CONDOECET: A BIOGRAPHY. 201 



self-love was alarmed. He is evidently far from coosidering this sup- 

 position of the public injurious to him as a man of letters. 



To such evidence as this would I call the attention of those who have 

 considered Condorcet's style wanting in eloquence and depth. 



In the society of d'Alembert our former confrere became a geometer. 

 Turgot in his turn inspired him with a taste for social economy. Their 

 ideas, their hopes, their sentiments became identical. It would really 

 be impossible to mention a single point in science upon which Turgot 

 and Condorcet differed, even in an almost imperceptible shade. They 

 were both persuaded that in matters of commerce " entire and absolute 

 liberty is the only law of utility and even justice." They believed that the 

 protection accorded "to one special branch of industry was detrimen- 

 tal to all ; * * * that the minute precautions with which legislators 

 deemed it necessary to load their regulations were the fruits of timidity 

 and ignorance, and without any compensation, the source of inconven- 

 ience, intolerable vexations, and real losses. 



Turgot and Condorcet were, if possible, still more closely united upon 

 the special question of commerce in grain. They maintained that 

 entire libert}^ in this commerce was of equal importance to owners, to 

 cultivators, to consumers, to employes ; that there was no other rem- 

 edy for the effects of local scarcity, no other means of reducing the mean 

 price and diminishing the rate of variations, a matter of still more import- 

 ance, for mean prices regulate the wages of the workmen. If, on 

 the one hand, these rigorous principles were a formal discouragement to 

 any yielding to disorderly clamors, or popular prejudices, on the other 

 hand the two economists proclaimed distinctly that in times of scarcity 

 the government ought to make provision for the poor. This relief 

 should not, however, be dispensed blindly, but should be the price of 

 work. 



Turgot and his friend professed the maxim that there exist for every 

 man certain natural privileges of which no lot in life can legitimately 

 deprive him. They considered among the most important of these the 

 right to dispose of his own intelligence, his own hands, and his own labor. 

 Our philosophers also advocated the abolition of a number of tedious 

 formalities, often absurd and always costly, which made the condition 

 of the workmen an odious slavery. If the mastership and the warden- 

 ship were the despair of artisans and city workmen, the statutes of 

 labor as severely affected the workmen of the rural districts. The 

 labor statutes condemned to work without wages men who were depend- 

 ent upon those very wages for their living. They allowed ])rodigality 

 in labor because this cost the royal treasury nothing. The form of the 

 requisitions, the hardness of the Ir.ws, the rigor of the penalties, added 

 humiliation to misery. Turgot and Condorcet were the most ardent 

 adversaries of this cruel servitude. 



The two philosophers were not men who become tolerant of crime 

 through seeing it constantly committed. The slave-trade excited their 



