He deplored the impending war, which ought to have been avoided by England's acknowledging in time “the folly of its absurd project to subjugate the Americans. . . . It is a strange thing that it be not yet a commonplace truth to say that no nation can ever have the right to govern another nation; that such a government has no other foundation than force, which is also the foundation of brigandage and tyranny; that a people's tyranny is, of all tyrannies, the most cruel, the most intolerable, and the one which leaves the least resources to the oppressed; . . . for a multitude does not calculate, does not feel remorse, and it bestows on itself glory when all that it deserves is shame.”
The Americans, according to Turgot, must be free, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of humanity; an experiment of the utmost import is about to begin, and should succeed. He added this, the worthy forecast of a generous mind:
“It is impossible not to form wishes for that people to reach the utmost prosperity it is capable of. That people is the hope of mankind. It must show to the world by its example that men can be free and tranquil, and can do without the chains that tyrants and cheats of all garb have tried to lay on them under pretense of public good. It must give the example of political liberty, religious liberty, commercial and industrial liberty.
“The shelter which it is going to offer to the oppressed of all nations will console the earth. The ease with which men will be able to avail themselves of it and escape the effects of a bad government will oblige governments to open their eyes and to be just. The rest of the world will perceive by degrees the emptiness of the illusions on which politicians have festered.”
Toward England Turgot has a feeling of regret on account of its policies, but no trace of animosity; and, on the contrary, the belief that, in spite of what some people of note were alleging, the absolutely certain loss of her American colonies would not result in a diminution of her power. “This revolution will prove, maybe, as profitable to you as to America.”
The honorable rules of war rigorously observed
Not less characteristic of the times and of the same thinker's turn of mind is a brief memorial written by him for the King shortly after, when Captain Cook was making his third voyage of discovery, the one from which he never returned. “Captain Cook,” Turgot said, “is probably on his way back to Europe. His expedition having no other object than the progress of human knowledge, and interesting, therefore, to all nations, it would be worthy of the King's magnanimity not to allow that the result be jeopardized by the chances of war.”
Orders should be given to all French naval officers “to abstain from any hostile act against him or his ship, and allow him to freely continue his navigation, and to treat him in every respect as the custom is to treat the officers and ships of neutral and friendly countries.”
The King assented and had our cruisers notified of the sort of sacred character which they would have to recognize in that ship of the enemy—a small fact in itself, but showing the difference between the wars in those days and in ours, when we have had to witness the wanton destruction of the Louvain library, the shelling of the Rheims cathedral, and the Arras town hall.
A fight not for recompense, but for liberty
An immense aspiration was growing in France for more equality, fewer privileges, simpler lives among the great, less hard ones among the lowly, more accessible knowledge, the free discussion by all of the common interests of all. A fact of deepest import struck the least attentive: French masses were becoming more and more thinking masses. One should not forget that between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the French one only six years elapsed; between the American and the French Constitutions but four years.
It was not, therefore, a statement of small import that Franklin had conveyed to Congress when he wrote from France: “The united bent of the nation is manifestly in our favor.” And he deplored elsewhere that some could think that an appeal to France's own interest was good policy:
“Telling them their commerce will be advantaged by our success, and that it is their interest to help us, seems as much as to say: ‘Help us and we shall not be obliged to you.’ Such indiscreet and improper language has been sometimes held here by some of our people and produced no good effect. The truth is,” he said also, that “this nation is fond of glory, particularly that of protecting the oppressed.”
The treaty of commerce, accompanying the treaty of alliance of 1778, had been in itself a justification of this judgment. Help from abroad was so pressingly needed in America that almost any advantages requested by France as a condition would have been granted; but that strange sight was seen: advantages being offered, unasked, by one party and declined by the other.
France decided at once not to accept anything as a recompense, not even Canada, if that were wrested from the English, in spite of Canada's having been French from the first and having but recently ceased to be such. The fight was not for recompense, but
