France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made
Controller-General; and there shall be endless reformation.
Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months. With a
miraculous _Fortunatus’ Purse_ in his Treasury, it might have
lasted longer; with such Purse indeed, every French
Controller-General, that would prosper in these days, ought first
to provide himself. But here again may we not remark the bounty
of Nature in regard to Hope? Man after man advances confident to
the Augean Stable, as if _he_ could clean it; expends his little
fraction of an ability on it, with such cheerfulness; does, in so
far as he was honest, accomplish something. Turgot has faculties;
honesty, insight, heroic volition; but the Fortunatus’ Purse he
has not. Sanguine Controller-General! a whole pacific French
Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker; but who
shall pay the unspeakable “indemnities” that will be needed?
Alas, far from that: on the very threshold of the business, he
proposes that the Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be
subjected to taxes! One shriek of indignation and astonishment
reverberates through all the Château galleries; M. de Maurepas
has to gyrate: the poor King, who had written few weeks ago, “_Il
n’y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple_ (There is none but
you and I that has the people’s interest at heart),” must write
now a dismissal;[32] and let the French Revolution accomplish
itself, pacifically or not, as it can.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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