“It is impossible not to desire earnestly that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the human race. They can become its model. They are to prove to the world, by the fact, that men can be free and tranquil, and can dispense with the chains of all kinds which the tyrants and charlatans of every cloth have pretended to impose under the pretext of the public good. They are to give the example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum which they open to all the oppressed of all nations is to console the earth. The facility thereby afforded for escape from a bad government will force the European governments to be just and enlightened. The rest of the world, little by little, will open their eyes to the nothingness of the illusions in which politicians have indulged. To this end it is necessary that America should guard against them, and should not again become, as your ministerial writers have so often repeated, an image of our Europe, _a mass of divided powers_, disputing about territory or commercial profits, and continually cementing the slavery of the peoples with their own blood.”[345] After these admirable thoughts, so full of wisdom and prophecy, Turgot alludes to the impending war between France and England:-- “Our two nations are going to do each other reciprocally much evil, probably without either of them obtaining any real advantage. The increase of debts and charges and the ruin of a great many citizens will be, perhaps, the only result. England seems to me even nearer to this than France. If instead of this war you had been able to yield with good grace from the first moment,--if it had been given to policy to do in advance what infallibly it will be forced to do later,--if national opinion could have permitted your Government to anticipate events,--and, supposing that it had foreseen them, it had been able to consent at once to the independence of America without making war on anybody,--I firmly believe that your nation would have lost nothing by this change. It will lose now what it has already expended, and what it shall yet expend. It will experience for some time a great falling off in its commerce, great domestic disturbances, if it is forced to bankruptcy, and, whatever may happen, a great diminution of political influence abroad. But this last matter is of very small importance to the real welfare of a people; and I am not at all of the opinion of the Abbé Raynal in your motto.[346] I do not believe that this will make you a contemptible nation, and throw you into slavery. On the contrary, your troubles will perhaps have the effect of a necessary amputation; they are perhaps the only means of saving you from the gangrene