Category: Biographies
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot was born in Paris on the 10th of May 1727. He died in 1781. His life covered rather more than half a century, extending, if we may put it a little roughly, over the middle fifty years of the eighteenth century. This middle period marks the exact date...
Again, by a curious perversity of official pedantry, the government insisted on each man who drew the black ticket in the abhorred lottery, performing his service in person. It...
2. Chapter 2We know the books which Turgot and his friends devoured with ardour. Locke, Bayle, Voltaire, Buffon, relieved Clarke, Leibnitz, Spinosa, Cudworth; and constant discussions among...
3. Chapter 3[Footnote 27: 'La seule leçon de morale qui convienne à l'enfance, et la plus importante à tout âge, est de ne jamais faire de mal à personne,' etc. _Emile_, bk. ii. 'Never trou...
6. Chapter 6The common food of the people was the chestnut, and to the great majority of them even the coarsest rye-bread was a luxury that they had never tasted. Maise and buckwheat were t...
4. Chapter 4Nothing but the Christian religion could have worked that general revolution in men's minds, which brought the rights of humanity out into full day, and reconciled an affectiona...
8. Chapter 8Turgot's policy in this matter is more instructive as to the social state of France, than it may at first sight appear. At first sight we are astonished to find the austere econ...
1. Chapter 1Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot was born in Paris on the 10th of May 1727. He died in 1781. His life covered rather more than half a century, extending, if we may put it a little rou...
5. Chapter 5Montesquieu and Voltaire were both far enough removed from Bossuet's point of view, and the _Spirit of Laws_ of the one, and the _Essay on the Manners and Character of Nations_...
9. Chapter 9Turgot at first showed some just and natural resentment at the levity with which he had been banished from power, and he put on no airs of theatrical philosophy. He would have b...