ever agree with Turgot that the excellence of Monarchy consisted in the power it possessed of changing the laws without regard to popular prejudices; believing that the ulterior evils which spring from all summary exercises of power, outweigh the immediate advantages of the reforms so carried;[1] nor could he with Turgot consent to regard an armed foreign intervention as in the abstract ever justifiable. A country which is oppressed would, he thought, be the better for righting herself, and working out her own political salvation; England had done without foreign assistance against George III., and America, he considered, might have dispensed with the aid of France. Under the influences of these sentiments he proposed to establish a newspaper called the Neutralist, which should be above party, and devoted to the advocacy of free trade doctrines; and he begged Price to abandon his theological wrangles, and leaving the Doctors of Divinity and the Archbishops "to die by their own hands," to devote the rest of his life to crying down war and preaching up peace. If sovereigns, he said, are offended with each other, let them fight single-handed without involving the people in their silly quarrels; kings had different interests, but the people throughout the world had but one interest, if properly understood. The rights of neutrals, contrary to the views he had formerly held, he wished to see carried to the furthest point possible. To the mere introduction of the principle of Free Ships, Free Goods, he indeed objected, and stated as much in Parliament during the discussion of the French Treaty. In his opinion it went either too far or not far enough. If war were declared, the English carrying trade, likely under free trade principles to be the greatest of the world, would, he foresaw, be at once transferred to neutral flags; while the country would at the same time be deprived of those advantages which as a belligerent she had enjoyed under the old rule of the Consolato del Mare. He therefore regretted that Pitt in his French Treaty had
- ↑ See the remarks of De Tocqueville, Ancien Régime, ii., xv., on the views of the French economists of the time on the subject of liberty, and Comte, Positive Philosophy, ii. 72.
