But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even a character. All that I intend is an introduction to Turgot’s prophetic words. When only twenty-three years of age, while still an ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne, the future minister delivered a discourse on the Progress of the Human Mind, in which, after describing the commercial triumphs of the ancient Phœnicians, covering the coasts of Greece and Asia with their colonies, he lets drop these remarkable words:--
“Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent à l’arbre que jusqu’à leur maturité: devenues suffisantes à elles-mêmes, elles firent ce que fit depuis Carthage,--_ce que fera un jour l’Amérique_.”
“Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until their maturity: when sufficient for themselves, they did that which Carthage afterwards did,--_that which some day America will do_.”[337]
On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de Nemours, the editor of Turgot’s works in 1808, remarks in a note:--
“It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty-three years old, and devoted in a seminary to the study of theology, divined, foresaw, the revolution which has formed the United States,--which has detached them from the European power apparently the most capable of retaining its colonies under its dominion.”
At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French possession; but his words are as applicable to this colony as to the United States. When will the fruit be ripe?
In contrast with this precise prediction, and yet in harmony with it, are the words of Montesquieu, in his ingenious work, which saw the light in 1748, two years before the discourse of Turgot. In the famous chapter, “How the laws contribute to form the manners, customs, and character of a nation,” we have a much-admired picture of “a free nation” “inhabiting an island,” where, without naming England, it is easy to recognize her greatness and glory. And here we meet a Delphic passage, also without a name, pointing to the British Colonies:--
“If this nation sent out colonies, it would do so more to extend its commerce than its dominion.
“As people like to establish elsewhere what is found established at home, it would give to the people of its colonies its own form of government; and this government carrying with it prosperity, _we should see great peoples formed in the very forests which it should send to inhabit_.”[338]