongst them would have preferred an honest despot, with whom they could have obtained preponderance for their views, to a The I<i:fhls of the State. 39 government exercising more freedom, and submitted to influences upon each of which it would have been necessary to act separately. Turgot did not go so (ar, but he was not in favour of what was already called then cc the balance of power," or "the equilibrium of forces," and the other combinations devised for the purpose of checking the power of the chief of the State. His fear was lest the obstacles which some persons wanted to oppose to evil should become. hindrances to good.

He wished that the prince might exercise, in order to protect the freedom of individuals, what has been called in our own days, through a frequent abuse both o( the name and of the thing, the rights of the State. And yet he did not confound the rights of the State or of the prince with those which certain philosophers claimed as belongingto society. U Persons have accustomed them~ selves too much," said he, U under all governments, to sacrifice always the happiness of individuals to certain pretended rights of society. They forget that society is made for individuals." He considered all authority which extended beyond what is absolutely necessary, as a. tyranny, but he never had a very dear notion of what is now canedpolitiCalguarantees. He believedtoo readily that the consultative powers of certain local authorities, and the wide publicity given to their deliberations under the shape of fHEIIX (expression or statement of wishes), could hold the place of politkalfreedom, and sufficed to guarantee the rights of the citizens.

Through D'Alembert, Turgot joined the Entydopedie, 4° Tttrgot. and became personally acquainted with Voltaire. It is in 1760 that he went on a pilgrimage to "Ies Delices." "You shall soon," D'Alembert writes to Voltaire, "have another visit, of which I gave you notice; it is that of ~-1. Turgot, a young man full·of philosophy, of intellect, and of knowledge. He is a great friend of mine, and wishes to go and see you en bonne {ortulze. I say til b01tltcjortune, because, propter 11lelu11l/"da:orulIl,he must not boast too much of that visit, nor must you." After having received Turgot's visit, Voltaire answered to D'Alembert: "I am still quite full of M. Turgot; I was not aware that he had written the article' Existence.' I have seldom seen a man more amiable and better informed; and, what is seldom to be found in metaphy sicians, he has the most delicate and the soundest taste." Although Turgot had been entirely won over by Voltaire, his passion was not a blind one, and it suffered several eclipses: first, when Voltaire mistook (or prose the Abbe de Lange's metrical lines; later, also, when the Ferney patriarch published, under the title of l'Ho1nme aux tjuarante tcus,his witty pampplet against one exclusive taxation. On Voltaire's side there was more constancy; he felt Turgot's dismissal, in 1776, as a personal misfortune. " I see nothing but death before me/' he wrote to La Harpe, "since M. Turgot is no longer in office. I cannot understand how the king can have dismissed him. It is a thunderbolt which has struck both my brain and my heart."

Turgot 'lvyitcs ill the EllcyclojJtdie. 4 1 Two years afterwards, in 1778, when Voltaire came to Paris in triumph, he wished to see Turgot. "\Vc have witnessed, in 1778,usays Condorcet, U the enthusiasm mixed with tender and deep venerotion which the name and the sight of ~1. Turgot excited in that illustrious old man. \Ve have seen him, in the midst of the public acclamation, weighed down by the wreaths which the whole nation lavished upon him; we have seen him rush ,vith a tottering step to meet ~L Turgot, seize hold of his hands in spite of himself, kiss them, wet them with his tears, saying to him in a stifled voice, ' Allow me to kiss the hand which has signed the salvationof the people.'U Turgot wrote, in 1755,for the E'ICj'c/o!;ditfive articles which appeared the following year: Ety!1lo!ogie, Exis-: It'nfe, Expallsibtlilt., puiru d mardds, Fondatimls. He had intended writing several others, such as .:fundicite, Inspt'ctettrJ,HJpital, Immalenalite, but the publication of the work of the pllilosophesbeing no longer authorised, he thought it incompatible with his duties as a magis~ trate to remain one of its contributors.

The appearance of the article ec Existence" was a real literary and philosophic.'tlevent. The world of literati and that of the Encydol'h/isteshad been struck by the precision and the clearness of the style, the originality and depth of the ideas. A true ,witer, a philosopher had revealed himself. The Hke impression is even t<Kiay produced upon those who read, for the first time, that remarkable paper. Cousin admired it much, and I> Tttrgot. assigned to it n. special place in the philosophical out~ come of the eighteenth century. U As a metaphysician," he says, "Turgot belongs to the school of Locke, like all the men of his age, like Hutcheson and Smith, with whom he has so many points in common; but, like them, he has known how to keep free from all the vices of that school, thanks to the extent and penetration of his intellect, thanks, especially, to the elevation of his sentiments and of his character.

In a letter to Condorcet on the book de /'Esprit, he exposes the sad and absurd ethical system of Helvetius . .. . . . But the article C Existence' is the best specimen we have of his metaphysics."