amined
those archives a few years ago with this purpose among others
expressly in view.

An occasional letter, however, certainly did pass between them, for,
as Smith himself mentions in a letter which will appear in a
subsequent chapter, it was "by the particular favour of M. Turgot"
that he received the copy of the _Memoires concernant les
Impositions_, which he quotes so often in the _Wealth of Nations_.
This book was not printed when he was in France, and as it needed much
influence to get a copy of it, his was most probably got after Turgot
became Controller-General of the Finances in 1774. But in any case it
would involve the exchange of letters.

Smith, with all his admiration for Turgot, thought him too
simple-hearted for a practical statesman, too prone, as noble natures
often are, to underrate the selfishness, stupidity, and prejudice that
prevail in the world and resist the course of just and rational
reform. He described Turgot to Samuel Rogers as an excellent person,
very honest and well-meaning, but so unacquainted with the world and
human nature that it was a maxim with him, as he had himself told
David Hume, that whatever is right may be done.[167]

Smith would deny the name of statesman altogether to the politician
who did not make it his aim to establish the right, or, in other
words, had no public ideal; such a man is only "that crafty and
insidious animal vulgarly termed a statesman." But he insists that the
truly wise statesman in pressing his ideal must always practise
considerable accommodation. If he cannot carry the right he will not
disdain to ameliorate the wrong, but, "like Solon, when he cannot
establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the
best that the people can bear."[168] Turgot made too little account,
he thought, of the resisting power of vested interests and confirmed
habits. He was too optimist, and the peculiarity attaches to his
theoretical as well as his practical work. Smith himself was prone
rather to the contrary error of overrating the resisting power of
interests and prejudices. If Turgot was too sanguine when he told the
king that popular education would in ten years change the people past
all recognition, Smith was too incredulous when he despaired of the
ultimate realisation of slave emancipation and free trade; and under a
biographical aspect, it is curious to find the man who has spent his
life in the practical business of the world taking the