I hope that time may not justify me, and that your reign may be as happy and as tranquil, for yourself and your people, as they flattered themselves it would be, in accordance with your principles of justice and beneficence." Useless wishes, belied in advance by the previsions of M.Turgot himself.
He had espied the danger and sounded some of the chasms just yawning beneath the feet of the nation as well as of the king; he committed the noble error of believing in the instant and supreme influence of justice and reason.

"Sir," said he to Louis XVI., "you ought to govern, like God, by general laws." Had he been longer in power, M.Turgot would still have failed in his designs.

The life of one man was too short, and the hand of one man too weak to modify the course of events, fruit slowly ripened during so many centuries.

It was to the honor of M.Turgot that he discerned the mischief and would fain have applied the proper remedy.
He was often mistaken about the means, oftener still about the strength he had at disposal.

He had the good fortune to die early, still sad and anxious about the fate of his country, without having been a witness of the catastrophes he had foreseen and of the sufferings as well as wreckage through which France must pass before touching at the haven he would fain have opened to her.
The joy of the courtiers was great, at Versailles, when the news arrived of M.Turgot's fall; the public regretted it but little: the inflexible severity of his principles which he never veiled by grace of manners, a certain disquietude occasioned by the chimerical views which were attributed to him, had alienated many people from him.