Condorcet was the friend of Turgot, a minister whose virtues and genius attached to him all the more enlightened men of the day. His ministry, however, was stormy, since he was among the first who endeavoured to bring a remedy to the ruined finances of France, without being permitted to strike at the root of the evil--unequal taxation and extravagant expenditure. His edict touching the sale of corn excited popular commotions, and was attacked by Necker. Condorcet undertook to answer Necker's book, but was on the unpopular side, and therefore not read. He wrote a series of laudatory biographical essays on various academicians, and men of science and celebrity, Euler, Franklin, D'Alembert, and others. In these he, at the same time, developed his scientific knowledge and his theory of the perfectibility of the human species. Every useful and liberal cause found him its partisan. He was one among the opponents of negro slavery; and, feeling that diatribes against the cruelty and wickedness of the slave trade would not avail with those who regarded it as advantageous to the country, he argued to prove its political and commercial inexpediency. He was a laborious and prolific writer, urged on by a strong sense of duty; for, firmly believing that the wisdom of philosophers was of vast influence in improving the moral condition of mankind, he believed it to be the primal duty of thinking men to propagate their opinions. In his life of Turgot he details his theories of the perfectibility of his species, which the minister had also entertained. He undertook an edition of the works of Voltaire, and wrote the life of that great wit, one of the best and most elegant of his works. To escape persecution, or to give greater force to his writings, he published several of his writings under fictitious names. In this manner, he brought out his "Reflections on Negro Slavery" under the name of Swartz, a pastor of Bienne. A biographer observes on this work, that "the simplicity, elegance, and precision of the style; the forcible arguments, respect for misfortune, and indignation at crime; the tone which inviolable probity inspires, and which art cannot imitate, obtained signal success for this work. Those who were fortunate enough to be intimate with Condorcet easily raised the veil under which he concealed himself." In the same way, he adopted the name of a citizen of Newhaven, when he wrote to refute a book by De Lolme, in praise of the English constitution, insisting, in particular, on the benefits arising from two legislative chambers. Condorcet argued that all just government ought to be founded on giving preponderance to the majority; and he brought all his logic to prove that to confide the task of legislation to two chambers, one of which should propose and the other sanction laws, was to give to the minority a power superior to that enjoyed by the majority; since that which had been proposed unanimously