at
he believed to be false, and the proscription as falsehoods of what he
believed to be true. The horror and disgrace of such a situation were
too striking for one who used his mind and acted on principle, to run
any risk of that situation becoming his own. An ambitious timeserver
like Lomenie, or a contented adherent of use and wont like Morellet,
might well regard such considerations as the products of a weak and
eccentric scrupulosity. Turgot was of other calibre, holding it to be
only a degree less unprincipled than the avowed selfishness of the
adventurer, to contract so serious an engagement on the strength of
common hearsay and current usage, without deliberate personal reflection
and inquiry.

At the close of his course at the Sorbonne, he wrote a letter to his
father giving the reasons for this resolution to abandon all idea of an
ecclesiastical career and the advancement which it offered him, and
seeking his consent for the change from Church to law. His father
approved of the resolution, and gave the required consent. As Turgot had
studied law as well as theology, no time was lost, and he formally
entered the profession of the law as Deputy-Counsellor of the
Procureur-General at the beginning of 1752.

His college friends had remonstrated warmly at this surrender of a
brilliant prospect. A little deputation of young abbes, fresh from their
vows, waited on him at his rooms; in that humour of blithe and sagacious
good-will which comes so naturally to men who believe they have just
found out Fortune's trick and yoked her fast for ever to the car, they
declared that he was about to do something opposed to his own interest
and inconsistent with his usual good sense. He was a younger son of a
Norman house, and therefore poor; the law without a competency involved
no consideration, and he could hope for no advancement in it: whereas in
the Church his family, being possessed of influence and credit, would
have no difficulty in procuring for him excellent abbeys and in good
time a rich bishopric; here he could realise all his fine dreams of
administration, and without ceasing to be a churchman could play the
statesman to his heart's content. In one profession he would waste his
genius in arguing trifling private affairs, while in the other he would
be of the highest usefulness to his country, and would acquire the
greatest reputation. Turgot, however, insisted on placing genius and
reputation below the necessity of