III. 1776. CHAP. in the country as proved irresistible. Malesherbes was the first who sank before the storm. Worn out with the opposition which his measures of reform had experienced, disgusted with the selfishness with which he was surrounded, despairing of effecting any permanent amelioration in a state where individual interest was the object of universal worship, he sent in his resignation, which Louis, a prey to similar vexations, mournfully accepted, March 17. observing at the same time, in touching words, "You are happier than I; you can resign." Turgot, endowed with more obstinacy of disposition, held out longer; but the public clamour became so violent, that at length he also felt the necessity of sending in his resignation.* Maurepas, who was no reformer in his heart, but had merely given in to the system of the Philosophers to keep things quiet, and win over their powerful voice to his side, was alarmed at the vehement fermentation which had been excited,1 and had for some time been skilfully sowing the seeds of doubt and distrust as to Turgot's designs in the upright magistrates, is treated by these new preceptors of the human race with an insulting contempt, which could spring from nothing but the reveries of a disturbed imagination, stimulated by the enthusiasm of a false philosophy."— Speech of M. Séguier, Procureur-Général of the Parliament of Paris, 1775; SOULAVIE, iii. 88, 89. April 30. May 12. 1 Soul. iii. 160, 165. Biog. Univ. xxxix. 82. Droz, i. 207, 209. Turgot," said Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII., “ says to the French, For a thousand years you have had laws, privileges, property, usages, and distinctions. They are all chimeras and barbarisms. Become a new people. Let the reason of the first age of the world enlighten you; let every thing be abandoned to instinct and self-government; let all obstacles be thrown down, all privileges abolished.' To accomplish these ends he furnished to Louis XVI. six skilfully drawn edicts, well purified in the fire of liberty, and involving all the elements of a general revolution. The evil genius of France, in the shape of an Anglomania, has got possession of the royal councils: it has misled the King, seduced the council, abused the nation. Observing the disorders of the finances, it has seized upon that as the lever wherewith to subvert the state; and its fatal influences will precipitate a revolution by putting France at war with itself, and in the end establish the lasting superiority of Great Britain.”—What a prophecy and these were the men whom the philosophers of the day characterised as esprits bornés," incapable of raising themselves above antiquated prejudices.-Mémoire par MONSIEUR FRERE DU ROI, Avril 1776, p. 7, 8; and SOULAVIE, iii. 107. * He said, in his letter resigning office,-" The most decided combination of all parties against me, my absolute isolation, and the scarce disguised enmity of M. Miromenil, his influence with M. Maurepas, all convince me that I only hold by a thread."-SOULAVIE, iii. 164. III. King's mind. After some hesitation, accordingly, he CHAP. accepted his resignation; and thus fell the government of the Economists. 1776. 42. on the fall The fall of Turgot and Malesherbes is one of the most important of the many important phases which preceded Reflections the Revolution, and was intimately connected with that of Turgot. convulsion. That it accelerated the march of events conducive towards it, cannot be doubted; for the return to arbitrary government, and the continuance of abuses, becomes to a peculiar degree grating when the minds of men have been heated by the taste for reforms, how visionary soever. Yet were the innovations contemplated by these eminent and well-meaning men in themselves to the last degree perilous, and such as would have conducted France, by a path less bloody, perhaps, but not less certain, than that which it actually followed, to a social revolution and military despotism. No other testimony is required to this, than that of Malesherbes himself, who thus, when taught by misfortune, expressed himself on the tendency of the reforms in which he had had too large a share. "M. Turgot and I," said he, in 1790, "were very honest men, well-informed, and passionately desirous of the public good. No one, at the time, could have believed that the King could have done better than to have trusted himself to our guidance. Nevertheless, I now see that, knowing mankind only from books, and wanting the judgment necessary for conducting public affairs, we conducted the administration ill. wished to govern the French not as they were, but such as we wished them to be, and such as our hearts imagined they were. We were misled by our zeal; our principles having been introduced into the government, the use we made of our power to enforce them was clearly erroneous. I know not to what the changes in progress will lead but I must admit that, stepping on from one system of supposed perfection to another, we have arrived, I grieve (Turgot.) to say, at our present state.1 Strange to say, the nation We ; Soulavie, Biog. Univ. vi. 101, 102. xxxix. 83, III. CHAP. has always thought it would right itself by making a further step in advance. Without perceiving it-without intending it, we have contributed to the Revolution." 1776. 43. these disas trous results. The principle which led the plans of reform adopted Causes of by Turgot, and many other great and good men who followed him, to these disastrous results, has now been clearly illustrated by experience. They proceeded upon an erroneous estimate of human nature, and a mistaken idea of human perfectibility. No one knew better, or felt more keenly than that upright minister, the unbounded selfishness of the aristocratic classes by whom the throne was surrounded, and by whom his plans of amelioration had been incessantly thwarted. But he imagined that these were the vices of the great only, and that if the invidious distinctions of society were removed, the community would no longer be oppressed by their influence. He saw the evils of the privileges of the dominant classes of society; but he did not see, what experience has now fully shown, the still greater evils resulting from the unrestrained ascendency of the working masses. His plans shook the base of all good government, the security of property professing to lay the social burdens equally on all classes of society, they in effect removed them from one class, hitherto unjustly left to bear them all, to lay them with equal injustice on another. The corvées were to be taken entirely from the shoulders of the peasantry, and laid on those of the landed proprietors. This was not equalising the social burdens, but changing the class which was to bear them. The project of suppressing the privileges of incorporations, and leaving the career of industry open to all, in appearance so equitable, has been found by experience to lead to the most calamitous The Roman maxim, "cujus est commodum ejus debet esse onus," is the certain guide in the often complicated, and always vehemently contested matter of the distribution of the social burdens; and its justice is so apparent that, when it is strictly followed, they are never complained of. Accordingly, the English tolls, falling on the persons who use the roads, though often imposing a far heavier burden on individuals than the French corvées, are never felt as burdensome. III. 1776. consequences; for it takes large bodies of men from the CHAP. guidance of respectability and property, to range them beneath the mandates of violence and injustice. The working classes must be combined in some way or other; the feeling of impotence to an isolated poor man is insupportable. When so combined, human nature will ever prompt to some system likely, in appearance at least, to conduce to the general advantage. If not arrayed by law in guilds and in corporations, recognised and protected in their privileges, they will array themselves in combinations which will enforce their assumed rights by violence and intimidation, attended with the most dreadful results. The nation is little to be envied which, having extinguished legal incorporations, where age predominates, industry is cherished, and misfortune alleviated, falls under the dominion of ruthless trades' unions, where violence directs, despotism commands, and cruelty executes; where the torch and the dagger are the instruments of popular vengeance, and which consign, for months together, twenty or thirty thousand of their fellow-creatures to compulsory idleness and real destitution.* régime is succeeded Maurepas supplied the place of Turgot by Clugny, for- 44. merly intendant of Bordeaux-a man of no distinction, The system but a courtier, and one whose character gave an earnest of of the old a return to the old régime of aristocratic influence and restored by Clugny, who The author can speak from personal information on this subject. Turgot. The great cotton-spinners' strike, in 1837, cost Lanarkshire and Glasgow Aug. 11. £452,000; that of the whole colliers and iron-miners in the same year, £417,000, besides doubling the price of coals, which levied a tax to an equal amount on the community: the strike of the calico-printers in the West of Scotland, in 1834, inflicted a loss of £474,000 on the country; that of the colliers and iron-miners, in 1842, cost Lanarkshire at least £600,000. Nearly the whole of the loss arising from these strikes fell on the innocent and industrious labourers, willing and anxious to work, but deterred from doing so by the threats of the unions and the dark menaces of an unknown committee. The mode in which these committees acquire such despotic authority is precisely the same as that which made the Committee of Public Salvation despotic-Terror-terror-terror. Every morning we asked each other, why was nothing done last night?" "What did you mean by nothing done?" "Why was no one murdered by the committee."-Crown Evidence, SWINTON'S Report of the Trial of the Glasgow Cotton-Spinners, p. 88. See also Evidence before Combination Committee, Commons, 1838, pp. 128, 164. As a contrast to CHAP. abuses. III. Arnoldt succeeded Malesherbes in the Home Office a man totally devoid of talents: indeed he was selected by Maurepas for that very reason; they had had enough of the men of letters.* An immediate change ensued in the conduct of government. The six edicts registered by force on the 12th March were repealed, and the edict as to the corvées was suspended: the promised ameliorations were so frittered away that they amounted to nothing. Every thing returned to the old system. Maurepas addressed a hypocritical letter of condolence to Turgot on his dismissal, which drew forth an indignant retort from the fallen philosopher. "At least," said he, "I retire without having to reproach myself with weakness, falsehood, and dissimulation." It was those three vices which retained Maurepas in power, and the opposite qualities of vigour, truth, and sincerity, which drove Turgot from it. Such are courts: except in those cases, unhappily so rare, when penetration and resolution, as well as virtue and good intentions, are at the head of affairs. If it is rare for a Henry to find a Sully, it is still more rare for a Sully to find a Henry. Turgot, a few days before his retirement, addressed an eloquent letter, in justification of his conduct and designs, to Louis XVI.;1 but he said, at the same time, of that prince, with profound and prophetic sagacity, that "the destiny of this, the united trades' incorporations of Glasgow spend above £7000 a-year That £10 be given to 939 * "At least," said Maurepas, "they cannot accuse me of having chosen him or his talents."—DROZ, i. 212. |