PART IV: CORRESPONDENCE

To Voltaire

Turgot corresponded with many of leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Condorcet, and Hume, and these letters disclose important aspects of his thought. He strongly condemns the French utilitarian philosopher Helvétius for reducing all human motives to self-interest. To the contrary, human beings display strong sympathy for others. Although morality helps people achieve happiness, it must be based on justice, not a narrow conception of self-interest. Turgot left no doubt about the contents of morality founded on this basis. It requires equal rights for everyone. He warns against confusing this conception with rule by the majority, which can, in his view, lead to a destruction of liberty worse, because less easily changed, than despotism. A prime mistake in thinking about morality is to suppose that nations have interests apart from the individuals who live in them. If one correctly considers the interests of individuals, it is clear that absolute freedom of commerce and avoidance of war are required. Turgot strongly supported independence for all European colonies; and in a letter to Richard Price, he offers criticisms and suggestion for the newly independent United States.

To Voltaire

Paris, 24 August 1761

ince I received the letter which you did me the honor of writing to me, a change that concerns me has taken place: I have had the misfortune to be made intendant. I say the misfortune, for in this age of troubles there is no happiness except in living philosophically among our studies and our friends.

It is to Limoges that I am to be sent. I should have much preferred Grenoble, which would have enabled me to make little pilgrimages to the chapel of Confucius and to sit at the feet of the high priest. But your friend M. de Choiseul has judged that to fill a place so important I have still need of some years of training. Thus I cannot hope to see you for a long time, unless indeed you come to fix your tent in Paris—an event I desire more than I dare to advise.

You would find there certainly nothing so good as your present repose—rem prorsus substantialem, said the truly wise Newton. You already enjoy as much glory as if you were dead, while you delight yourself as a man in every sense alive; without being in Paris you amuse it, you instruct it, you make it laugh or weep according to your own good pleasure. It is Paris that ought to visit you.

I thank you for having thought of me in proposing the subscription to the edition you are preparing of the works of the great Corneille, and I have to apologize for having so long delayed in replying to you. My desire to see gathered, first, a greater number of subscriptions, then the duties connected with my entrance into the intendancy, and above all, some degree of indolence in writing letters, have been the cause of this delay. I am the more ill-pleased with myself in now being able to ask of you only a small number of copies, the most of my friends having already subscribed on their own account.

But you need not doubt that the public will speedily concur in your enterprise. Independently of the interest which the name of the great Corneille must excite in the nation, the notes and reflections which you promise will render your edition infinitely precious. I have, however, learned from M. d’Argental that you intend to limit these to the pieces which have kept possession of the theatre. I feel that you have in this wished to avoid occasions of criticizing Corneille too hardly, while raising a monument to his glory. But I believe that you would have been able to trace with nicety his beauties and his defects, without deviating from the respect due to his memory. You have left things less complete, and I think that an adequate criticism of the very pieces which we no longer act would be really useful to literature, and above all to young men who destine themselves to art. Your analysis would teach them to distinguish the defects springing from the subject, from those belonging to the manner in, which it is treated. You would indicate the means of their avoiding some of these defects and of modifying others. You would lead them to regard essays which have failed under new aspects which would display the conditions of success.

The Court is in difficulty which side to take [in the decree of the Parliament against the Jesuits]. For myself, I would wish that we did these poor fathers the good turn of sending each of them back to his family, leaving him a reasonable pension and the distinction of the petit collet. The college finances would not be overburdened, the individuals would be made happy, the body would no longer exist, and the State would be tranquil.

Adieu, Monsieur; I repeat all my excuses and I pray you to be assured that nobody is, with a more real attachment, etc., etc.

To Condorcet

[Condorcet had written to Turgot (June 14, 1773): “You are very fortunate in being possessed by the passion for the public good and in having the ability to satisfy it; this is a great consolation and of a kind superior to any afforded by literature.” Turgot replies to this:]

Ussel, 21 June 1772

WHATEVER YOU MAY SAY, I believe that the satisfaction resulting from literary studies is deeper than any other satisfaction. I am quite convinced that by literature we may be a thousand times more useful to mankind than we can be in any official position, in which we strain ourselves, and often without succeeding, to effect some small benefits, while we are made the unwilling instruments of very great evils. All these small benefits are transient, but the light that a man of letters can shed must, sooner or later, destroy all the artificial evils of mankind, and enable men to enjoy all the good offered them by Nature. I know well that in spite of this there will still remain physical evils and moral disappointments which must be endured by bowing the head under the yoke of necessity. But enduring, and yet fighting against these, the human race is strengthened in moral character. I confess to you that my gout has not prevented me from still believing in final causes. I know well that no individual, or even world of individuals, is the centre of the system of final causes, and that the bounds of this system are not and cannot be known by us. To burst blood, to cough, to have the gout, to lose our friends, all these are but in detail the execution of the decree of death pronounced against everything that is born: and if we die only to be born again, it will still be true that the sum of good will be greater than that of evil (always of course setting aside those evils which men bring upon themselves), transient evils, as I believe they are, for the species, and transient also for the individual, if the thinking and feeling individual has successive careers to fulfil.

[Alluding to a reported commentary on the Bible, written by “Émilie” (Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire’s friend), Turgot in the same letter remarks:]

Such a commentary will be an interesting work, but I would wish it written without passion, and in a design to gather from the text commented on all that can be gathered of what is useful as an historical monument precious in many respects. The indulged desire to discover absurdities and things to ridicule, which sometimes are not there, lessens the effect of the incongruities which really are there.

[In reply to some remarks of Condorcet on Helvétius, Turgot writes:]

Limoges, 28 December 1773

I DO NOT THINK that morality in itself should be regarded as local. Its principles everywhere spring from the nature of man and from his relations with his fellow-creatures, which do not vary, except in very extraordinary circumstances. But the judgment to be passed on the actions of individuals is a problem much more complicated, and infinitely variable, by reason of local opinions and the prejudices of education. In respect to moral judgments, I am a great enemy to indifference, and yet a great friend to indulgence, of which I have often as great need as any other man.

[On this and other questions in moral philosophy connected with it we have a longer letter by Turgot, the date of which is uncertain. du Pont considered it to belong to the pre-Limoges period. But Charles Henry relegates it, we think with more reason, to the period of correspondence marked by the previous letter—December 1773.]

As I do not believe that you yourself could ever write a work in philosophy without logic, in pure literature without taste, and in morals without honesty, I do not see that the severity of my judgment on the book “De l’Esprit” by Helvétius need displease you…. I agree with you that the book is the portrait of the author. But apart from this merit, and that of some passages, written in a kind of poetic eloquence brilliant enough, although usually ill-introduced and also spoiled by some features of bad taste, I confess I cannot see any more in it. It appears to be made and written with the same incoherence that existed in the head of the author. In spite of a pretentious apparatus of definitions and divisions, one finds scarcely an idea analysed with justice, scarcely a word defined with precision. Even with the good maxims which he has stuffed into his work, it is seldom that their effect is not missed or is not spoiled by false applications and by paraphrases which take away all their sharpness or their energy….

I know that there are many good men who are so according to the principles of the book “De l’Esprit"—that is to say from a calculation of self-interest. To make the work one of merit the author might have concerned himself in proving that men have a real interest in being virtuous. But he seems continually occupied in proving the contrary. He pours floods of contempt and ridicule on all honest sentiments, and on all the private virtues; by the grossest and most absurd errors in viewing morals and politics, he would regard these virtues as worthless in order that he may laud presumed public virtues, much more fatal to men than useful to them. Everywhere he seeks to exclude the idea of justice and morality. Those who concern themselves with these minutæ he confounds with the bigots in religion and hypocrites in morals. Never do we find him founding his morality on justice, and he has not a word tending to prove that justice toward all is the interest of all, that it is the interest of every individual as well as of every society. According to his false method and very false principles, he lays it down that there is no foundation for probity between nations, from which it would follow that the world must be for ever a den of robbers. On no side does he see that the interest of a nation is nothing else than the interests of the individuals who compose it. Nowhere does he rest himself upon any deep knowledge of the human heart; nowhere does he analyze the real needs of men—which appear to him to consist only in their having wives. He has no idea that man may have need to love. But indeed a man who could have felt this need could not have said that self-interest is the only principle that actuates men. He would have understood that, in the sense in which this proposition is true, it is a puerility and a metaphysical abstraction from which there is no practical result to be drawn, since it is just equivalent to saying that men only desire what they desire. If he alludes to self-interest, reflected upon, calculated upon, by which a man compares himself with others, and prefers himself, it is false to say that men, even the most corrupt, conduct themselves always by this principle. It is false to say that the moral sentiments do not influence men in their judgments, in their actions, in their affections. A proof that they do influence is that men have to make an effort to overcome their sentiment when it is in opposition to their interests. A proof is that they have remorse. A proof is that this interest, which they pursue at the expense of integrity, is often founded on a sentiment honest in itself and only ill-directed. A proof is that they are deeply touched by romances and by tragedies; a romance whose hero acted according to the principles of Helvétius—I mean to those he teaches—would displease readers much. Neither our ideas nor our sentiments are innate, but they are natural, they are founded in the constitution of our mind and of our soul, and on our relations with everything that surrounds us.

I know that there are some deficient in moral sensibility who are at the same time virtuous men, such as Hume, Fontenelle, etc., but all take for the foundation of their virtue justice, and even a certain degree of kindness. Thus I make it less a reproach to Helvétius for his having little sensibility than for his representing the quality as a ridiculous folly, or as a piece of hypocrisy, and for his exalting only the passions without fixing the definition of any duty, and without acknowledging any principle of justice….

I forgot to mention the affectation with which he recounts to you the greatest horrors of every kind, the most horrible barbarities, and all the infamies of all the vilest debauchery, in order to declaim against hypocritical or imbecile moralists, who make them, he says, the object of their preachings, without seeing that they are the necessary effects of such or such stated legislation. As regards the most sensual vices of mankind, he reflects complacently on the debaucheries of great men…. Doubtless a debauchee, a brigand, a murderer may be a Nadir-Shah, a Cromwell, or a Cardinal de Richelieu—but is that the destination of man? Is it desirable that there should be such men? Everywhere Helvétius finds grandeur only in startling and stunning actions; certainly it is not by this fashion of judging that we can arrive at just ideas of morality and happiness.

I cannot side with his declamations against the intolerance of the clergy, nor with those against despotism. 1. Because I do not love declamations; 2. Because I see in his book, everywhere, the question of intolerance is treated not in a manner that could improve either clergy or princes, but only in a manner to irritate them; 3. Because in his declamations against despotism he confounds all ideas, and adopts the style of an enemy of all government…. When we would attack intolerance and despotism, it is before all necessary to stand on just ideas, for the inquisitors have their self-interest in being intolerant, and the viziers and sub-viziers have a self-interest in maintaining all the abuses of government. As they are the stronger, we should not add right to their might. I hate despotism as much as any man docs, but it is not by declamations that we ought to attack it; it is by establishing, in an unanswerable manner, the rights of man. And besides, we must distinguish despotism in its degrees; there are a crowd of abuses of despotism in which the princes themselves have no real interest; there are other abuses which they permit only because public opinion has not decided upon their injustice and their evil effects. We should win a better hearing from nations by attacking these abuses with discernment, with courage, and above all by interesting humanity against them, than by indulging in mere eloquent invective. When we do not insult we rarely offend. Men in place are justly shocked by violent expressions which everyone seizes upon, and they attach only a minor importance to the cause provoking the outburst, and to the uncertain or far-distant consequences of philosophic truths, often con-tested and regarded by most men as problems. There is no form of government without some anomalies to which the governments themselves would not willingly apply a remedy, and without some abuses which they intend to reform sooner or later. We should therefore assist them by treating questions of public good solidly, calmly; not coldly, yet not passionately, but with that touching warmth which arises from a deep feeling of justice and the love of order. It is not necessary to believe that to persecute is a pleasure. See what an interest J.-J. Rousseau has inspired in spite of his follies, and how highly he would have been respected if his self-love had only been reasonable. He has been condemned, it is true, by the Parliament; but, 1, because he had the madness to put his name to “Émile”; 2, the Parliament was sorry enough to take it up, and if Rousseau had wished he could easily have avoided the storm by concealing himself two or three months…. By adopting a proper tone, we may say almost anything, and still more effectively when we add to it the weight of solid reason, along with some slight precautions not difficult to take.

I have a leaning to Rousseau in almost all his works, but what case can I make for a declaimer such as Helvétius, who pours vehement insults and scatters bitter sarcasms on all government, and who undertakes to send to Frederick a company of finance-mongers, and who, while deploring the misfortunes of his country, in which he says that despotism has arrived at the last degree of oppression, and the nation at the last degree of corruption and of baseness (which is not true), holds up as his heroes the King of Prussia and the Empress of Russia? I see in all that nothing but vanity, the spirit of party, an excited brain; I see neither the love of humanity nor of philosophy…. I am, I confess, indignant at hearing him praised with a kind of fervor which seems to me an enigma which party-spirit only can explain …

I have received news to the effect that my return is not urgent. I will, therefore, stay here all the month. It is not for any pleasure, nor even for “interest” for I should greatly prefer to be with you, my friends. I find there is more substance in this verse of La Fontaine.

“Qu’un ami véritable est une douce chose!”

than in the whole book “De 1’Esprit.” I hope that this will obtain my pardon from you for all the ill I have said of the hero whose glory I have attacked. You know well that it is like trying to obscure the sun by throwing dust into the air.

[Condorcet writes in January 1774: “There is a degree of character being below which a man is a fool; but, that aside, we can scarcely cultivate one talent except at the expense of another; in like manner in morality we cannot absolutely avoid certain vices of some danger without the risk of losing some great virtues. In general, scrupulous persons are not fit for great things; a Christian will, while subduing the motions of the flesh, lose the time which he might have employed on things useful to humanity. He will not dare to rouse himself against tyrants, fearing that he may have formed a rash judgment, etc.” Turgot replies:]

Limoges, 14 January 1774

I DO NOT LEAN much to the opinion that virtues may be opposed, one kind to another, unless in the case where by virtues we mean certain active qualities which are perhaps as much talents as virtues. Besides, all these words are taken in different senses, and are almost always so ill-defined that we may easily dispute for ages on those matters without coming to an agreement. Morality turns much more on duties than on these active virtues, which, belonging to characters and to passions, are in fact rarely combined in a high degree in the same individual. But all duties are in accord with themselves. No virtue, in whatever sense we take this word, dispenses with justice, and I do not set much value on the men who do “great things” at the expense of justice, or on poets who think that they can produce great beauties of imagination without justness. I allow that excessive exactitude dulls in some degree the fire of composition and that of action, but there is a middle point with everything. We have nothing to do in our argument with a monk who loses his time in subduing the movements of the flesh (although, by parenthesis, the time lost in satisfying them might have been really much greater). Nor has our argument anything to do with the case of a blockhead who hesitates to reprobate a tyrant from fear to form a rash judgment.

To David Hume

23 July 1766

I AM TEMPTED TO send you at the same time a trifle of a very different sort,—the program of an academic prize I think of offering, on a subject we have sometimes discussed. The best means of deciding this, like all other questions, is to get it discussed by the public. I have tried to set forth the state of the question in a clear fashion, as well as the different aspects under which it may be considered. I very much wish you could have the time to give us your ideas. We should take essays on the subject even in English. Our economic philosophers, who belong to Quesnay’s sect, will strongly maintain the system of their master. This is a system from which the English writers have been far removed, up to the present, and it is too hard to reconcile its principles with the ambition to monopolize the commerce of the universe for one to expect that they will adopt it from this side for a long time to come. It would, however, be very desirable that Mr. Pitt, and all those who lead the nations, should think as Quesnay does upon all these points. I fear greatly lest your famous demagogue should follow altogether different principles, and think himself interested in keeping up in your nation the prejudice you have called “The Jealousy of Trade.” It would be a great misfortune for the two nations. I believe, however, the almost equal exhaustion on both sides will prevent this folly from being long maintained.

7 September 1766

I DON’T KNOW WHY you have thought that those who would like to maintain that indirect taxation is favorable to the proprietors of landed estates will be excluded from competing for my prize. I assure you that if you will give us an essay looking at the question from that point of view, it will be very well received. It is true that the instructions seem to direct authors to look at it from another. But the fact is I have offered the prize rather to get people to see what they can do in the way of estimating the effects of indirect taxation,—for I am still uncertain how the exact share should be reckoned,—than to get a discussion of the general question, as to which my mind is entirely made up.

I have said it was agreed that indirect taxation fell back altogether on the proprietors, since as a matter of fact I have supposed that most of those who defended indirect taxation for other reasons have agreed as to this, especially during the last fifteen or twenty years; and because most of the people agreed with it with whom I have had occasion to talk on the matter. I well know that the practice of no government at all conforms to the principle; but, in the first place, you know, as well as I do, that the principles put into practice by all the governments do not change as easily as speculative principles. The financial system of all the peoples was formed in periods when men gave little thought to these matters; and, although people might be quite convinced that it was established on weak foundations, it would still be a good deal of trouble, and take a good deal of time, to remove a machine in full working and substitute another for it. You know, also, as well as I do, what is the great aim of all the governments of the earth: obedience and money. The object is, as the saying goes, to pluck the hen without making it cry out; but it is the proprietors who cry out, and the government has always preferred to attack them indirectly, because then they do not perceive the harm until after the matter has become law; and, moreover, intelligence is not widely enough distributed, and the principles involved are not clearly enough proved, for them to attribute the evil they suffer to its true cause. I am always sorry not to find myself in accord with you. But I rely upon your tolerance….

25 March 1767

I SHOULD VERY MUCH have liked to enter into some detail on the subject of taxation; but to reply to your objections it would have been necessary, so to speak, to write a book and earn my own prize. I will only indicate to you the principle from which I set out, and which I believe incontestable: it is, that there is no other revenue possible in a State than the sum of the annual productions of the land; that the total mass of these productions falls into two parts: one set aside for the reproduction of the following year, which comprises not only the portion of the crops that the undertakers of agriculture consume in kind, but also all they use to pay the wages of the workmen of every kind who labor for them: blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, weavers, tailors, etc., it includes, also, their profits and the interests upon their advances. The other part is the net produce, which the farmer pays over to the proprietor, when the person of the latter is distinguished from that of the cultivator,—which is not always the case; the proprietor employs it to pay all that labor for him. If this is granted, it necessarily follows that that taxation which does not bear directly upon the proprietor, falls either upon the wage-earners who live upon the net produce, or upon those whose labor is paid on the part of the cultivator. If wages have been reduced by competition to their just price, they cannot go up; and as they cannot go up except at the expense of those who pay them, one part falls ultimately upon the proprietor for the expenditure he engages in with his net product, the other part increases the expenditure of the cultivators, who are consequently obliged to give less to the proprietor. It is, therefore, in all cases the proprietor who pays.

You remark that I am supposing that wages increase in proportion to taxes, and that experience proves the falsity of this principle: and you justly observe that it is not taxes, high or low, which determine the price of wages, but simply the relation of supply and demand.

This principle has certainly never been disputed; it is the only principle which fixes at the time the price of all the things which have a value in commerce. But one must distinguish two prices, the current price, which is established by the relation of supply to demand, and the fundamental price, which, in the case of a commodity, is what the thing costs the workman. In the case of the workman’s wages, the fundamental price is what his subsistence costs the workman. You cannot tax the man who receives wages without increasing the price of his subsistence, since he has to add to his old expenditure that involved by the tax. You thus increase the fundamental price of labor. But although the fundamental price be not the immediate principle of the current value, it is nevertheless a minimum below which it cannot fall. For if a merchant loses by his trade, he ceases to sell or manufacture; if a workman cannot live by his labor, he becomes a mendicant or leaves the country. That is not all: it is necessary that the workman obtain a certain profit, to provide for accidents, to bring up his family. In a nation where trade and industry are free and vigorous, competition fixes this profit at the lowest possible rate. A kind of equilibrium establishes itself between the value of all the productions of the land, the consumption of the different kinds of commodities, the different sorts of works, the number of men employed, at them, and the price of their wages.

Wages can be fixed and remain constantly at a definite point only in virtue of this equilibrium, and of the influence which all the parts of the society, all the branches of production and commerce, exercise upon one another. This granted, if you change one of the weights, a movement cannot but result from it in the whole of the machine which tends to restore the old equilibrium. The proportion which the current value of wages bears to their fundamental value was established by the laws of this equilibrium and by the combination of all the circumstances under which all the parts of the society are placed.

You augment the fundamental value: the circumstances which have before fixed the proportion which the current value bears to this fundamental value cannot but cause the current value to rise until the proportion is reestablished. I am aware that this result will not be sudden; and that in every complicated machine there are frictions which delay the results most infallibly demonstrated by theory. Even in the case of a fluid perfectly homogeneous, it takes time for the level to be restored; but with time it always is restored. It is the same with the equilibrium of the values which we are examining. The workman, as you say, taxes his ingenuity to work more or consume less; but all this is only temporary. Doubtless there is no man who works as much as he could. But it is no more natural for men to work as much as they can than for a cord to be stretched as much as it can be. There is a degree of relaxation necessary in every machine, without which it would run the risk of breaking at any moment. This degree of relaxation in the case of labor is fixed by a thousand causes which continue to operate after the tax is imposed; and consequently, even if by a first effort the tension had increased, things would not be long in regaining their natural shape.

What I have said about the augmentation of labor I also say about the diminution of consumption. Wants are always the same. That kind of superfluity out of which retrenchment can, strictly speaking, be made, is nevertheless a necessary element in the usual subsistence of the workmen and their families. Molière’s miser says that when dinner is laid for five, a sixth can always make a meal; but by pushing this reasoning a little further one would quickly fall into absurdity. I add that the diminution of consumption has another effect upon the revenue of the proprietor which is very serious,— through the diminution of the value of commodities and of the products of his land.

I do not enter into the details of the objection drawn from foreign trade, which I cannot regard as a very important matter in any nation, save in so far as it contributes to augment the revenue from lands; and which, moreover, you cannot tax without causing it to diminish. But the time fails me, and I am forced to conclude, although I should have a good deal to say as to the inconveniences caused to the consumers by a tax whereof the very collection involves a perpetual assault on the liberty of the citizens: they have to be searched in custom-houses, their houses have to be entered for aides and excises; not to mention the horrors of smuggling, and of the sacrifice of human life to the pecuniary interest of the treasury,— a fine sermon legislation preaches to highwaymen!

Paris, 25 March 1767

I PROFIT BY THE opportunity, through Mr. Francis, to acquit myself of the reply I have so long been owing you, and at the same time to give you my congratulations on the place which you now occupy in the Ministry, so far as there can be a congratulation made to a man of letters upon finding himself thrown into the whirlpool of affairs. As for myself, I should receive much more heartily a congratulation on an event which would set me free from affairs, and would restore me to letters and to liberty. Whatever may be your sentiments on this event, I share them, and I take in it the interest which I shall always take in everything concerning you…. I hesitate to allude to the subject again [the quarrel between Hume and Rousseau], at which you have, with reason, been so much annoyed. Besides, in order to explain oneself at this distance volumes would need to be written, and even after these we might not succeed in understanding each other perfectly, because the slightest circumstance, differently looked upon, suggests interpretations quite contrary to the intention of the writer. I see, for example, by the details into which you enter, and by the pains you take to defend yourself, that you have believed my reflections to be dictated by my attachment for Rousseau, of whom you call me a zealous friend, and of whom you say elsewhere, I am so fond (engoué)…. I can well assure you that no other motive has dictated what I wrote to you than my attachment for you—attachment very real, and founded on personal knowledge, while of Rousseau I have no knowledge personally, for I met him only for half an hour at Baron d’Holbach’s more than twelve years ago. I know Rousseau only as an author. Unfortunately experience has dispelled in me the illusion that the man himself is to be loved merely from faith in his writings. I say unfortunately, because this illusion is very sweet, and I have lost it only with much regret. I do not, however, less esteem, and love greatly, the works of Rousseau. Quite independent of the beauty of his language, the eloquence of Rousseau in his moral writings has a charm of peculiar power. I believe that he is one of the authors who have best served morality and humanity. Very far from reproaching him for having in this respect wandered from common ideas, I believe, on the contrary, that he has respected still too many prejudices. I believe that he has not gone far enough forward on his road; but it is by following his path that we shall arrive at the end which is to draw men together into equality, into justice and happiness. You must understand me. You will do me the honor of believing that I do not adopt his ridiculous paradoxes on the danger of literature, and on the destination of man to the savage life. Like yourself, I regard them as a display, a kind of “feat of strength” of eloquence. Rousseau was not yet known when he set himself on this false track; the body of his ideas was not yet formed. He imagined himself as gaining an advertisement by seizing on the paradoxical sides of the subjects proposed by the Academy of Dijon. This unfortunate pride, which I do not pretend to justify, has led him constantly to heap up paradoxes in order not to have to retract those first made; and his “Émile” is still spoiled by the twists he sometimes gives in it to truths placed there merely in order to connect them with his crack-brained fads. I believe that in this he is a victim of the charlatanism produced by an ill-conceived self-love. Moreover, I do not believe much in his pretended Christianity. But, in spite of these defects, how many potent truths there are in “Émile,” how closely the path which he presents to education is drawn from Nature, what fine and original observations there are on the successive developments of the human mind and human heart! He prolongs rather much this development. Nature moves faster than he thinks; but she follows the route which he traces, and he is the first who has known to quicken and advance Nature without hampering her, and for this assuredly the human race is to him under an eternal obligation. And do you count for nothing the contrat social? At all events it presents a very luminous truth, which appears to me to fix for ever our ideas on the inalienability of the sovereignty of the people under whatever government may exist. “Émile” appears to me everywhere to exhale the purest moral lessons ever yet taught, and they might in my opinion be carried into further application; but I guard myself against giving you more of my ideas on this because you would think me perhaps to be still madder than Rousseau. I will not say to you, then, that I find true morality in no book on morals, and that all I recognize of it is scattered here and there in romances. I will not say to you that it is precisely because the morality in the writings of Rousseau approaches nearest to that of romances, that I so much esteem it, for I should thus give you too ill an opinion of myself. After this profession of faith in Rousseau considered as author, I confess freely, but not without regret, that there are defects which render his person intolerable in society and which have caused him to fall into odious improprieties. There is no one in the world who can be more indignant than I am at his suspicions against you. Although I have regarded them quite in the same light as you have, and although I have not believed them to be a mere pretext suggested in bad faith, and deliberately, in order to shake off the obligations which he received from you; although I have regarded them only as the fruit of an imagination excited by pride and by melancholy, I do not the less feel that no honest soul could conceive such suspicions against a benefactor, and that a misbelief so evil-minded proclaims a man in whom we can have no confidence. I believe that at present Rousseau is quite convinced of the falsity of his suspicions, and I hold him to be inexcusable for not having retraced his steps. However, I am less surprised at this second fault than at the first, considering that the excess of his pride and the horror he would doubtless feel to see himself humiliated before you after the manner in which you have treated him. If I have differed from your view of the matter, it was not that I might justify Rousseau, because no one in the world can justify him, but I believed— and I confess to you that I still think the same—that you are mistaken in the manner of regarding his conduct; and I see with pain that in defending yourself on the subject of Rousseau’s accusation— on which assuredly you have no need of defense, and which falls by its own atrocity—you have put yourself slightly in the wrong toward him by attributing to him views which I believe he did not hold, and you have given him, so to speak, a means of setting him on his feet again in the fight. It seems to me that by confining yourself to making public the two letters without comment he would have been confounded in the most overwhelming manner. I know well that he is so already; but the partisans of Rousseau still say: “Mr. Hume has taken this affair too seriously"; besides I think all this ought to disquiet you very little. Men who know you the least of the world have rendered you full justice, in France as well as in England, and I am sure that even among Rousseau’s partisans who know you the least no one has been tempted to give the least credence to the absurdities of his letters. If in order to lead Rousseau into England you shortened your stay in France, it is we who suffer the most by the whole affair, since we are deprived of the pleasure to possess you and to live with you. I am one of those who regret it the most. I have dwelt longer than I intended upon this affair, but it shall be certainly the last time of my mentioning it to you, [The remainder of Turgot’s letter is given to an argumentative defense of his “agricultural” doctrine.]

Paris, 1 June 1767

I AM NOT SURPRISED at your ways of thinking on literature and public affairs, although they are quite opposed to my own. Your passion for Letters is a love used up by long enjoyment, and public affairs are to you a new taste. As to me, on the contrary, I am more than satiated with affairs, and circumstances have never permitted me to give myself up to my taste for literature. It may possibly be that my career will thus become the inverse of yours, and that I shall yet find my relaxation in study as you find yours in affairs.

It is right to say that the affairs with which you meddle are probably less irksome than those occupying me. With us the interior administration is complicated with a multitude of details repulsive and trivial, entangled with the spirit of pettifogging, by the multiplicity and perplexity of forms, etc…. However, literature and public life are both means—the end is happiness. But it happens too often that the equipments embarrass the march, and prevent the end being reached. I wish very earnestly that you may find everywhere the happiness of which you are so worthy. It will ever be a happiness for me to be counted one of your friends.

Paris, 3 July 1768

THE GOOD GOVERNMENT [hoped for in the future] cannot establish itself without creating a crisis, and crises are accompanied by disorder. Must we accuse on that account the light and liberty which force us to pass through these disorders in order to bring about a happier condition? No, certainly no. They make evil on the way to good; but after all do they make more evil than the tyranny and the superstition which would suppress them? You do not think so, I am sure, any more than I do. The people occupied with their necessities, the great occupied with their pleasures, have no time to be wise and to extricate themselves from their prejudices. But in the progress of knowledge it will come about that we need not be so learnedly wise in order to have good sense and to be able to render truths easily popular which today exact labor before they carry conviction.

To Mlle. de Lespinasse

Limoges, 26 January 1770

YOU SEEM TO BELIEVE that I think the Abbé Gialiani’s work (“Dialogues sur le commerce desbBlés”) to be a good one; I only find it to be full of wit, of genius, of tact, of depth, of good temper, etc., but I am far from finding it to be good. I think that, on the whole, it is intellect infinitely ill employed, all the worse for its greater success, for it will be a welcome support to all the fools and knaves attached to the old system, which after all the Abbé himself surrenders in his conclusions. He has the art of all those who set themselves to darken things that are clear to the open mind, of the Nollets disputing against Franklin on electricity, of the Montarans against Gournay on the freedom of commerce, of the Caveyracs attacking tolerance. This art consists in never commencing at the commencement, but by rushing into the subject in all its complications, or with some fact which is only an exception, or some circumstance isolated, far-fetched, or merely collateral, which does not belong to the essence of the question and goes for nothing in its solution. The Abbé Galiani, commencing with the case of Geneva to treat of the question of the freedom of the corn-trade, is like the man who, writing a book on the means men employ to procure themselves subsistence, should make his first chapter on “culs-de-jatte"; or like a geometer who, treating of the property of triangles, should commence by white triangles as the most simple, in order to treat after of blue triangles, then of red triangles, etc. I would state generally that whoever overlooks the fact of political States being separated from each other and being differently constituted will never treat properly any question of Political Economy. Besides, I do not like to see him always so prudent, so much an enemy to enthusiasm, so much in accord with all the ne quid nimis, and with all men who simply enjoy the present and are quite satisfied that the world should go on as it does, because it goes on well enough for them, and who, as Gournay said, having their own bed well made, do not wish to be disturbed. These indeed are not the men to love enthusiasm, and they like to call “enthusiasm” all that attacks the infallibility of men in office….

I believe it possible for a very good reply to Galiani to be made, but it would demand much study and tact. The Economists are too confident in their science to fight against one they consider a merely adroit dealer in old wares. As for the Abbé Morellet, he must not think of it; he would do himself a real wrong by turning again from the work of his dictionary.

To Abbé Morellet

Limoges, 17 January 1770

YOU HAVE BEEN VERY severe. Galiani’s “Dialogues” is not a book to be called bad, although it sustains a very bad cause, but it could not sustain it with more spirit, more charm, more tact in the exercise of its frank pleasantry and of its subtlety in discussion of details. A book written with this elegance, this airiness of tone, this correctness and originality of expression, and by a foreigner, is a phenomenon. The work is very amusing, and unfortunately it will be very difficult to reply to it in such a manner as to dissipate the seduction induced by the speciousness of its reasonings and the piquancy of its style, I wish I had the time, but I have it not. Neither have you. du Pont is absorbed in his paper. The Abbé Baudeau would reply too much as an economist, etc.

[To same, some time later, same year.]

I AM CURIOUS TO know what the English have thought about “L’Histoire des deux Indes” [by the Abbé Raynal]. I confess that while admiring the talent of the author and his work, I have been somewhat shocked by the incoherence of his ideas, and by seeing paradoxes the most opposite brought forward or defended with the same warmth of argument, the same eloquence, the same fanaticism. He is sometimes puritanic like Richardson, at other times immoral like Helvétius … irrational in science, irrational in metaphysics, and often in politics. His book brings out no result, except in showing the author to be a man full of thought, well instructed, but without one idea in him properly determined, such a man as would allow himself to be carried away by the enthusiasm of a jejune rhetorician. He seems to have put himself to the task of sustaining successively all the paradoxes which have presented themselves to him in the course of his readings or of his dreams. He has more learning, more sense, and more natural eloquence than Helvétius, but he is in fact as incoherent in his ideas, and as ignorant of the true nature of man.

To Dr. Josiah Tucker

Paris, 12 September 1770

I HAVE NOT THE honor to be personally known to you, but I know that you were pleased with the translation I made, fifteen years ago, of your. Questions on the Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants.’ I have since translated your pamphlet on the wars of commerce ["On going to War for the sake of Trade.” London, 1763]. I have delayed its publication purposing to add some notes, which my occupations have not yet left me time to complete. A translator owes to his author every kind of homage, and I now request of you to accept as such a pamphlet which, while certainly conveying to yourself nothing new, may, I have been told, prove useful in spreading elementary ideas on subjects with which we desire to see the public better acquainted.¹ This little piece was written for the instruction of two Chinese whom I met in this country, in order to let them better understand questions I had put to them on the state and the economical constitution of their empire.

These questions reminded me of others which you had the goodness to send to me by Mr. Hume, but which I never received; for the packet put into the post-office at Paris for Limoges was lost. Mr. Hume no doubt informed you of this accident and of my regrets. I owe you not the less my deep thanks. If a copy should remain to you and you are disposed to repair my loss, the surest way would be simply to put it into the London post-office, to the address of M. Turgot, Intendant of Limoges, Paris.

I have a regret very much greater, that of not having been able to profit by the visit you made some years ago to Paris, in obtaining the honor of personal acquaintance with you. I should have been all the more flattered by it, for I find by your works that our principles on liberty and on the main objects of political economy are much in accord. I confess I cannot help being astonished that, in a nation enjoying the liberty of the press, you should be almost the only author who has known and felt the advantages of a free commerce, and who has not been seduced by the puerile and suicidal illusion of a commerce fettered and exclusive. May the efforts of enlightened and public-spirited politicians destroy this abominable idol, which still remains after the mania of conquests and of religious intolerance of which the world begins to be undeceived! Think of the millions of men who have been immolated to these three monsters! I see with joy, as citizen of the world, an event approaching, which more than all the books of philosophers will dissipate the phantom of the jealousy of commerce. I allude to the separation of your colonies from the mother country, which will soon be followed by that of all America from mother Europe. Then the discovery of that part of the world will become really useful. Then will it multiply our commercial enjoyments much more abundantly than when we purchased them with streams of blood. The English, the French, the Spaniards, etc., will consume the sugar, the coffee, etc., etc. and will sell their commodities just as the Swiss sell theirs today, and these nations will also have, like the Swiss people, the advantage that this sugar, coffee, etc., will no longer serve as pretexts to intriguers to involve their nation in ruinous wars and to burden it with accumulated taxes.

I have the honor to be, etc.

Limoges, 10 December 1778

I HAVE MANY EXCUSES to make to you for having so long-delayed the thanks I owe you for all the particulars you have been kind enough to send to me at the request of my friend M. Bostock, relating to the production of cereals and their commerce.

I intended to reply to you in English, but at the time I found myself just convalescent from an attack of gout; and as it is to me somewhat of a task to write in your language, I delayed my answer until another time. Since I returned to the province, I have had quite a pressure of occupations, and I take advantage now of my first moment of liberty. But as Mr. Bostock is now in London, he can translate my letter to you, and thus it is I write it in French.

I begin by thanking you for the different pamphlets you have forwarded to me, of your own composition, on this interesting subject. I am entirely of your opinion on the inutility of the bounty which your Government have so long granted on the export of corn. My principles on this matter are: absolute liberty to import, without distinction of vessels of this or that nation, and without any duties on import; similarly, absolute liberty to export in all kinds of vessels without any duties on export and without limitation even in times of scarcity; liberty in the interior to sell to whomsoever we wish, when and where we wish, without being obliged to carry to the public market, and without any authority interfering to fix the price of corn or of bread. And I would extend these principles to commerce in all kinds of merchandise. This policy is, as you know, far distant from the practice of your Government and of our own.

[Turgot then, at considerable length, dwells on the desirability of obtaining reliable statistics on the price of wheat, etc., in France and England, with various suggestions, and then replies to an inquiry by Dr. Tucker on a minor matter.]

I have made several inquiries relative to the question you have put to me on the opportunities which an English farmer would have to establish himself in one of our provinces. To work a farm it would be necessary to have a capital sufficient to develop it in value, and I doubt if capital would return as much in a French farm as in an English one. The reason is that our Government is still very undecided on the principles of the liberty of the corn-trade. It is even still extremely prepossessed against the exportation, and if it does not change its way of thinking by permanently establishing liberty of transit, there is reason to fear that our agriculture will become very slightly profitable. Besides, in the greatest part of our provinces, the land-tax is imposed on the farmer and not on the proprietor, which renders the condition of the farmer much less advantageous. I add that a Protestant would, in certain provinces, often have many disagreeable experiences to endure.

To Dr. Richard Price

Paris, 22 March 1778

MR. FRANKLIN HAS FORWARDED to me, on your part, the new edition of your “Observations on Civil Liberty, etc.” I owe you a doubly grateful acknowledgment. 1. For your work, of which I have long known the value, and which I had read with avidity at the time of its first appearance, in spite of the onerous duties that then pressed upon me; 2. For the kindness and sincerity in which you have withdrawn the imputation of “awkwardness” (maladresse) which you had mingled with the good you had said of me elsewhere in your “Observations.” I should indeed have deserved the imputation if you had had in view no other maladresse than that of my being unable to untwist the secret springs of the intrigues directed against me by men much more adroit in this kind of work than I am—than I shall ever be, or ever wish to be. But at first it seemed to me that you imputed to me the maladresse of having rudely offended the general opinion of my nation, and in this respect I believe that you did justice neither to me nor to my nation, where there is much more enlightenment than your countrymen generally suppose, and where, perhaps, it is easier to lead the public to reasonable ideas than it is with yourselves. I judge thus by the infatuation of your nation on the absurd project of subjugating America which so long endured, until the result of Burgoyne’s adventure began to open its eyes. I judge thus by the spirit of monopoly and exclusion which prevails among all your political writers on commerce (I except Mr. Adam Smith and Dean Tucker), a spirit involving the very principle on which your separation from your colonies took effect. I judge thus by all your polemical writings on questions which have agitated your nation for the last twenty years, and among which, until your own appeared, I can scarcely recollect to have read one in which the real point of the question was seized.

I cannot conceive how a nation which has cultivated with so much success all the branches of natural science, should remain so completely below itself in the science the most interesting of all, that of public happiness; in a science in which the liberty of the press, which your nation alone enjoys, would give to it prodigious advantage over all the other nations of Europe. Is it national pride that has prevented you from turning these advantages to account? Is it because you are somewhat less ill than others that you have employed all your speculations to persuade yourselves that you are perfectly well? Is it the spirit of party, the desire to find a support in [uneducated] popular opinions, which has retarded your progress by inducing your politicians to treat as vain metaphysics all those speculations which tend to establish fixed principles on the rights and the true interests of individuals and of nations? How has it happened that you are almost the first among your men of letters who has advanced just notions of liberty and who has exposed the falseness of the idea, again and again pronounced by almost all public writers, that liberty is secured if men are only subject to laws—as if a man oppressed by an unjust law could be free? This would not be true, even supposing all the laws were the work of the assembled nation; for beyond all, the individual has also his rights, and the nation cannot deprive him of them, except by violence and by an illegitimate use of the general power. Although you have, indeed, yourself dwelt upon this truth, perhaps it still merits from you a fuller development, considering the little attention that has been given to it, even by the most zealous advocates of liberty.

Again, it is a strange thing that in England it should not be held as a common truth that one nation has never any right to govern another nation; that such a government can have no other foundation than physical force, which is also the foundation of brigandage and of tyranny; that the tyranny of a people is of all tyrannies the most cruel and the most intolerable, and the one which leaves the fewest resources to the oppressed nation; for after all a despot is limited by his own interest, he is checked by conscience or by public opinion, but a multitude [in a fit of ascendency] never calculates, is checked by no conscience, and awards to itself glory while it more deserves disgrace.

Events are, for the English nation, a terrible commentary on your book. For some months they have rushed on with an accelerated rapidity. The end is reached in respect to America. She is independent now for ever. Will she be free and happy? Is this new people, placed so advantageously to give to the world the example of a constitution by which man may enjoy all his rights, freely exercise all his faculties, to be governed only by nature, reason, and justice?— will this people be able to form such a constitution? Will they be able to establish it on permanent foundations, and to ward off all the causes of division and of corruption which can undermine it, little by little, and destroy it?

I confess that I am not pleased with the constitutions that have been drawn out by the different American States up to this time. You reproach with reason that of Pennsylvania for the religious oath exacted from members of the representative body. The case is even worse in other States; there are several which exact, by oath, specified belief in certain dogmas. I observe in a great many instances an imitation, without any real necessity, of the usages of England. Instead of radiating all the authorities to one centre, that of the nation, different bodies have been established, a body of representatives, a council, a governor, just because England has a House of Commons, a higher chamber, and a king. They think of balancing the different powers; as if this equilibrium of forces, which was believed to be necessary to balance the great preponderance of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded on the equality of all the citizens, and as if the establishment of so many different bodies would not be a source of so many divisions! In wishing to prevent chimerical dangers, they have created real ones. It was desirable to have nothing to fear from the clergy; they have united them under their banner of a common proscription. By excluding them from the right of eligibility [to the representative body], they have made of them a body by themselves, a body foreign to the State. Why should a citizen, who has the same interests as others in the common defense of liberty and its possessions, be excluded from contributing to the State his enlightenment and his virtues, because he belongs to a profession which itself exacts these virtues and this enlightenment? The clergy is dangerous only when it exists as an organized body in the State, when we attribute to this body special rights and private interests, and when we attempt to have a religion established by law—as if men could have any right or any interest in regulating the conscience of others; as if the individual man should sacrifice, for the advantages of civil society, the principles to which he believes his eternal salvation to be attached—as if a people were to be saved or to be damned in a lot! Wherever tolerance, that is to say the absolute neutrality of the Government in dealing with the conscience of individuals, is established, there the ecclesiastic, in the midst of the national assembly, when he is admitted, is but a citizen; he becomes an ecclesiastic only when he is excluded.

The framers of American constitutions cannot study enough to reduce to the smallest number possible the kinds of affairs of which the Government of each State should take charge; to separate the objects of legislation from those of general administration and from those of local administration, and to constitute minor local assemblies which by fulfilling the functions of Government in local matters would exclude these from the general assemblies, and remove from their members every opportunity, means, and desire of abusing an authority which should be confined to general interests, and kept free from the petty local passions which agitate people….

No fixed principle is established in respect to taxation; it would seem that each province could tax itself according to its fancy, could establish personal taxes, taxes on consumption, and on importation—that is to say, would maintain an interest of its own, contrary to the interest of the other provinces.

The right to control commerce is everywhere taken for granted; exclusive bodies, or the governors, are even authorized to prohibit the exportation of certain commodities in certain circumstances. So far are people yet from realizing that the law of complete freedom of all commerce is a corollary of the right of property—so deep are they still immersed in the fog of European illusions.

In the general union of the provinces with each other I do not see a coalition, a fusion of all parties, in order to make a body one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregation of parties, always too separated, and which will always maintain a tendency to separate, by the diversity of their laws, of their manners, of their opinions, by the inequality of their actual forces, and still more by the inequality of their eventual progress. It is only a copy of the Dutch Republic, which had not to guard, like the American Republic, the possible extension of some of their provinces. The whole edifice at present rests on the false basis of a very ancient and very vulgar policy, on the prejudice that nations and provinces have an interest, as nations and provinces, other than the interest of the individuals composing them, which is to be free and to defend their property against invaders; that they have an interest, not in buying merchandise from the foreigner, but in compelling the foreigner to consume their productions and the works of their manufactures; an interest in having a vaster territory, in acquiring such and such a province, such an island, such a village; an interest in gaining an ascendency over other peoples…. Some of these prejudices are fostered in Europe, because the ancient, rivalry of nations and the ambition of princes obliged all States to hold themselves armed to defend themselves against their armed neighbors, and to regard the military force as the principal object of Government. But America has the happiness to have no enemy to fear (unless she creates a division within herself); thus she can and should appreciate at their real value those presumed interests, those subjects of discord which would threaten her liberty. By the sacred principle of the freedom of commerce, regarded as a consequence of the right of property, all the presumed interests of national commerce disappear, also the interest to possess more or less territory will vanish, by the principle that the territory belongs not to the nations but to the individual proprietors of the land [and other inhabitants]; that the question whether such a canton, such a village ought to belong to such a province, to such a State, ought not to be decided by the presumed interest of that province or that State, but by the interest of the inhabitants of that canton or village themselves.

I imagine that the Americans are yet far from feeling the force of these truths to the degree necessary to insure the happiness of their posterity. I do not blame their leaders. They had to provide for the necessity of the moment by a Union, such as it is, against a present and formidable enemy; there was no time to think of correcting the vices of constitutions and deciding upon the composition of the different States. But they ought to beware of making these defects permanent. They ought to set about uniting opinions and interests, and placing them under uniform principles in all the provinces. They have in this respect great obstacles to overcome….

In the Southern colonies there is a too great inequality of conditions, and above all, the great number of black servants, whose slavery is incompatible with a good political constitution, and who, even when their liberty is granted, will cause embarrassment by forming almost a second nation in the same State.

In all the States there prevail prejudices, an attachment to established forms, the use and wont of certain taxes, the fear of taxes of a better kind that should be substituted for them, the vanity of those colonies which think themselves to be the most powerful, and most unhappy symptoms beginning of national pride. I believe that the Americans are bound to become great, not by war but by culture…. If they leave neglected the immense fields that stretch to the sea on the west, there might be formed there a mingling of their outlaws, of their scamps escaped from the severity of the law, with the savages there, from which would rise hordes of brigands to ravage America as the barbarians of the North ravaged the Roman Empire; hence another danger, the necessity of holding themselves armed on the frontier and of being there in a state of continual war. The colonies on the frontier will in consequence become more inured to war than the others, and this inequality in military strength may become a terrible spur to ambition. The remedy for this possible inequality would be to maintain a standing military force, to which all the colonies will contribute in proportion to their population. The Americans, who harbor still all the fears that prevailed in England, dread more than anything a permanent army. They are wrong. Nothing is easier than to connect the constitution of a standing army with the militia, in such a manner as to improve the militia and to make liberty even more assured…. There are thus many difficulties for the future, and perhaps the secret self-interest of powerful individuals will be joined to the prejudices of the multitude to frustrate the efforts of the truly wise and good citizens.

All right-thinking men must pray that this people may arrive at all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the human race. They should be the model. They must prove to the world, as a fact, that men can be both free and peaceful and can dispense with the trammels of all sorts which tyrants and charlatans of every costume have presumed to impose under the pretext of public safety. They must give the example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum which America affords to the oppressed of all nations will console the world. The facility of profiting by it, in making escape from the consequences of bad governments, will compel the European powers to be just, and to see things as they are. The rest of the world will, by degrees, have its eyes opened to the dispersion of the illusions amidst which politicians have been cradled. But, for that end, America herself must guarantee that she will never become (as so many of your ministerial writers have preached) an image of our Europe, a mass of divided powers disputing about territories or the profits of commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of peoples by their own blood.

All enlightened men, all the friends of humanity, should at this moment contribute their lights and join their reflections to those of wise Americans, in order to concur in the great work of their legislation. This would be well worthy of you, Sir; it has been my desire to excite your zeal; and if in this letter I have given myself up, perhaps too much, to the expression of my own ideas, this desire has been my only motive, and will excuse me, I hope, for the weariness I may have inflicted on you.

I would that the blood which has been shed and which will yet be shed in this quarrel, should not prove useless for the happiness of mankind.

Our two nations have done each other much evil, without either of them probably having gained any real profit. The increase of national debts and expenditure, and the loss of many lives, are perhaps the only result. England, it seems to me, has incurred that even more than France. If, instead of pursuing this war, you had only acted with a good grace at the beginning, if you had allowed policy to dictate then what it was inevitably compelled to do later, if national opinion had permitted your Government to have been beforehand with events, and to have consented at first to the independence of America, without making war on anyone, I firmly believe that your nation would have lost nothing by such a policy. She will lose now all that she has spent, and she will spend more; she will suffer for some time a great falling off in her commerce, and suffer many internal troubles, if she is forced to bankruptcy; and whatever happens, she must suffer a great loss in her influence abroad. But this last point is of very little importance for the real good of a people…. Your present misfortunes are the effect of a necessary amputation, which will make for your future happiness; it was perhaps the only means of saving you from the grangrene of luxury and corruption.

If in your political agitations you could reform your Constitution by making elections annual, by granting the right of representation in a more equal manner and one more proportionate to the interests of the represented, you would gain as much perhaps as America herself by this Revolution; for your liberty would remain to you, and your other losses would be soon repaired with that and by that.

You can judge, Sir, by the frankness with which I have expressed myself on these delicate points, of the esteem with which you have inspired me, of the satisfaction I have in feeling that there is some resemblance between our ways of thought. I need not remind you that this confidence is intended only for yourself. I must request of you not to reply to me in detail, by the post, for your letter would certainly be opened at the office, and they would find me much too great a friend of liberty for a minister—even for a disgraced minister—to be!

I have the honor, etc.

To du Pont

9 December 1766

I HAVE DRAWN UP some questions for the two Chinese I have mentioned to you; and to enable them to see their object and meaning, I have prefaced them by a sketchy sort of analysis of the labors of Society and of the distribution of riches. I have put no algebra into it, and there is nothing of the Tableau économique but the metaphysical part; moreover I have left a good many questions on one side which one would have to treat to make the work complete. But I have gone pretty thoroughly into what concerns the formation and the movement of capitals, the interest of money &c …

2 February 1770

THE PASSAGE ABOUT THE original agricultural advances has especially troubled me; you know how I have argued on this point with the abbé Baudeau in your presence. I may be wrong, but everybody likes to be himself and not somebody else…. These additions all tend to make me out an economist, which I don’t wish to be any more than an encyclopedist.

20 February 1770

ALTHOUGH THE ADVANCES WHICH you call foncières contribute their share to the production of the crops,—as I should have said if my object had been to expound the principles of the Tableau économique, yet it is false that the avances foncières are the principle of property. It is this alteration which has given me most annoyance.

I will content myself with simply telling you this: that no one can argue from what I have said that slavery was good for any society, even in its infancy. As to individuals who have slaves, that is another matter. I should be glad to think you are right in maintaining that slavery is for no one’s advantage, for it is an abominable and barbarous injustice; but I very much fear that you are mistaken, and that this injustice may sometimes be useful to the man that perpetrates it.

23 March 1770

TO SUPPOSE THAT SAVING and hoarding are synonymous, what a confusion of ideas, or rather of language! and that to cover certain mistaken expressions which fell from the good doctor² in his earlier writings. Oh, this sectarian spirit!

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¹ The work thus modestly referred to is the Réflexions sur la formation des richesses.

² I.e., Quesnay.