The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent of the political messiah,[308] and he shared the extreme hopes of that great and virtuous man’s most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.[309] His sallies against the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted on hoping all things.
Contemple la brillante aurore Qui t’annonce enfin les beaux jours. Un nouveau monde est près d’éclore; Até disparaît pour toujours. Vois l’auguste philosophie, Chez toi si long temps poursuivie, Dicter ses triomphantes lois. ***** Je lui dis: ‘Ange tutélaire, Quels dieux répandent ces bienfaits?’ ‘C’est un seul homme.’[310]
When it proved that one man alone, ‘qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour faire le bien,’[311] was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May 1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never arose. ‘I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can never be other than pure bitterness.’[312]
The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It was the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime. The next great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began for all Europe.
The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved more violent than Voltaire’s feeble health could resist, and he died, probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to Chauvelin:—‘Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they will see fine things.’[313] A less sanguine tone marks the close of the apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of Turgot. ‘Ah, well,’ says Reason, ‘let us enjoy these glorious days; let us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our well.’[314] Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, content with the work of the day.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Œuvres, xxxv. p. 214.
[2] See Comte’s Philosophic Positive, v. 520.
[3] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in Les Economistes Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle, published by Guillaumin, 1851.
[4] ‘Je ne sais si, à tout prendre, et malgré les vices éclatants de quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clergé plus remarquable que le clergé catholique de France au moment où la Révolution l’a surpris, plus éclairé, plus national, moins retranché dans les seules vertus privées, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en meme temps de plus de foi: la persécution l’a bien montré’—De Tocqueville, Ancien Régime, liv. ii. c. 11.