editious risings with a strong hand, they insisted
that he was in nefarious league with the corn-merchants and the bakers.
How was it that the people did not recognise the hand of a benefactor?
The answer is that they suspected the source of the new reforms too
virulently to judge them calmly. For half a century, as Condorcet says
pregnantly, they had been undergoing the evils of anarchy, while they
supposed that they were feeling those of despotism. The error was grave,
but it was natural, and one effect of it was to make every measure that
proceeded from the court odious. Hence, when the parlements took up
their judicial arms in defence of abuses and against reforms, the common
people took sides with them, for no better reason than that this was to
take sides against the king's government. Malesherbes in those days, and
good writers since, held that the only safe plan was to convoke the
States-General. They would at least have shared the responsibility with
the crown. Turgot rejected this opinion. By doctrine, no less than by
temperament, he disliked the control of a government by popular bodies.
Everything for the people, nothing by the people: this was the maxim of
the Economists, and Turgot held it in all its rigour. The royal
authority was the only instrument that he could bring himself to use.
Even if he could have counted on a Frederick or a Napoleon, the
instrument would hardly have served his purposes; as things were, it was
a broken reed, not a fine sword, that he had to his hand.

The National Assembly and the Convention went to work exactly in the
same stiff and absolute spirit as Turgot. They were just as little
disposed to gradual, moderate, and compromising ways as he. But with
them the absolute authority on which they leaned was real and most
potent; with him it was a shadow. We owe it to Turgot that the
experiment was complete: he proved that the monarchy of divine right was
incapable of reform.[45] As it has been sententiously expressed, 'The
part of the sages was now played out; room was now for the men of
destiny.'

[Footnote 45: Foncin's _Ministere de Turgot_, p. 574.]

If the repudiation of a popular assembly was the cardinal error in
Turgot's scheme of policy, there were other errors added. The
publication of Boncerf's attack on the feudal dues, with the undisguised
sanction of the minister, has been justly condemned as a grave
imprudence, and as involving a forgetfulness of the true principles