Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/14

 were added, "And this as the price of the original agricultural advances, by which they have brought these soils into a condition to be cultivated, and which, so to speak, are incorporated with the soil" ("Et cela pour prix des avances foncières par les quelles ils ont mis ces terreins en état d'être cultivées, et qui se sont pour ainsi dire incorporées au sol même"). Out of Turgot's one section (xxi) on cultivation by slaves. Du Pont made three; his additions (more than equal in extent to Turgot's own text) not only emphasizing the moral evil of slavery, but also maintaining that slave labour was unprofitable even to the masters: and from the heading and opening sentences of § lv Du Pont omitted altogether the enumeration of slaves among moveable riches. Turgot was exceedingly annoyed (see Appendix, Excerpts 7, 8); and remonstrated in time to prevent the third instalment from being tampered with. But Du Pont could not allow Turgot's language in § lxxviii, about saving ("l'épargne") as the source of capital, to pass uncriticised; and accordingly he appended a long note, urging that "the formation of capitals arises much less from saving out of the expenditure of revenues than from the wise employment of the expenditure" (see Appendix, Excerpt 9), and added one or two other fussy notes. Throughout he touched-up the style in minute points.

Turgot insisted that in the separate issue of the Reflections which was about to be made, the text should be corrected, and an erratum inserted drawn up by himself. This was done; but according to M. Schelle only 100 or 150 copies were struck off, and scarcely one has survived. A corrected reprint, issued in 1788, is equally rare. Strangest of all is the fact that when, in 1808, Du Pont edited Turgot's Œuvres, he boldly reprinted his old text of the