“In the general union of the provinces among themselves I do not see a coalition, a fusion of all the parts, making but one body, one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregation of parts always too much separated, and preserving always a tendency to division, by the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions,—by the inequality of their actual forces,—still more by the inequality of their ulterior progress. It is only a copy of the Dutch Republic: but this Republic had not to fear, as the American Republic has, the possible enlargement of some of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported hitherto on the false basis of the very ancient and very vulgar policy: on the prejudice that nations and provinces, as bodies, can have interests other than that which individuals have to be free and to defend their property against brigands and conquerors; a pretended interest to carry on more commerce than others,—not to buy the merchandise of the foreigner, but to force the foreigner to consume their productions and their manufactures; a pretended interest to have a vaster territory, to acquire such or such a province, such or such an island, such or such a village; an interest to inspire fear in other nations; an interest to surpass them in the glory of arms, and in that of arts and sciences.”[343]
Among the evils to be overcome are, in the Southern Colonies, too great an inequality of fortunes, and especially the large number of black slaves, whose slavery is incompatible with a good political constitution, and who, even when restored to liberty, will cause embarrassment by forming two nations in the same State. In all the Colonies he deprecates prejudice, attachment to established forms, a habit of certain taxes, fear of those which it might be necessary to substitute, the vanity of the Colonies who deem themselves most powerful, and the wretched beginning of national pride. Happily he adds: “I think the Americans destined to aggrandizement, not by war, but by husbandry.”[344] And he then proceeds to his aspirations:—
“It is impossible not to desire earnestly that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the human race. They can become its model. They are to prove to the world, by the fact, that men can be free and tranquil, and can dispense with the chains of all kinds which the tyrants and charlatans of every cloth have pretended to impose under the pretext of the public good. They are to give the example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum which they open to all the oppressed of all nations is to console the earth. The facility thereby afforded for escape from a bad government will force the European governments to be just and enlightened. The rest of the world, little by little, will open their eyes to the nothingness of the illusions in which politicians have indulged. To this end it is necessary that America should guard against them, and should not again become, as your ministerial writers have so often repeated, an image of our Europe, a mass of divided powers, disputing about territory or commercial profits, and continually cementing the slavery of the peoples with their own blood.”[345]
After these admirable thoughts, so full of wisdom and prophecy, Turgot alludes to the impending war between France and England:—
“Our two nations are going to do each other reciprocally much evil, probably without either of them obtaining any real advantage. The increase of debts and charges and the ruin of a great many citizens will be, perhaps, the only result. England seems to me even nearer to this than France. If instead of this war you had been able to yield with good grace from the first moment,—if it had been given to policy to do in advance what infallibly it will be forced to do later,—if national opinion could have permitted your Government to anticipate events,—and, supposing that it had foreseen them, it had been able to consent at once to the independence of America without making war on anybody,—I firmly believe that your nation would have lost nothing by this change. It will lose now what it has already expended, and what it shall yet expend. It will experience for some time a great falling off in its commerce, great domestic disturbances, if it is forced to bankruptcy, and, whatever may happen, a great diminution of political influence abroad. But this last matter is of very small importance to the real welfare of a people; and I am not at all of the opinion of the Abbé Raynal in your motto.[346] I do not believe that this will make you a contemptible nation, and throw you into slavery. On the contrary, your troubles will perhaps have the effect of a necessary amputation; they are perhaps the only means of saving you from the gangrene of luxury and corruption. If in your agitations you could correct your Constitution by rendering the elections annual, by apportioning the right of representation in a manner more equal and more proportioned to the interests of those represented, you would gain from this revolution as much, perhaps, as America; for your liberty would remain to you, and with this and by this your other losses would be very speedily repaired.”[347]
Reading such words, the heart throbs and the pulse beats. Government inspired by such a spirit would become divine, nations would live at peace together, and people everywhere be happy.
HORACE WALPOLE, 1754, 1774, 1777, 1779.
Most unlike Turgot in character, but with something of the same spirit of prophecy, and associated in time, was Horace Walpole, youngest son of England’s remarkable Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. With the former, life was serious always, and human improvement the perpetual passion; with the latter, there was a constant desire for amusement, and the world was little more than a curious gimcrack.
Horace Walpole was born 5th October, 1717, and died 2d March, 1797, being at his death Earl of Orford. According to his birth he was a man of fashion; for a time a member of Parliament; a man of letters always. To his various talents he added an aggregation of miscellaneous tastes, of which his house at Strawberry Hill was an illustration,—being an elegant “Old Curiosity Shop,” with pictures, books, manuscripts, prints, armor, china, historic relics, and art in all its forms, which he had collected at no small outlay of time and money. Though aristocratic in life, he boasted that his principles were not monarchical. On the two sides of his bed were hung engravings of Magna Charta and the Sentence of Charles the First, the latter with the inscription “Major Charta.” Sleeping between two such memorials, he might be suspected of sympathy with America, although the aristocrat was never absent. His Memoirs, Journals, Anecdotes of Painting in England, and other works, are less famous than his multifarious correspondence, which is the best in English literature, and, according to French judgment, nearer than any other in our language to that of Madame de Sévigné, whom he never wearied in praising. It is free, easy, gossipy, historic, and spicy.
But I deal with him now only as a prophet. And I begin with his “Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second,” where we find the record that the Colonists were seeking independence. This occurs in his description of the Duke of Newcastle as Secretary of State for the Colonies, during the long Walpole administration. Illustrating what he calls the Duke’s “mercurial inattention,” he says: “It would not be credited what reams of papers, representations, memorials, petitions from that quarter of the world [the Colonies], lay mouldering and unopened in his office”; and then, showing the Duke’s ignorance, he narrates how, when it was hinted that there should be some defence for Annapolis, he replied, with evasive, lisping hurry: “Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended,—to be sure, Annapolis should be defended;—where is Annapolis?” But this negligence did not prevent him from exalting the prerogative of the Crown; and here the author says:—