Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/139

112 avances foncières are the principle of property. . . . It is this alteration which has given me most annoyance.

. . . I will content myself with simply telling you this: that no one can argue from what I have said that slavery was good for any society, even in its infancy. As to individuals who have slaves, that is another matter. I should be glad to think you are right in maintaining that slavery is for no one's advantage, for it is an abominable and barbarous injustice; but I very much fear that you are mistaken, and that this injustice may sometimes be useful to the man that perpetrates it. . ..

To suppose that saving and hoarding are synonymous, what a confusion of ideas, or rather of language! and that to cover certain mistaken expressions which fell from the good doctor in his earlier writings. Oh, this sectarian spirit!

I see you take care in your prospectus not to offend your economists by a declaration of your views; and in this I commend your prudence. But I hope in your work you will batter them, crush them, pound them, reduce them to dust and ashes! The fact is they are the most fanciful and arrogant set of men to be found nowadays, since the destruction of the Sorbonne. . . . I ask myself with amazement what can have induced our friend M. Turgot to join them.