or the savage state
was the peculiar form assumed by emotional protests against the existing
system of the distribution of wealth. Turgot from first to last resisted
the whole spirit of such protests. In this letter, where he makes his
first approach to the subject, he insists on inequality of conditions,
as alike necessary and useful. It is necessary 'because men are not born
equal; because their strength, their intelligence, their passions, would
be perpetually overthrowing that momentous equilibrium among them, which
the laws might have established.'

'What would society be without this inequality of conditions? Each
individual would be reduced to mere necessaries, or rather there would
be very many to whom mere necessaries would be by no means assured. Men
cannot labour without implements and without the means of subsistence,
until the gathering in of the produce. Those who have not had
intelligence enough, or any opportunity to acquire these things, have no
right to take them away from one who has earned and deserved them by his
labour. If the idle and ignorant were to despoil the industrious and the
skilful, all works would be discouraged, and misery would become
universal. It is alike more just and more useful that all those who have
fallen behind either in wit or in good fortune, should lend their right
arms to those who know how best to employ them, who can pay them a wage
in advance, and guarantee them a share in the future profits.... There
is no injustice in this, that a man who has discovered a productive kind
of work, and who has supplied his assistants with sustenance and the
necessary implements, who for this has only made free contracts with
them, should keep back the larger part, and that as payment for his
advances he should have less toil and more leisure. It is this leisure
which gives him a better chance of revolving schemes, and still further
increasing his lights; and what he can economise from his share of the
produce, which is with entire equity a larger share, augments his
capital, and adds to his power of entering into new undertakings....

'What would become of society, if things were not so, and if each person
tilled his own little plot? He would also have to build his own house,
and make his own clothes. What would the people live upon, who dwell in
lands that produce no wheat? Who would transport the productions of one
country to another country? The humblest peasant enjoys a multitude of