rganisation were as
distinctly pointed out by the economists as by the electors of the
National Assembly, twenty years later, and in nearly all things they
proposed the remedy. But they were persuaded that the only thing to
regenerate France was a convulsion which the national character would
make a dreadful one. They desired a large scheme of popular education,
because commands take no root in soil that is not prepared. Political
truths can be made so evident that the opinion of an instructed public
will be invincible, and will banish the abuse of power. To resist
oppression is to make a league with heaven, and all things are
oppressive that resist the natural order of freedom. For society
secures rights; it neither bestows nor restricts them. They are the
direct consequence of duties. As truth can only convince by the
exposure of errors and the defeat of objections, liberty is the
essential guard of truth. Society is founded, not on the will of man,
but on the nature of man and the will of God; and conformity to the
divinely appointed order is followed by inevitable reward. Relief of
those who suffer is the duty of all men, and the affair of all.

Such was the spirit of that remarkable group of men, especially of
Mercier de la Riviere, of whom Diderot said that he alone possessed
the true and everlasting secret of the security and the happiness of
empires. Turgot indeed had failed in office; but his reputation was
not diminished, and the power of his name exceeded all others at the
outbreak of the Revolution. His policy of employing the Crown to
reform the State was at once rejected in favour of other counsels; but
his influence may be traced in many acts of the Assembly, and on two
very memorable occasions it was not auspicious. It was a central dogma
of the party that land is the true source of wealth, or, as Asgill
said, that man deals in nothing but earth. When a great part of France
became national property, men were the more easily persuaded that land
can serve as the basis of public credit and of unlimited assignats.
According to a weighty opinion which we shall have to consider before
long, the parting of the ways in the Revolution was on the day when,
rejecting the example both of England and America, the French resolved
to institute a single undivided legislature. It was the Pennsylvanian
model and Voltaire had pronounced Pennsylvania the best government in
the world. Franklin gave the sanction of an oracle