This is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of
Diderot. That of the second is in the letter which follows: "The
learned man (a name given in a joke by Grimm to the son of Madam
d'Epinay) must have informed you there were upon the rampart twenty
poor persons who were dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for
the farthing you customarily gave them. This is a specimen of our
little babbling.... And if you understand the rest it would amuse you
perhap."
My answer to this terrible argument, of which Diderot seemed so
proud, was in the following words:
"I think I answered the learned man; that is, the farmer-general,
that I did not pity the poor whom he had seen upon the rampart,
waiting for my farthing; that he had probably amply made it up to
them; that I appointed him my substitute, that the poor of Paris would
have reason to complain of the change; and that I should not easily
find so good a one for the poor of Montmorency, who were in much
greater need of assistance. Here is a good and respectable old man,
who, after having worked hard all his lifetime, no longer being able
to continue his labors, is in his old days dying with hunger. My
conscience is more satisfied with the two sols I give him every
Monday, than with the hundred farthings I should have distributed
amongst all the beggars on the rampart. You are pleasant men, you
philosophers, while you consider the inhabitants of cities as the only
persons whom you ought to befriend.
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