THE GREAT FRENCH WRITERS

TURGOT

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MONTESQUIEU  By Albert Sorel.
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Ci)e Oreat iFienci) canters

TURGOT Bv LEON SAY
OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
TRANSLATED BY
MELVILLE B. ANDERSON
TRANSLATOR OF HUGO'S " SHAKESPEARE "

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1888

Copyright
By A. C. McClurg and Company

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Note upon Turgot's Works  7
Introduction : Brief Review of Life, Character,
Influence  9
CHAPTER I.
His Family, 16. — Youth and Education, 20. — The Sor
bonne, 24. CHAPTER II.
Leaves the Sorbonne, 30. — Appointed Master of Requests,
34. — Associates with the Philosophers and the Econo
mists, 36. — Writes for the " Encyclopaedia," 42.
CHAPTER III.
Quesnay and Gournay, 45. — The Physiocrats, 46. — Turgot's
Economic Doctrine, 48. — Essay on " The Formation and
Distribution of Wealth," 48. — Eulogy of Gournay, 64.
CHAPTER IV.
I. Intendant of Limoges, 70. — The Cadastre, 74. — II.
Loans of Money, and Usury, 79. — III. Letters on Free
Trade in Grain, 89.

vi Table of Contents.

CHAPTER v.
I. Minister of Finance, 99. — II. Free Trade in Grain, 108.
— III. The Bread Riots, 126.— IV. Recall of the Parlia
ments, 132. CHAPTER VI.
I. Preparation of the Great Edicts of 1776, 139. — II. Aba
lition of the Corvee, 144. — III. Suppression of Trade.
Guilds ; Freedom of Labor, 161. — IV. The Bed of
Justice, 167. CHAPTER VII.
Increasing Difficulties, 175. — Resignation of Malesherbes,
179. — Secret Letters to the King, 180. — Turgot's Dis
missal, 191. — Retirement, 192. — Death, 198.

CHAPTER VIII.
Economic and Political Reaction after Turgot's Death,
200. — Definitive Triumph in 1789, 206. — New Reactions
under the Empire, the Restoration, and the Republic of
February (1848), 210.

CHAPTER IX.
Radical Socialist School, 215. — Catholic Economic School,
216. — Conclusion: Difficulty of Reconciling the Prin
ciple of Freedom of Labor with that of Freedom of
Association, 217.

Index . 223

NOTE UPON TURGOT'S WORKS.

A part only of Turgot's works appeared during his
lifetime. Among these are his
" Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des ri-
chesses " (1766, i2mo), and his poem, of which but
a few copies were printed for private distribution
only ;
" Didon, poeme en vers me"triques hexametres, divisel
en III. chants, traduits du IV" livre de l'Ene"ide de
Virgile, avec le commencement de l'Ene'ide et les
II", VIII", et X" eglogues du meme" (par Anne-
Robert-Jacques Turgot). 1778. 4to, pp. 108. (Re
produced in the edition of the works published by
Dupont de Nemours.)
Turgot's works were collected after his death, —
" OZuvres de M. Turgot, ministre d'Etat, pre'ce'de'es et
accompagnees de me"moires et de notes sur sa vie,
son administration et ses ouvrages " (with this epi
graph : " Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum
libenter." Tacitus). 9 vols., 8vo. Paris : printed
by A. Belin. 1809-1811.
" Giuvres de Turgot, nouvelle Edition classed par ordre
de matieres, avec les notes de M. Dupont de Ne
mours, augmented de lettres inddites, des questions

8 Note upon Turgot's Works.
sur le commerce et d'observations et de notes nou-
velles par MM. Eugfene Daire et Hippolyte Dussard
et pre'ce'de'e d'une notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de
Turgot, par M. Eugene Daire." 2 vols., large 8vo.
Paris : Guillaumin. 1844.
Portions of Turgot's correspondence are found in
various publications, especially in the following : —
" Correspondance ine"dite de Condorcet et de Turgot,
1770-1779." Edited by Ch. Henry. 1 vol., 8vo.
Paris: Charavay. 1882.
" Life and Correspondence of David Hume." Edited
by John Hill Burton. 2 vols., 8vo. Edinburgh :
William Tait. 1846.
" Letters of Eminent Persons addressed to David
Hume." Edited by John Hill Burton. 8vo. Edin
burgh and London : Blackwood. 1849.
There exist unpublished letters from Turgot in the
archives of several families, particularly in those of
the Turgot family (at Lantheuil Castle), and among
the descendants of Dupont de Nemours, who are
settled in the United States.

TURGOT.

INTRODUCTION.
MUCH has been written about Turgot.
We have been told the story of his
childhood, of his youth, of his manhood. We
have seen him as a timid child hiding under the
furniture to avoid the scrutiny of his mother's
visitors ; and later, as a young man in a cas
sock, playing at shuttlecock with Minette, the
beautiful maiden who was soon to become
Madame Helvetius. The dissertations read
by him as Prior of the Sorbonne, at the open
ing and at the closing of the session of 1750,
have been preserved. We know the reasons
that prompted him to renounce the priest
hood, and we have seen him holding offices
in the magistracy, first as Deputy-Counsellor
of the Attorney-General, next as Counsellor in
the Parliament of Paris, then as Master of Re
quests. We have witnessed his first breach
with the Parliament, on that day in 1754 when

10 Turgot.
he accepted a seat in a Royal Chamber em-.
powered to judge in the place of the exiled
Parliament. We can recall the sayings of his delighted
friends at the time of his appointment as
Intendant of Limoges, and we know the .
hope that appointment awakened in Voltaire's
breast: " One of the brethren has just written
me that an intendant is good only for evil ; I
am sure you will show that he can do great
good." At Limoges he remained thirteen years, and
during the twenty-five years elapsing between
his admission to the Sorbonne and his depart
ure from Limoges he did not cease to be the,
idol of the economists and of the Encyclo
pedists. He became acquainted, successively,
with Quesnay, Gournay, Dupont de Nemours,
Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, Condorcet. His
correspondence is very extensive. He was a
leader among men; and, what though the
Duke de Choiseul could say of him in 1769
that he had not " a ministerial head," his
masters, his friends, his disciples, even then
deemed him the only minister capable of regu
lating the administration and the finances of
the tottering monarchy.
A collection has been made of his letters,
his plans, his memoirs, his opinions, his de-

Introduction.

n

cisions, his circulars, his reports, — of every
thing he wrote during the first part of his
life. He can be followed almost day by day
in the fulfilment of the various official duties
with which he was intrusted between 1750
and 1774.
Finally, at the age of forty-seven years,
prepared by a life of reflection, of study, of
administrative experience, he is made a Min
ister. He is ready to carry out the widest
and the most fruitful plans of reform. He re
establishes the freedom of the grain trade, and
by this measure, justifiable as it was, he arouses
the popular wrath. To the surprise of many
he outrides the storm of the Bread Riots,1 and
completes his work by proclaiming freedom
of labor. The abolition of the exclusive in
dustrial corporations, or trade-guilds,2 was the
crowning act of his life, and his economical
testament. We have his memorials to the king, his
notes, his drafts of the decrees of the Council,
the preambles which he prefixed to his minis
terial edicts. We know the slightest details of
all that he thought, wrote, and did, during an
administration of twenty months, which, brief
as it was, is wonderful for its fulness and excel-
1 La guerre des farines.
2 Les jurandes et les maitrises.

1 2 Turgot.
lence. He succumbs after a vigorous struggle,
overcome by the coalition of interests and
prejudices, or, as Voltaire puts it, " of finan
ciers, red-heels, and bigwigs," and his biogra
phers indulge in interminable discussions about
the causes of his failure.
His fall is attributed to his undertaking too
much at once, to his want of flexibility of
character, to his being animated by a spirit of
sect; and writers endeavor to ascertain the
qualities of a successful statesman which he
lacked. In order the better to understand
him, they follow him into retirement, where
they find him occupied with scientific experi
ments and with the exercises in prosody which
interested him from early youth.
At last, at the age of fifty-four years, he dies
of gout, which had not ceased to rack him for
more than twenty years, — a hereditary malady
that caused him to reply to Malesherbes, who
was reproaching him with too great haste :
"What would you have me do? The needs
of the people are enormous, and in my family
we die of gout at fifty.''
For all those who have told the story of his
life and have piously collected his slightest
words and writings, Turgot is a great mind, —
the greatest, perhaps, after Montesquieu, in
the eighteenth century; but they all look

Introduction. 1 3
upon him as an unlucky reformer who sank
miserably under the blows of adversaries less
strong, indeed, but surely better advised than
he, — men who were far from being eager to
know and apply great economic truths, but
thoroughly trained to pull all the wires of
profitable court intrigue.
All those who have lived most with Turgot,
and have never ceased to love and admire
him, repeat with one voice : " Turgot had not
the qualities that assure success." I would
draw from his life-work a very different con
clusion, and would treat him, not as defeated,
but as victorious. For if he failed in the
eighteenth century, he has prevailed in the
nineteenth. He is the founder of our present
political economy, and, by the freedom of
labor which he bequeathed us, he has stamped
our century with its most distinctive mark.
Thanks to freedom of labor, the nineteenth
is the century of industry on the grand scale,
of the application of great scientific, geographi
cal, economic discoveries to the development '
of labor and wealth. By deeply imbuing the
French and European consciousness with the
principles "of free labor, Turgot prepared the
way for the conquest of the world by Occi
dental civilization, and it is the nineteentli j
century that has effected this conquest

14 Turgot.
It is a remarkable sign of the personal influ
ence of Turgot upon the activity of our cen
tury, that his inspiration seems to this day
needed to animate the principles he enun
ciated. In order to prevent the century from
deviating from the path Turgot marked out
for it, we are compelled to cling more firmly
than ever to his person, to his life, to his acts,
and to invoke his help in struggles very similar
to those he sustained almost a century and a
quarter ago.
Freedom of labor, which was for him the
beginning and the end of all economic laws,
is to-day the object of the sharpest attacks.
It is no longer the privileged, the wealthy, the
magistracy, the classes formerly termed ruling,
that combine, as once they did against Turgot.-
The present reaction against him is found
among the workingmen, among the sons of
those who seemed intoxicated with delight
when his edict went forth abolishing the exclu
sive industrial corporations. The workingmen
are seeking to load themselves again with
their broken fetters, thinking to find protec
tion in what was formerly — though they
have forgotten this — the instrument of their
oppression. The nineteenth is the true century of Tur
got, because it is that in which his ideas have

Introduction. 1 5
been applied, and in which he has borne mani
fest sway over minds and over things. Is it to
be the only century in which his principles
shall receive so salutary a vindication? Will
the coming century burn what we have adored?
There is no lack of gloomy prophets who
menace us with this ; but their prognostica
tions will not be fulfilled. Turgot has entered
into his glory; he has entered into it for all
time, and the French political economy, of
which he is the real founder, has nailed its
flag to the mast.

CHAPTER I.
HIS FAMILY. — CHILDHOOD. — EDUCATION. —
THE SORBONNE.
TURGOT'S family was one of the most
ancient of Normandy, and Condorcet
asserts that the name, in the language of the
old Northmen, meant " Thor-God." The fam
ily was divided, in the sixteenth century, into
two branches, — the Turgots of Tourailles and
the Turgots of Saint-Clair. Their common
ancestor, Louis Turgot, had been Master of
Requests under Francis, Duke of Alencon,
and counsellor in the Supreme Court of Caen.
His eldest son, John, was the first Turgot of
Tourailles, and his second son, Antony, the
first Turgot of Saint-Clair.
In 162 1 a Turgot of Tourailles had an en
counter with a certain Montchretien ; and sin
gularly enough this passage at arms connected
for the first time the name of Turgot with that
of the science it was to illustrate. Montchre
tien, the son of a Falaise apothecary, a tragic

His Family. iy
playwright, and a soldier of adventure, was in
trusted, by the chiefs of the Protestant party
at the time of the insurrection of La Rochelle,
with the task of rallying the Protestants of
Normandy. In a letter written from Caen on
the 14th of October, 162 1, Malherbe thus re
lates the upshot of this expedition.
" The rebellion in Normandy was check
mated by the death of a certain Montchretien,
the organizer of the whole affair. Accom
panied by six others of the same class, he
came, about a week ago, at eight o'clock in
the evening, to the hostelry of a place called
Les Tourailles, some twelve leagues from here.
Word was immediately sent to the lord of /the
place, who forthwith appeared with fifteen or
twenty musketeers." The band was destroyed,
and the lord of Tourailles, who slew its chief,
was named Claude Turgot.
Now this Montchretien who was slain by
a Turgot had written not merely tragedies,
but a book of remarkable sagacity upon
trade and manufactures ; and this book, dated
1615, bears the then absolutely unique title of
" Treatise of Political Economy." Never be
fore had this term been employed in the French
language to designate the economic science;
and the man who first employed it was slain
by the hand of an ancestor of the precursor of

1 8 Turgot.
J. B. Say in France, and of Adam Smith in
England. The grandfather of the great Turgot was
descended from Antony Turgot, of Saint-Clair,
but belonged to a younger branch of the fam
ily. He had been Intendant of the Generality
of Metz and of that of Tours. The great Tur
got's father, Michael Etienne, was successively
Master of Requests, Provost of the Merchants
of Paris, member of the Academy of Inscrip
tions and Belles-lettres, Councillor of State,
and President of the Grand Council. Among
his maternal ancestors he counted the famous
jurisconsult Pierre Pithou, and of all his an
cestors he was proudest of this one. He
gained just celebrity as Provost of the Mer
chants. He undertook to drain the marshy
quarters of Paris, extending from the boule
vards to Montmartre, and constructed an im
mense sewer, to which his name was attached,
and which still exists, in part, under Saint-
Lazare Street. To Michael Etienne Turgot is
due one of the finest plans * for the defence of
Paris which have been made, and this also bears
his name. It was at his initiative that the Gre
nelle Street fountain was erected by Bouchar-
don, to whom he intrusted its execution.
After resigning his post as Provost of the
Merchants, he found himself able to devote to
1 Plans cavaliers.

His Family. ig
his private affairs a part of the leisure left him
from his duties as a Councillor of State. His
ancestral estates were situated between Caen,
Falaise, Bayeux, and the sea, in that part of
Normandy which to-day forms the Department
of Calvados. In his honor these domains were
erected into a marquisate bearing the name
of Soumont. Long afterward, in memory of
the great Minister, the Marquis of Soumont
was authorized to bear the title of Marquis
Turgot. The Provost of the Merchants resided not at
Soumont but at Bons, — Bons-Turgot, as Du
pont de Nemours terms it, — a little commune
not far from Soumont. Among his estates,
farms, and grazing-lands were those of Laulne
and of Brucourt, of which our Turgot bore
the name. At the Sorbonne he was called the
Abbe de Laulne ; and upon leaving that seat
of learning he assumed the name of Turgot of
Brucourt. Lantheuil Castle, the cradle of the family,
situated near Bons, was then in the hands of
the elder branch, the Turgots of Saint-Clair, but
was afterward annexed to the marquisate. The
present Marquis Turgot has collected the fam
ily archives at Lantheuil Castle. To these he
has kindly given me access. I have held in
my hands the first draft of the letter of the

20 . Turgot.
24th of August, 1774, addressed by the great
Turgot to the king, in order, as the writer says,
to place before His Majesty's eyes the engage
ment His Majesty has made to support his
minister in the execution of the latter's plans
of economy. The note is written off-hand, with
some erasures. It seemed to me I heard the
firm thrilling tones of the great man, — those
tones so gentle to his friends, so harsh to his
opponents. In these same archives I found nu
merous traces of the examination of the papers
made after Turgot's death by Malesherbes, for
the purpose of obtaining the notes, documents,
and manuscripts to be published by Dupont
de Nemours as the first edition of Turgot's
works. On the 1st of February, 1751, the Provost
of the Merchants died, leaving three sons and
a daughter. The eldest son rose to the bench,
and died as Chief-Justice of the Parliament of
Paris ; the second son, known as Chevalier
Turgot, was scholar, governor, soldier, — for a
time he governed Guiana; the third son was
the great Turgot. The daughter had married
the Duke de Saint-Aignan.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot was born in
Paris on the 10th of May, 1727. As a boy]
he was studious, shy, and awkward; and his
youthful timidity never quite forsook him. He

Childhood.

21

said one day to King j^iis XVI., " My words
are somewhat confuseaBjTO I am ill at ease."
" I am aware that you are shy," replied the
king. He was educated at the College of Louis the
Great and at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice.
As early as 1743. at the age of sixteen, we find
him attending the lectures of the Faculty of
Theology ; and in 1746, on account of his
youth, a special dispensation was necessary
before he could be admitted to the examina
tions. This dispensation was granted him by
the Faculty " in consideration of the very po
tent recommendation of the King, and also in
memory of the services rendered during his
administration by M. Turgot's illustrious father
to the City of Paris and to the various depart
ments of the Faculty itself."
This dispensation is dated October 1, 1746.
Six months later, on the 11th of March, 1747,
the Provost of the Merchants, writing to his
second son, the Chevalier, then at Malta, re
ports that the young Abb6 had sustained his
baccalaureate thesis with signal success. He
wrote : —
"Your brother the Abbe has sustained his thesis
with all possible distinction, wholly surpassing my ex
pectations ; for he exhibited not the least trepidation,
and won the applause of all. He spoke in the im-

2 2 Turgot.
mense hall of the outer Sorbonne ; it was admirably
furnished and lighted, and, large as it is, was full of
listeners during the whole five hours' discussion.
" The Archbishop of Tours presided. The Assem
bly of the Clergy, at present in session at Paris, of
which he is also the chairman, came in a body to
hear this thesis. My lord the Archbishop of Paris
was there in full canonicals. His surpliced cross-
bearer held the cross at the door of his coach, came
before him into the hall, and sat in front of him upon
a footstool, bearing the great and beautiful archiepis-
copal cross of gilded silver. After the Archbishop's
departure, the Pope's Nuncio came in and remained
above an hour and a half. On going out he remarked
to the Abbe, and to the doctors of the Sorbonne who
accompanied him, and to your brother, and to M. de
Creil, that he had been present on many such occa
sions, but that he had never heard a thesis sustained
with so much ability.
" The Archbishop of Tours descended from his
chair and embraced the Abbe, assuring him that he
had acquitted himself eminently well. The next day,
the Archbishop being at Versailles, the king asked
him if he had attended the Assembly of the Clergy
on the day before. He answered no ; that he had
presided at the discussion of a thesis. The king in
quired who sustained the thesis, and was informed
that it was the Abbe Turgot. To the king's further
inquiry whether the Abbe had sustained it well, the
Archbishop was good enough to reply that he had
never heard a thesis sustained with equal distinc-

First Economic Paper. 23
tion, and added, 'Your Majesty has no greater or
better subject than the Abbe Turgot. All this is ex
ceedingly flattering to us, and it must give you equal
pleasure."

Two years later, on the 7th of April, 1749,
young Turgot composed the first economic
paper that has come down to us from him. It
is in'the form of a letter written from the Semi
nary to his fellow-student, the Abbe de Cice.
Its aim is to refute Law's system, which had
been published twenty years before by the
Abbe Terrasson.
According to Turgot, metallic money is not
a mere sign. " As a species of merchandise,"
said he, " money is, not the sign, but the com
mon measure, of other kinds of merchandise."
In refuting the widespread notion that metallic
coin is a mere token deriving its value from
the royal stamp, Turgot made short work of
the visionaries who then thought, as they
thought later during the Revolution, and as
many still think, that the state can defray pub
lic expenses by issuing irredeemable bills trans
formed by law into compulsory currency.
"The king," said he, "would gain a mere
temporary relief by the issuing of bills, — or
rather by their multiplication, — for this relief
would cease as soon as commodities began to

24 ' Turgot.
increase in price in proportion to the number
of the bills." " If forty years later," comments
Dupont de Nemours, " the majority of the citi
zens composing the Constituent Assembly had
possessed as much knowledge of the subject as
Turgot so early exhibited, France might have
been spared the Assignats."
Early in June, 1749, the young Abbe de
Laulne was admitted to the House of the Sor
bonne to take his final degrees. The House of
the Sorbonne was an association formed for
the purpose of attending the lectures and exer
cises of the Faculty of Theology. The society
was made up of about one hundred ecclesias
tics, — bishops, vicars-general, canons, priests
of Paris and of the principal cities of the king
dom. Their great House, which still exists as
the Sorbonne, contained thirty-six apartments,
with a chapel, a valuable library, and a garden.
The servants were employed by the society,
and^the members dined together. As many of
the members lived elsewhere, a certain number
of apartments were allotted to a half-score of
students, and one of these students was the son
of the Provost of the Merchants.
The master's degree, for which he was pre
paring, required a certain number of theses :
first, the Tentative for the bachelor's degree,
which Turgot had already attained ; then the

The Sorbonne. 25
Minor, the Sorbonical, and the Major. On the
last day of December, 1749, six months after
his admission to the Sorbonne, he was elected
Prior. The priorship was an honor rendered
to distinguished young men, and to the sons of
illustrious parents. The Prior was the chair
man of the assemblies, where it was his privi
lege and his duty to pronounce discourses in
Latin, usually tfpon religious subjects. Turgot
presided for the first time on the 16th of May,
1750, when the Abbe Morellet, who was to be
come his life-long friend and his passionate
admirer, was admitted to take his final exami
nations ; and again on the 13th of August, when
Morellet was made a fellow of the society.
Thus, from 1743 to 1750, Turgot had un
remittingly pursued theological studies ; and
these studies, with the exercises which formed
their necessary complement, had ripened his
mind to a very remarkable degree. " In order
to win distinction in theological exercises," says
Morellet, " some talent was requisite, and some
adroitness in singling out and answering objec
tions. Turgot often used to say, smilingly,
' My dear Abbe, it is only we who have dis
puted for the master's degree who know what
it is to reason exactly.' "
Turgot read two Latin dissertations, one at
the opening and the other at the close of the

26 Turgot.
session of 1750. The first of these was upon
" The Advantages that the Establishment of
Christianity has conferred upon the Human
Race." It is a rhetorical exercise, though a re
markable one, resembling one of those excel
lent Latin discourses that were crowned in this
same Sorbonne but a few years since, in con
nection with the General Competition between
the colleges of Paris. Writing to his brother
the Chevalier, on the 30th of July, 1750, Turgot
says : " I have had a Latin discourse to make,
which I pronounced on the 3d of July with a
success most flattering to me. At present I
have some four minors a week, with twelve
arguments, and on the 27th of November I am
to pronounce a second discourse, with which I
am even now occupied." And his father, writ
ing to the Chevalier under date of October 23,
said : " I have told you of the wonderful success
of the Abbe's speech last July ; he is to pro
nounce another on the 27th of next month."
The Abbe's success in November was more
splendid than in July.
The latter discourse is much more important
than the former ; it deals with " The Successive
Advances of the Human Mind." It is a pic
ture of universal history drawn with great talent,
full of reflections surprisingly ripe for a man
of his age, marked by great freedom of thought,

Experiments in Prosody. 27
and permeated with an extremely warm feeling
of human perfectibility. It contains, touching
ancient colonies, this oft-quoted expression,
written a quarter of a century before the
American Declaration of Independence : " Colo
nies are like fruit, which clings to the tree only-,
until it grows ripe. Becoming self-sufficient,
they did what Carthage afterward did, what
America will sometime do."
At this time Turgot busied himself much
with translations from the Latin, thinking that
some of the rules of Greek and Latin versifica
tion might advantageously be employed in the
French language. He wished to see the alter
nation of long and short syllables introduced
into French poetry, in order to produce upon
the delicate and practised ear something of the
effect of antique melody. The search for this
new prosody was one of Turgot's most constant
diversions, to which he returned whenever his
engagements permitted it. One of his achieve
ments is a translation of the entire Fourth
Book of* the ,/Eneid into unrhymed French
hexameter verses.
He assumed, as a writer of verse, the name
of the Abbe de Laage, and sent his verses,
under this pseudonym, to Voltaire, requesting
his opinion. As one may imagine, Voltaire
made no haste to read the efforts of an un-

28 Turgot.
known abbe. Pressed, however, by renewed
letters he finally replied as follows : —
" I have received the letter dated Paris, the
28th of April,1 and have not received that
from Genoa. I am full of regard for the Abbe
de Laage, and thank him for his kind remem
brance. But being an old man harassed by
disease and almost completely blind, I am
hardly in a condition to enter upon literary
discussions. All that I can say is that I have
been extremely well pleased with what I have
read, it being the only spirited prose version
I have seen."
The pretended Abbe de Laage was much
mortified that the great poet should have
taken his verses for prose, and wrote to his
intimate friend Caillard that " the man has
either disdained to guess, or does not care
to express himself; " and passing to a sub
ject in political economy, he adds : " I am no
more surprised to see this great poet reason
ill about political economy than about physics
or natural history; reasoning has never been
his strong side." 2
If Turgot had no success in French versifi
cation, it was his fortune to compose a Latin
1 1770. See Morley's " Voltaire," p. 335. — Tr.
2 It is thought best to omit the specimen, which the author
here gives, of Turgot's unscannable verses. — Tr.

Cannot wear the Mask. 29
verse which clings to every memory, — the
famous verse written by him beneath the por
trait of Franklin : —
" Eripuit ccelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." x
But the young Abbe de Laulne was not to
remain long at the Sorbonne ; he did not feel
himself called to the priesthood. His friends
had wished to retain him, and told him that
the name he bore, and his learning, would win
him rapid promotion in the Church. He was
assured that he would soon become a bishop,
and that he might realize in the direction of
a diocese some of the noble administrative
dreams that already filled his mind.
" My dear friends," he replied, " take for
yourselves the advice you give me, since you
are able to follow it. For my part, I cannot
condemn myself to wear a mask throughout
my life." His father, who was very ill, and
whose death came three months later, left
him free to do as he pleased. He therefore
abandoned the Church forever, and left the
Sorbonne in the month of December, 1750.
1 " Lightning from heaven he snatched, and the sceptre
from tyrants."

CHAPTER II.
LEAVES THE SORBONNE. — IS APPOINTED MAS
TER OF REQUESTS.  ASSOCIATES WITH THE
PHILOSOPHERS AND THE ECONOMISTS. —
WRITES FOR THE "ENCYCLOPAEDIA."
TURGOT was twenty-three years old when
he left the Sorbonne. His judgment
was formed and his method determined. He
sought natural laws, and, in order to reach
them, he endeavored to distinguish, in all
classes of phenomena, causes from effects,
being persuaded that all human errors arise
from the confusion which people incessantly
make between causes and effects. Thus while
still very young he had succeeded, with wonder
ful accuracy and really incredible swiftness, in
unravelling the general causes of all the par
ticular facts that came under his notice. It
might almost be said that while still at the
Sorbonne his mind contained all that it after
ward produced ; so that the labor of the last
thirty years of his life would be simply to give
clear expression to what he had acquired

A Consummate Philosopher. 31
during the eighteen months passed at that re
nowned seat of learning.
A consummate philosopher, considering Na
ture and man from the loftiest standpoints, he
had, when scarcely twenty years of age, formed
the conception of a history of the human mind
and its progress. Of this history he had even
sketched the plan, which was one day to be
developed in a book. This plan we still pos
sess, and of it some of his later productions
are mere partial developments. Thus already,
despite his youth, he was admirably equipped
for the life-struggle, and his years of appren
ticeship had made him one of the men most
competent to give helpful expression to new
truths, at a time when prejudice seemed to
have irresistible potency.
Studying Turgot at the threshold of his ac
tive life, and remembering the influence he
afterward exerted upon the economic destiny
of his country, we naturally ask, " Whose
image and superscription does he bear; to
what intellectual family does he belong ? "
Contrary to the rule, we find no answer, for
the simple reason that he proceeds from no
one. Plainly he is of his century, but by an
energy peculiar to himself, and with no guide
but his own reason, he finds a way to break
the barriers of that century and to take his

32 Turgot.
place in ours. The strength of his genius was
not developed by those who directed his studies,
but by his severe and philosophical question
ing of his own powers. He was the child of
~his meditations. He was a born master, as is
proved by the fact that those whose disciple
he has been called have survived only because
of him, and find access to us to-day simply
because they force themselves upon us, as it
were, in his train.
There is, however, a resemblance to Adam
Smith which early becomes well marked. They
were of nearly the same age, — Adam Smith
was born in 1723. The student at Paris and
the student at Edinburgh developed their
thoughts separately, for neither knew of the
other, and each formed his doctrine by inde
pendent reflection. Walking with equal steps
upon converging paths, they prepared them
selves by the same method for the activities
which were to make their names illustrious.
Each had been intended for the Church, and
each, having completed his theological course,
forsook the Church for philosophy ; both held
the same faith in the progress of the human
mind, and both sought its law, at the same time
and by the same method, in metaphysics, in
moral philosophy, and in political economy.
It is therefore not surprising that they became,

Compared with Adam Smith. 33
by turns, the forerunners and the inspircrs of
each other.
Like Turgot, Adam Smith had thought to
write the history of civilization and of progress ;
and like Turgot he had never ceased to study
man in his consciousness, in his language,
and in his moral, social, economical relations.
Later on, they met — this time wittingly —
upon philosophical and metaphysical ground.
They became apprised of each other's exist
ence, they came to know each other, and we
cannot be mistaken in saying that from the
day they became acquainted they derived mu
tual aid and profit from each other's works,
and from those of their respective masters.
Turgot's philosophy owes much to the Scotch
school, to Hutcheson, Adam Smith's master,
as well as to Adam Smith himself. But the
political economy of Adam Smith owes no less
to France, to the Physiocratic x economists,
and to Turgot.
Quesnay, Gournay, and above all Turgot, ex
ercised a manifest and happy influence upon
the author of " The Wealth of Nations." Tur
got's little treatise " On the Formation and
Distribution of Wealth " preceded by ten years
the publication of Adam Smith's great eco-
1 See the article " Physiocrates" in Lalor's " Cyclopedia
of Political Science." — Tr. 3

34 Turgot.
nomic work ; and it was during these ten
years that the two thinkers met, became ac
quainted with each other, and perhaps corre
sponded upon economic subjects. Condorcet
is authority for the statement that there was
an active correspondence between them.
Of both it may be said that they are more
truly the masters of the nineteenth century than
of the eighteenth. In a speech upon the Bank
of England, delivered in the house of Commons
May 30, 1797, Sir William Pulteney was able
to say of Adam Smith that he would persuade
the present generation and would govern the
next. A similar judgment might have been
passed upon Turgot; for although he did not
prevail in his own century, he persuaded the
enlightened minds of his time, while after his
death his ideas governed, and still govern,
French society.
On the 5th of January, 1752, Turgot was
called to the duties of Deputy-Counsellor of
the Attorney-General ; on the 30th of Decem
ber he entered the Parliament of Paris as Coun
sellor; but his connection with this High Court
was merely transitory, or rather he continued
to be attached to it only by the looser ties
that still united the Masters of Requests to the
Parliament. Appointed Master of Requests
on the 28th of March, 1753, he was occupied
exclusively with the duties of the office until

Appointed Master of Requests. 35
1 761, when he was sent to Limoges as Inten
dant; but during the whole period of his in-
tendancy (1761 to 1774) he preserved the title
and the prerogatives of the Master of Requests,
sharing the labors of his colleagues when he
thought proper, and sitting with them when
he was at Paris.
The functions of the Masters of Requests
were both administrative and judicial. They
made reports to the Council in presence of the
Councillors of State, and sometimes even of
the king. They were members of the Parlia
ment, in which, however, they had a right to but
four seats. The first four masters who arrived
took the places reserved to their body. They
shared the jurisdiction of the Royal Council
in cases of appeal, and possessed, moreover,
a kind of special jurisdiction, — that of the
requests of the H6tel de Ville. It was the
Council that heard the review of the trial of
Calas, but it was the Chamber of Requests of
the H6tel de Ville — that is, the Masters of
Requests alone — that pronounced the judg
ment. Turgot sat during this trial. " He was
one of the judges," says Dupont de Nemours,
" and he spoke on this occasion with a vehe
mence unusual to him." Unfortunately his
words have not been preserved, as no report
of the proceedings exists.

36 Turgot.
Turgot had been welcomed with open arms
by the society of the philosophers, the men of
letters, and the economists. His official duties
left him much leisure, which he employed to
the full in cultivating his mind and in conver
sation with his friends. It was at Madame
Geoffrin's that he made the acquaintance of
D'Alembert, of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse,
of Condorcet, of Helvetius, and of so many
others. Madame Helvetius was an older ac
quaintance. She was Madame de Graffigny's
niece, and while still at the Sorbonne he had
often seen her as a young girl at her aunt's.
Madame de Graffigny, who nicknamed every
one, — who called her friend Devaux, Panpan ;
her friend Desmarets, Morocco; her friend
Saint-Lambert, the Little Saint, — never ad
dressed her niece, Mademoiselle de Ligneville,
otherwise than by the name of Minette. She
loved Minette, she loved the young Abbe de
Laulne, as Turgot was then called, and the two
young people were warmly attached to each
other. Good Abbe Morellet laments that this
intimacy did not end in marriage. He was
convinced that such a marriage would have
secured the happiness of the two young peo
ple, and his own into the bargain. Between \
the two beings whom he best loved, and who
returned his affection, he would have passed a

Minette. 37
most agreeable life, without being obliged to
make pilgrimages from the house of one to
the house of the other. " It has always puz
zled me," says he, " that no true passion grew
out of this intimacy ; but whatever the causes
of such great reserve, there remained from this
union a tender and abiding friendship."
Attempts have been made to convert Morel-
let's regrets upon this subject into an historical
problem, upon which a wealth of erudition has
been expended. Many writers have dealt with
the question. If Turgot exhibited the reserve
with which Morellet seems to reproach him,
and if he let slip the opportunity for so well-
assorted a match, it was, say some, because he
had already taken orders. Such, at least, is
the opinion of Delort, author of " The History
of the Detention of Philosophers and Men of
Letters in the Bastille." But this opinion is
based, in the first instance, upon a very doubt
ful text, and upon many other very contra
dictory ones. It is certain that Turgot is
designated, in some documents of the House
of the Sorbonne, as a Parisian deacon ; it is no
less certain that in others equally authentic he
is classed among the simple acolytes. In the
first case, he would have takerL orders ; in the
other, he would have remained free^ Other
writers do not seek so far; they think him too

38 Turgot.
busy, and find it difficult to imagine him divid
ing his time between the serious occupational
that already filled his life and the thousand
cares of family life. Again, — this is a third ver
sion, — knowing himself threatened with heredi
tary gout, and persuaded that he could not ex
pect to live much beyond fifty, Turgot perhaps
feared to associate a wife and children with a
life so precarious as his. Whatever the rea
son may be, Turgot never married ; he left fair
Minette free to marry Helvetius, and remained
till death her most devoted friend.
At Quesnay's he met Mirabeau, " the friend
of men," Dupont de Nemours, Baudeau, and
the economists. There likewise he met Adam
Smith, about 1762, when that celebrated writer,
not as yet known as a political economist, vis
ited France for the first time with the young
Duke of Buccleuch. Morellet says in his
Memoirs : " M. Turgot, who had a taste for
metaphysics, thought highly of the talent of
Adam Smith, whom we met several times."
Dupont de Nemours also records this meet
ing, and speaks of Adam Smith, of Turgot, and
of himself, as having been " fellow-disciples of
Quesnay." Turgot also made the acquaint
ance of Gournay, of the two Trudaines, of
Albert, who was afterward Intendant of Com
merce and Lieutenant-General of Police at

Associates with Philosophers. 39
Paris, and of many other men of ability, —
courageous administrators and defenders of
the liberal faith before Councillors of State
and the ministers of the day, who were almost
all of the school of Colbert.
He had access to the salon of the Marchion
ess du Deffant, but never was intimate with her.
He soon forsook her to follow Mademoiselle
de Lespinasse, when the latter, abandoning her
protectress, founded a rival salon. Moreover,
he had little liking for the friend of the Mar
chioness, the Duke de Choiseul, who was to be
come his most formidable adversary. Turgot
was already, and not without reason, con
sidered an enemy of the parliaments, although
he had in them relatives and personal friends
to whom he always remained faithful. In
1754 he accepted a place in a Royal Cham
ber, — a sort of commission set up after the
exile of one of the courts of Parliament, to pass
judgment upon cases that came within its
jurisdiction, — and this made the breach with
the parliamentarians and the Choiseul party
definitive. He was, moreover, as we have
already noted, by principle a supporter of
government, and his respect for the king's
authority kept him aloof from all the cabals
of opposition.
Madame du Hausset relates in her Memoirs

40 Turgot.
that, dining one day with Quesnay at Paris,
she met " a young Master of Requests, hand
some of face, who bore the name of some estate
that I do not recall [that of Brucourt] but
who was the son of Turgot, the Provost of the
Merchants. There was much talk of adminis
tration, which at first did not amuse me ; after
ward, the question of the love of the French
for their king being raised, M. Turgot said:
' This love is not blind ; it is a profound senti
ment, a confused recollection of great benefits.
The people — I will go further, and say Europe
and humanity — owe their freedom to a king
of France [I have forgotten the name] ; he
established the communes and gave civil ex
istence to a vast multitude of men.' I begged
M. Quesnay to write down what young Turgot
had said, and I showed it to Madame [de Pom
padour]. She pronounced in this connection
a eulogy upon this Master of Requests, and
related the incident to the king, who remarked,
' He comes of good stock.' "
It must be admitted that the economists had
an almost excessive tendency to lean upon au
thority. Some of them would have preferred
an honest despot by means of whom they
could have realized their system, to a freer
^government subject to influences upon which
it would have been necessary to act separately.

His Theory of Government. 41
While not going to such a length as this, Tur
got was no upholder of what was already termed
" the distribution of powers," or " the equilib
rium of forces," nor of other combinations de
vised for the purpose of checking the power
of the head of the state. He feared lest ob
stacles placed in the path of evil might be
come stumbling-blocks to the right. In order
that individual freedom might be protected, he
wished the sovereign to exercise what in our
day has been styled, often abusively, the rights
of the state. But he did not confuse the rights
of the state, or of the sovereign, with those
which certain philosophers claimed for society.
" It has been too constantly the practice of
governments," said he, " to sacrifice the happi
ness of individuals to the alleged rights of so
ciety. It is forgotten that society is made for
individuals." He considered all unnecessary
authority as tyranny; but he never had any
clear notion of what to-day goes by the name
of political guaranties. He was too prone to
think that the deliberative powers of certain
local assemblies, and the wide publicity given
to their deliberations in the form of votes,
might supply the place of political liberties,
and might suffice to guarantee the rights of
citizens. Through D'Alembert, Turgot became a col-

42 Turgot.
laborator upon the " Encyclopaedia," and made
the personal acquaintance of Voltaire. It was
in 1760 that he made his pilgrimage to the
D/lices. " You will soon have another vis
itor," writes D'Alembert to Voltaire, " of whom
I will tell you beforehand. This is M. Turgot,
a man full of philosophy, of enlightenment,
of knowledge, and very much my friend, who
.wishes to visit you as a matter of adventure.
I say adventure because, ' for fear of the Jews,'
he must not boast of it too much — nor you
either." After having received Turgot's visit, Vol
taire replied : " I am still full of M. Turgot.
I did not know that he was the author of the
article on ' Existence ; ' I have seldom seen a
more amiable or a better informed man ; and,
what is rare for a metaphysician, he has the
finest and surest taste."
Although Turgot was completely fascinated
by Voltaire, his passion was not blind, and it
suffered some eclipses: first, when Voltaire
took for prose the metrical experiments of the
Abbe de Laage ; again, later, when the patri
arch of Ferney published his witty diatribe
against the single tax on land, under the title
of "The Man with the Forty Crowns." On
Voltaire's side there was greater constancy;
he felt, as a personal misfortune, the dismissal

Writes for the Encyclopedia. 43
of Turgot in 1776. "Nothing is left for me
but to die," he writes to La Harpe, " now that
M. Turgot is gone. How they can have dis
missed him is more than I can conceive. It
has fallen like a thunderbolt on my brain and
my heart alike."
In 1778, two years later, when Voltaire re
turned to Paris, where he was received like
a conqueror, he desired to see Turgot. "We
were witnesses in 1778," says Condorcet, "to
the enthusiasm mingled with deep and tender
veneration, which the name and the sight of
M. Turgot aroused in that illustrious old man.
We saw him, in the midst of the public accla
mations, bending beneath the weight of the
garlands showered upon him by the nation,
hasten with tottering step to M. Turgot, seize
his hands in spite of him, cover them with
tears and kisses, crying, in a voice choked
with sobs : ' Let me kiss the hand that signed
the salvation of the people.' "
In 1755 Turgot wrote for the "Encyclopae
dia " five articles, which appeared in the follow
ing year : Etymology, Existence, Expansibility,
Fairs and Markets, Foundations. He had
formed the plan of contributing other articles,
as, Mendicity, Inspectors, Hospital, Immateri
ality; but when authorization was withdrawn
from this publication of the philosophers, he

44 Turgot.
deemed further collaboration inconsistent with
his capacity as a magistrate.
The publication of the article " Existence "
was a genuine literary and philosophical event.
Men of letters and encyclopedists were struck
with the clearness and precision of the style,
with the depth and novelty of the thoughts.
A writer, a philosopher, seemed to be revealed.
To this day a like impression is made upon
those who read this remarkable essay for the
first time. Victor Cousin greatly admired it,
and has assigned to it a place apart in the phi
losophical literature of the eighteenth "century.
" As a metaphysician," says Cousin, " Tur
got belongs to the school of Locke, like all
the men of his century, even Hutcheson and
Smith, with whom he has so much in com
mon ; but, like them, it has been given him to
escape all the vices of that school, thanks to
the breadth and insight of his mind, thanks
especially to the nobility of his character and
sentiments. In a letter to Condorcet con
cerning the book ' Of Mind,' he metes justice
to the absurd and gloomy ethics of Helvetius.
. . . But the best remaining trace of his meta
physics is the article on ' Existence.' "

men-

CHAPTER III.
QUESNAY AND GOURNAY.  THE PHYSIOCRATS.
 TURGOT'S ECONOMIC DOCTRINE.  ESSAY
ON THE FORMATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF
WEALTH.  EULOGY OF GOURNAY.
TURGOT did not separate economic laws
from other moral laws, and he pursued
the study of them all simultaneously, with
equal enthusiasm. To him, men formed a
natural society, and he thought them unable
to attain the degree of prosperity of which
they are capable, except under conditions
which they cannot possibly throw off. These
conditions form laws which are unlike positive
laws ; which do not, like the latter, find a
sanction in pecuniary or corporal penalties;
but which cannot be transgressed without real
injury. If man disobeys or seeks to evade
these laws, he places a stumbling-block in his
own path and fails to realize the degree of
wealth or comfort that he might otherwise
have attained. Such is the general notion

46 Turgot.
formed by Turgot of the relations beiwith
natural law and political economy.
Quesnay was then at the height of his fame;
he had published his Maxims and his " Eco
nomic Table." His disciples were a brother
hood of the initiated who treated the master
as a kind of god. They called themselves the
" Economists," and formed, in reality, a sect.
Turgot did not like the spirit of sect. One of
his letters on the freedom of the grain trade
contains this passage : " I know very well that
those who have for some time been speaking
or writing against free trade in grain, affect to
regard this opinion as merely that of a few
writers who have styled themselves Econo
mists, and who have contrived to arouse a cer
tain public prejudice against themselves by
the sectarian attitude into which they have
blundered, and by a fanatical tone that always
repels those who do not share it."
Although professing the sincerest admiration
for Quesnay, Turgot preferred the companion
ship of Gournay. Gournay, his second and
perhaps more beloved master, had, it is true,
adopted the ideas of Quesnay; but he labored
in another field of that domain with which they
had together enriched the world. Dupont de
Nemours takes great pains to prove the iden-
ticalness of the views of these two remarkable

Quesnay and Gournay. 47
men; and it was he who devised the name
" physiocracy " for the science with which they
both occupied themselves at the same time.
To his mind, Gournay was as much a physio
crat as Quesnay.
Quesnay's chief postulate was that agricul
ture should be brought to the highest pos-
-wW^e de§ree °f perfection. He considered all
W(jher industries as dependent upon the tillage
-ji the soil ; and if he demanded freedom for
manufactures and trade, it was because free
dom of trade, by facilitating the exchange
and working up of the raw products of the
soil, would assure to agriculture the means
of further development " Poor peasants,"
said he, " poor kingdom ; poor kingdom, poor
sovereign." Gournay, while recognizing the principle
that the promotion of agriculture should be
the chief care of the statesman, devoted him
self more especially to the solution of the eco
nomical problems of manufacturing industry
and trade. He noted that competition is the
most effective spur to labor, and that every
man knows better than the government what is
most favorable to his own interest. He took
as his motto the words : " Let alone, let pass." 1
The ideas peculiar to GournayTas developed
1 " Laissez faire, laissez passer."

48 Turgot.
and applied by Turgot, have bec;ions beiwith
ern political economy, — the polL-v.
of Adam Smith and of Jean Baptia his fame;
Turgot's economic doctrine is sum . « Eco-
in two of his essays. The first is a sbother-
Gournay sent in 1752 to Marmontel, to aiuster
latter in composing the eulogy of their cthe
mon friend. The second, entitled " An Ess'tt.
on the Formation and Distribution of Wealtfyf
is an outline of political economy for the ben<»
fit of two young Chinese students who were
about to return to their Oriental home.
The reflections on the formation and dis
tribution of wealth form an opuscule of one
hundred paragraphs. The first seven are
devoted to the principle that tillage of the
soil is the only source of wealth. This is the
pure doctrine of Quesnay. All things useful
to man are products of the earth. The pro
cesses of manufacture, the fetching and carry
ing of commerce, are operations that add no
new product to those that have sprung from
the cultivated soil. Agriculture is the only
form of industry that increases the wealth of
a nation. The soil immediately gives the cul
tivator the reward of his labor, and what it
gives is worth more than the pains he has
taken. This is a physical result of the fertility
of the soil, — a result always in excess of the

Que Economic Doctrine. 49
men; and it abor by which this fertility has
"physiocrac^ about The excesS) over and
both occi^ages of h;,g Jabor> that Nature thug
0 lsfas a mere gift upon the cultivator,
"¦ Vs him to purchase the labor of other
fibers of society, who earn simply so much
r% necessary for their support. The farmer
who owns his land, and whose superfluity gives
work to others, is therefore, according to Tur
got, the sole producer of wealth, which by
its circulation animates all the industries of
society. Society is thus divided into two industrial
classes : the first, drawing from the soil wealth
that is continually being renewed ; the second,
occupied in working up the raw product, and
receiving in exchange for its labor a mere
subsistence. The first may be called the
productive class, the second the wage-earning
class. After this preamble, Turgot enumerates in
the following paragraphs the different ways of
turning the soil to account, and endeavors to
prove by new arguments what he has already
set forth ; namely, that the soil alone can furnish
a net product, — that is, something in excess
of the expenses of cultivation and of interest
on the capital invested.
The following paragraphs, up to the fifty-
4

50 Turgot.
first, deal with the questions of capital, of
coinage, of trade, and of the circulation of
money. Before gold and silver had become
the pledge representing every kind of wealth,
exchanges, according to Turgot, were made in
kind. Measures of wheat were given in ex
change for measures of wine. The competi-r
tion between those who had more or less need
of a given commodity determined the current
value of each commodity relatively to all the
rest. Any commodity could thus become the
equivalent of any other, and could be used as
a common measure for comparing other com
modities. A given quantity of wheat worth
eighteen pints of wine would likewise buy a
sheep, or a piece of tanned leather, or a cer
tain quantity of iron ; thus all these things had
in trade the same value. But not all pints of
wine are of the same value; and if eighteen
pints of Anjou wine will buy a sheep, eigh
teen pints of Cape wine will buy several sheep.
In order to avoid the confusion resulting from
the application of the same term to things of
variable qualities, it was found necessary to
choose, as a measure of the value of other
commodities, a commodity always identical,
easy to transport, and capable of being pre
served without alteration. Gold and silver
unite to a superior degree all these qualities,

His Economic Doctrine. 51
and by the nature of things they have become
the universal form of money.
The last fifty paragraphs of the work deal
with the accumulation of capital and with the
various modes of employing it, as in purchas
ing a landed estate, in carrying on an agricul
tural enterprise, in industrial or commercial
pursuits, or, finally, in making loans, in con
sideration of interest, to those in need of funds.
In analyzing these five ways of investing capi
tal, Turgot points out and proves that capital
is always prerequisite to" "any undertaking,
whatever its nature. Agricultural enterprises
can no more dispense with it than others.
Hence he concludes that agriculture, like man
ufacturing, has its masters and its workmen, —
the masters furnishing the capital, the work
men the labor. The mere farm-laborer, like
the mere operative, has no property but his
muscles, and no profit but his wages. Without
capital there can be no large farms, and large
farms are necessary to progress ; for, except
by culture on a large scale, the soil cannot
produce all that it is capable of producing.
Thus the tillage of the soil and industries of
all kinds depend upon a mass of capital, — that
is, accumulated personal property, — which re
turns every year into the hands of those to
whom it belongs, to be again advanced the

52 Turgot.
following year in order to permit the same
enterprises to continue.
Returning at the end to the theory dear to
Quesnay, Turgot concludes that the product
of capital should be exempted from all cpn-
tribution to the public "expenses, because it
is a product previously deducted from that
of the soil. The revenue of landholders can
alone be considered free, because it is availa
ble, and only available wealth can be employed
for the expenses of the state.
Such is Turgot's famous little work. On the
subjects of capital, money, competition, it set
forth truths as useful as they were novel. It
was necessarily and constantly present to the
mind of Adam Smith nine years later, when
he wrote his " Wealth of Nations."
But one is forced to admit that while it is
full of truths it abounds also in errors, being
saturated with Quesnay's doctrine of the net
product, and constantly affirming that the soil
must be considered the only source of wealth.
While regretting the errors that led Turgot
astray, one cannot help honoring him, as well
as the other physiocrats. They should be hon
ored even for their errors, because these are
due to a false application of laws eternally
true, — laws of which Quesnay is the discov
erer. The false application made of these

Fundamental Truths. 53
laws by Turgot has given them such celebrity
that they have been recognized and accepted
as true by all thinkers.
The physiocrats affirmed in the first place
that there is a natural law of the formation of
wealth, and that, in order to permit this law
to produce all its effects and to enable men to
acquire wealth, three kinds of freedom are es
sential : First, men united into communities
and organized into nations must be left free
to produce ; secondly, they must be left free to
buy, sell, and transport the products of agri
culture, of manufactures, and of trade ; finally,
they must be left free to accumulate, to circu
late, to lend capital, and to employ it for the
development of the general wealth. This is
the most important of the truths discovered
by the physiocrats.
Another of the truths they taught is, that
taxes are subject to a natural law of incidence.
The state can compel a class of citizens to pay
taxes, but it cannot prevent them from obtain
ing reimbursement from others in case the
natural economic law permits or commands it.
The physiocrats proved conclusively that the
tax-payers are in many cases mere intermedi
ate agents, whose function is to pay the taxes
for those who, in the last analysis, must dis
charge them. Such taxable middlemen thus

54 Turgot.
make to the real debtors of the state advances
recoverable with more or less delay and diffi
culty. From this observation it was concluded
that such repercussive taxes should not be
imposed upon men whose sole reliance is the
labor of their hands, for this would be com
pelling the poor to advance money to the well-
to-do. Thence also they deduced the equally
evident principle that taxes should, as far as
possible, be assessed upon the fortune and the
income of those who are bound finally to pay
them. But with these great truths discovered by
Quesnay and so ably expounded by Turgot,
how much error is mingled ! Is it possible
to believe with them that the soil is the only
source of wealth, of " continually renewing
wealth," to use Turgot's own expression? We
know to-day that all forms of capital indistin-
guishably, whatever be their method of invest
ment or the use made of them, — provided
this investment and this use be productive, —
have, like the soil, the power of constantly
giving birth to new wealth. Of this principle
Adam Smith and Jean Baptiste Say have given
proofs that have closed the debate.
Equally contrary to truth is that theory of
taxation which recognizes no legitimate re
source for the budget of public expenditure,

Missing Page

Missing Page

An Economic Lesson from Hume. 57
nies there are next to no taxes, and manual labor is
three times as dear there as in any European country.
In Holland there are heavy taxes upon commodities,
and the Republic possesses no land upon which they
can fall. The price of manual labor invariably de
pends upon the quantity of labor and upon the
amount of demand for work, and not upon the
taxes. The dealers who manufacture cloth for ex
port jcannot raise the wages of their operatives, be
cause this would make their cloth too dear to be sold
in the foreign market ; nor can those who supply the
home market raise the wages, for there are never two
prices for the same kind of manual labor. This is
true of all products of which any quantity is ex
ported, — that is, of all products ; and even were
there a product of which no quantity was exported,
the wages of the operatives could not be raised, for
the rise in wages would attract so many laborers into
that industry, that a fall in the price of labor would
immediately result. It seems to me that when a tax
is levied upon a commodity, laborers either consume
less or work more. A man acquires no more pro
ductive power, but he can add some hours to his
week's work. Seldom is he so poor as not to be
able to cut off something from his expenditure.
What happens when the price of grain rises? Has
not the poor man to live more scantily and to work
harder? A tax produces the same effect. I beg
you also to consider that besides the landowners
and the poor laborers, there are always a consider
able number of opulent people who invest their capi-

58 Turgot.
tal in trade, and who spend a large income in .giving
work to the poor. I am convinced that in Erance
and in England incomes of this kind are much glreater
than those derived from the soil. For besides! mer
chants properly so called, I include in this clajss all
shopkeepers and all master tradesmen of every de
scription, and I deem it very just that these should
contribute toward the public expenses; this, how
ever, cannot take place unless taxes are levied upon
commodities. It seems to me unreasonable to say
that this order of citizens necessarily throws its pro
portion of the taxes back upon the landowners, since
its revenues and gains are certainly able to bear some
reduction." J
This excellent lesson in political economy
was given Turgot a year before he produced
his " Essay on the Formation and Distribution
of Wealth," and nine years before Adam Smith's
"Wealth of Nations." Turgot's reply, dated
March 25, 1767, has been preserved by Hill
Burton. Turgot admits that the price of labor
is determined by the law of supply and demand.
" You observe truly," said he, " that it is not
the degree of taxation that determines the rate
of wages, but merely the relation of the supply
to the demand. This principle has never been
1 This letter is not to be found in the collections of Hume's
correspondence, and is here perforce translated from the
French. — Tr.

His Defence of his Doctrine. 59
denied : it is the one principle that immediately
fixes the price of all things that have a com
mercial value." And in order to explain the
apparent contradiction between this and Ques-
nay's doctrine, Turgot distinguishes two prices,
— "the current price, determined by the rela
tions ofsupply and demand ; and the fundamen
tal price, which, for a commodity, is what the
object costs the workman." In this distinction
Turgot found an answer to his detractors, who
accused him, and still accuse him, of condemn
ing the workman to eternal poverty by the
iron law of wages.
With Quesnay, Turgot divided mankind
into two classes : the producing and the wage-
earning, — the productive and the sterile. The
workman cannot co-operate in the formation of
a net product, and his wages assure him noth
ing beyond the strict necessaries of life. " In
all kinds of labor," said Turgot, " it must and
does happen that the wages of the workman
are restricted to what is necessary for his
subsistence." Louis Blanc takes ground against this
theory. " Turgot," he says, " had the misfor
tune to adopt the principle from which has
been derived in our day that base and cruel
formula: 'Every man for himself and every
man in his own house.' This principle once

60 Turgot.
admitted, what if the consequences are fatal?
'This must be so.' Certainly, it 'must' hap
pen that the workman is reduced to the strict
necessaries of life, when individual right has
been taken as the point of departure; but
would this be so in a system of fraternal
association?," The germ of Turgot's defence is found in
his letter of March 25, 1767. The " iron law,"
he would have answered, determines the fun
damental price of labor ; the law of supply and
demand determines its current price. " Al
though the fundamental price is not," said he,
" the immediate principle of the current value,
it is nevertheless a minimum below which the
current value cannot sink : for if a dealer loses
on his merchandise, he ceases to sell or to
manufacture ; and if a workman cannot live by
his labor, he becomes a beggar or an emigrant.
Moreover, the workman must find a certain
profit in order to provide against accident,
and to bring up his family. ... As you say,
the workman contrives to labor more or to
consume less, but this can be only for a short
time. Doubtless no man works as much as he
might work. Nor is it in nature that men
should work as much as they might, any more
than that a cord should be strung as tensely as
it might be. In every machine a certain de-

The Economists. 61
gree of slackening is necessary, without which
it would run the risk of breaking down at any
moment. . . . This species of superfluity upon
which, when worst comes to worst, one can
fall back, is another essential element in the
ordinary subsistence of workmen and of their
families." Turgot deemed the English hardly fitted to
understand Quesnay. " Our economic philoso
phers," he wrote to Hume on the 23d of July,
1766, "zealous for their master, will stoutly
uphold Quesnay's system. This system is
now very remote from the minds of English
writers ; in fact, the difficulty of harmonizing
its principles with the ambition of monopoliz
ing the world's commerce is too great to per
mit the hope of their adopting it for a long
time to come."
He was not converted by his friend's letters ;
his mind was made up, — he was a physiocrat,
and a physiocrat he remained. David Hume
could not but lament this ; for with all his lik
ing for Turgot, he did not like the sect of the
economists, — witness this sally in a letter to
the Abbe Morellet (May 15, 1769) : 1 —
" I see that in your prospectus [of a new Diction
ary of Trade] you take care not to disoblige your
1 In J. Hill Burton's " Life and Correspondence of David
Hume," this letter is dated " London, July io, 1769." — Tr.

62 Turgot.
economists by any declaration of your sentiments;
in which I commend your prudence. But I hope
that in your work you will thunder them, and crush
them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and
ashes ! They are, indeed, the set of men the most
chimerical and most arrogant that now exist, since the
annihilation of the Sorbonne. I ask your pardon for
saying so, as I know you belong to that venerable
body. I wonder what could engage our friend,
M. Turgot, to herd among them, — I mean among
the economists ; though I believe he was also a
Sorbonnist." Turgot always remained faithful to Quesnay's
doctrine, always affirming it with deep convic
tion. One may even say that he made it his
own by the strength with which he set it forth.
It is not, however, to be forgotten that he did
not belong to the inner sanctuary; that he
would himself have protested more loudly
than any one else had he been taken for the
official interpreter of the master ; and that he
recoiled from attributing to Quesnay's maxims
that dogmatic value with which the sectaries
of every age have invested the ideas of their
founder. Outside of this school of economists he had
friends and even masters. For Gournay he
expressed as much respect as for Quesnay, and
with Gournay he lived upon terms of more

Net Contribution lo Economic Science. 63
familiar intimacy. The " Essay on the Forma
tion and Distribution of Wealth " is not, there
fore, sufficient to give us a full understanding
of Turgot's doctrine, the development of which
must be sought in the conversations with
Gournay. But this does not imply that, in
consequence of his studies with Gournay, Tur
got modified the fundamental ideas he had
derived from Quesnay touching the function
of the soil in the production of wealth, nor
that he recognized that he had previously
fallen into any errors.
The " Essay on the Formation and Distri
bution of Wealth " is posterior to Gournay's
death ; yet the theories of free labor, free trade,
and free industry, which really made up the
whole of Gournay's system, have received such
illustration from Turgot's application of them
and from his admirable tests exhibiting the
happy results that might flow from them, as to
have overshadowed the errors of the net prod
uct and of the exclusive predominance of the
land over personal capital. The net product
which was to furnish a basis for taxation, the
theory which sees in the soil the only source
of wealth, have become mere hypotheses ex
plaining the great law of the natural incidence
of taxes, and illustrating the incontestable
maxims that no state is rich whose people are

64 Turgot.
poor, and that no state can grow rich by ruin
ing its tax-payers. Considering certain eco
nomic prolegomena as hypotheses, we may
say that Quesnay's theories have been as use
ful to the progress of economic science as
other now abandoned hypotheses touching the
emission of light and the nature of electricity
have been to the progress of physical science.
Like the most eminent men of his time, Tur
got made use of these hypotheses ; it was, how
ever, not these, but his assertion of the free
dom of labor and of trade, his establishment
of the doctrine of free labor upon imperisha
ble foundations, that made him Adam Smith's
precursor, perhaps his master, and that give
Turgot a claim to be considered the real head
of the modern economic school.
Gournay, whose real name was Vincent, was
born in 1 712, at Saint-Malo. At the age of
seventeen he was sent by his parents to Cadiz,
to learn trade; he succeeded. In 1744 his
business brought him to France, and into re
lations with Maurepas, who perceived his
merit. Two years later his partner left him
a fortune, and with it the estate of Gournay,
whose name he thenceforward bore. He had
visited and studied in detail England and Hol
land, and he read with great eagerness books
dealing with the science of trade. From the

Schools of Quesnay and of Gournay. 65
treatises of Josias Child and the memoirs of
John De Witt he drew the first elements of his
economic knowledge. In 1748 he withdrew
from business and removed to Paris. M. de
Maurepas urged him to seek the position of
Intendant of Trade, and in 1751 helped him
to obtain it. It is at this time that he comes
into relations with the economists.
Dupont de Nemours, who lays great stress
upon the unity of the economic school, tells us
that Gournay and Quesnay arrived from differ
ent sides at the same results ; and that they
met at the goal with mutual congratulations
upon the exactness with which their diverse
but equally true principles led to identical con
clusions. He admits, however, that the two
standpoints from which they viewed " the prin
ciples of political administration" had formed
two schools. The principal members of Ques
nay's school are the Marquis de Mirabeau,
Abeille, Fourqueux, Bertin, Dupont de Ne
mours, the Abb6 Roubaud, and Le Trosne.
Mercier de La Riviere and the Abbe Baudeau
form, says Dupont de Nemours, a special
branch of .this school. They believed that it
would be easier to persuade a prince than a
nation, and that freedom of trade and labor, as
well as the true principles of taxation, would
be sooner established by the authority of sov-
5

66 Turgot.
ereigns than by the progress of reason. Al
though these views were not shared by all the
economists, there were many who slipped
upon this treacherous ground ; and, as we
have seen, Turgot has been reproached not
altogether unjustly : wTtTThavmg' attached too
little importance to the political liberties of a
nation. The other school is that of Gournay: it
comprised Malesherbes, the Abbe Morellet,
Trudaine de Montigny, Cardinal de Boisgelin,
the Abbe de Cice, — in general, the particular
friends of Turgot, and Turgot himself. K was
while Gournay was Intendant of Trade that
his relations with Turgot were most intimate.
Condorcet, speaking of their interviews, says:
" They were of great benefit to M. Turgot,
who learned from M. de Gournay to recognize
in detail all the advantages of free trade and
all the disadvantages of prohibitions." From
1753 to 1756 Gournay made a series of official
tours in the provinces in order to judge for
himself of the state of trade and manufactures.
Taking Turgot with him, he visited succes
sively Burgundy, Lyonnais, Dauphine, Pro
vence, Upper and Lower Languedoc; and,
later on, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany.
On his return from the journey of 1756
he fell sick, languished some years, and died

Eulogy, of Gournay. 67
June 27, 1759. Marmontel thought of writing
his eulogy, and asked Turgot for notes. Some
days later Marmontel received from Turgot a
paper containing a very clear and faithful ex
position of Gournay's doctrines. This paper,
which was published by Dupont de Nemours
under the title, " Eulogy of Gournay," sup
plements the " Essay on the Formation and
Distribution of Wealth," and constitutes with
that essay the doctrinal portion of Turgot's
works. Gournay thought that it did not belong to
government to regulate the market price of
commodities, or to prohibit one kind of in
dustry in order to cause another to flourish.
For a century past, said he, all educated men
in Holland and in England have regarded the
abuses still existing in France as relics of bar
barism, — as the mark of the ignorance and
weakness of those who have hitherto governed
France without recognizing the importance of
freedom, or, recognizing it, without being able
to protect it against the spirit of monopoly.
Universal freedom to buy and to sell appeared
to him the only way of assuring to the vender
a selling price high enough to encourage pro
duction, and to the consumer the lowest possi
ble price for the best goods. He recognized
the fact that some dealers are scamps and some

68 Turgot.
consumers dupes, but thought it the business
of the individual to be watchful; saying that
we do not furnish all children with padded
caps for fear lest some of them may fall and
bump their heads.
In the three following propositions Turgot
sums up and appropriates Gournay's doctrine :
First, " To give back to all branches of
trade that precious freedom of which they have
been deprived by centuries of ignorant preju
dice, by the facility of government in lending
itself to private interests, and by the desire
of a misconceived perfection;" secondly, "To
facilitate the labor of all citizens in order to
arouse the greatest competition in sale, whence
will necessarily result the greatest perfection in
the making and the most advantageous price
for the buyer ; " thirdly, " To give the buyer
the greatest possible number of competitors
by opening to the seller every outlet for his
commodity, — this being the only means of
assuring to labor its recompense, and of per
petuating production, which has no object but
this recompense."
Such was Gournay's system as adopted and
interpreted by Turgot, — a system resting upon
the maxim that " every man knows his own in
terest better than another to whom that interest
is entirely foreign." Those who opposed Gour-

Eulogy of Gournay. 69
nay's opinions represented him as the enthu
siast of a system. " This reproach, ' a man with
a system,' has become," says Turgot, " a sort
of weapon in the hands of the prejudiced, or
of persons interested in maintaining abuses,
against those proposing any kind of change
whatever."

CHAPTER IV.
I. INTENDANT OF LIMOGES.  THE CADASTRE.
 II. LOANS OF MONEY, AND USURY. — III.
LETTERS ON FREE TRADE IN GRAIN.

FOR two years after Gournay's death Tur
got continued to perform his functions
as Master of Requests; but, with a view to
preparing himself for an intendancy, he asked
permission of M. de La Michodiere to accom
pany him in his tours of inspection.
France was divided into forty provinces, and
into thirty-five revenue districts called generali
ties. The province was a military division com
manded by a governor ; the generality was an
administrative circumscription presided over
by an intendant. The province did not coin
cide, either in extent or in boundaries, with the
generality. There were almost always several
governors to every intendant, and several
intendants to every governor; but their re
spective functions were independent. The in
tendants were financial agents like our present

Intendant of Limoges. 71
tax-commissioners, and were judges in certain
disputed matters in relation to taxes, like our
prefectoral councils ; moreover, like our pre
fects, they had charge of the police, of public
charity, and of the militia. Their powers were
the more considerable from the fact that they
stood in constant relations with the Council of
State, and that, preserving the title of Master
of Requests, they sat during their frequent
sojourns at Paris with the other masters of
requests. On the 8th of August, 1761, Turgot was
appointed Intendant of Limoges. Writing to
Voltaire on the 24th of the same month, he
says : " It is to Limoges that I am sent. I
should have much preferred Grenoble, whence
I could have made little pilgrimages to the
shrine of Confucius in order to learn of the
High Priest." The Generality of Limoges was
divided into five sub-districts called elections ;
namely, Brive, Tulle, Limoges, Bourganeuf,
Angouleme. The country was poor and tax-
ridden. " I think myself within bounds in
affirming," says Turgot, " that the taxes of the
Generality of Limoges amount to forty-eight
or fifty per cent of the total product, and that
the king derives about as much from the land
as the proprietors."
For thirteen years Turgot devoted himself

72 Turgot.
with unslackening zeal to the interests of his
generality; but he could not satisfy every
body. When, in 1774, he was called to the
Ministry, some said that he was worshipped in
Limousin, others that he was detested there.
Probably both classes were right. The Limou
sin nobility had been accustomed to make use
of the intendant to obtain favors, to reduce the
taille1 and the poll-tax of its dependents, and
to cut down its own twentieths to the low
est figure. The nobles did not pardon Turgot
for breaking with such easy customs, and af
fected to treat him, like Gournay, as a doc
trinaire. " Yes, madame, he is a man with a
system," exclaims Abbe Baudeau, writing to a
lady whom he does not mention, but whom he
describes as a witty court prude and a mother
in the Jesuitical Church. "... What ! think
you that incoherent ideas strung together
with red tape suffice for the governing of a
kingdom like France ? " Turgot had there
fore made many enemies among the petty
nobility of the country. But not so among
the peasantry. His departure was announced
from the pulpit by all the parish priests of
the province, who everywhere said mass for
him. The peasants left their work to attend
1 The tallage or tax levied upon all who did not belong to
the nobility or clergy. — Tr.

Intendant of Limoges. 73
this service, saying to one another, " The king
does well to take M. Turgot, but we are very
unlucky to lose him."
We cannot write the history of his ad
ministration, nor make a complete analysis
of what he called his Limousin labors; this
would involve an extended work full of de
tails now devoid of interest. But in order
fully to understand Turgot's genius, it is neces
sary to study the unfailing breadth of view
which he brought to the treatment of admin
istrative problems. No piece of business was
too insignificant to afford an occasion for
laying down principles. His circulars to his
subordinates, his letters to the minister, his
advices to the Council, are so many essays
upon economic laws and theories. Such are
his " Advice Concerning the Levy and Distri
bution of the Taille" (1762 to 1770), his
" Memorial on Interest-bearing Loans and on
Usury " (1769), his " Letters on Free Trade in
Grain" (1770). And, surprising enough, all
that he writes seems improvised ! He has no
need of protracted study to enable him to trace
effects to their causes; his early education,
"his mental habits, his accuracy of judgment,
enable him to penetrate immediately, without
hesitation or confusion, to the bottom of every
subject. Not that he was satisfied with a first

74 Turgot.
glance, or neglected details, or was not labo
rious; on the contrary, he was a prodigious
toiler, and his frequent attacks of gout never
took him from his business.
His only rest was the writing of private let
ters, and he had many correspondents. With
Caillard he talked poetry, sending him trans
lations of Horace or of Pope, and employing
him to forward to Ferney, under the veil of
an assumed name, those metrical verses that
Voltaire took for prose. He reasoned about
the pronunciation of the ancients, and could
not pardon David Hume for thinking that
the ancient Romans pronounced Latin in
the English fashion. With Condorcet he ex
changed opinions upon philosophy, ethics,
science. Never was his mind so free as when
it was most occupied.
Meantime the interests of those under his
jurisdiction were his constant solicitude. One
of his most engrossing tasks during the first
years of his intendancy was the revision of the
tax-rolls. In Limousin the taille was at that
time levied in accordance with a scale drawn
up twenty years before by M. de Tourny, the
former intendant. Wishing to correct the
abuses of the arbitrary taille, Tourny had con
ceived the plan of recasting all the old valu
ations of the products of the land, and of

The Cadastre. 75
founding upon a sort of cadastre an equita
ble scale of assessment. But' the surveys had
been finished only throughout some two thirds
of the Province, and the valuations had been
based, for the most part, upon a mere inspec
tion of premises or a bird's-eye view of sections
of cultivated land. There had resulted such
shocking inequalities that the people had found
no relief in the abandonment of the arbitrary
taille. Turgot found it necessary to do the
work all over again.
What he had in view was a real cadastre, —
a methodical, geometrical description of the
Province, estate by estate, — which could be
kept abreast of successive changes in the com
position and nature of each piece of property.
But the establishment of a cadastre with sur
veys and valuations has always been, and will
always be, a very long, difficult, and costly
work. " Had I then known," writes Turgot in
1 762 to the Comptroller-General, " the vastness
of the labor necessary, not merely to perfect
the future working of the system, but to draw
it from its present confusion, I should perhaps
not have had courage to undertake the task."
He did not, however, spare his pains. He
made every effort to instruct the commission
ers, the proprietors, the peasants, touching all
questions raised by the tax-revision. With a

76 Turgot.
view to public education, he caused the Li
moges Agricultural Society to offer a prize for
an essay on the theory of taxation ; and in or
der to overthrow administrative prejudices, he
continually broached in his letters and reports to
the Council and to the Comptroller-General —
no matter how small the immediate question
at issue — the most general topics, even that
of the principle of taxation.
According to Turgot the land-tax should be
fixed and real. It should be fixed : " It is very
important to apportion the land-tax according
to a fixed valuation." It should be real : that
is, " apportioned only upon the basis of the
real estate of each tax-payer and of the reve
nue he derives from it." A tax upon indi
viduals is, Turgot thinks, a manifest absurdity,
since the individual is nothing but " a bundle
of wants."
In his " Plan of a Memoir on Taxation,"
Turgot examines the comparative merits of
the quota system and of the apportionment
system. The state may ask of each individual
a portion of his revenue, — this is the quota
system ; or the state may content itself with
asking of the nation, of each province, of
each community, a lump sum to be assessed
proportionally upon the proprietors, — this is
the apportionment system. Turgot sees great

The Cadastre. 77
advantages in the quota system. Collecting a
proportional part of the revenue, the state
would be, in his opinion, the real proprietor of
that part of the revenue. Bargains would be
arranged upon this understanding. It would
finally come about that purchasers would not
purchase the state's part, so that in the end no
one would pay any more taxes. The public
revenue, being a quota of the national wealth,
would increase with it. " The king's wealth
would be the gauge of the people's wealth,
and the administration, always smitten by the
counter-stroke of its own errors, would learn
wisdom from continual experience, by the
mere calculation of the product of the tax."
Notwithstanding all these advantages, the
quota system appears to him impossible ; be
cause here the government is alone against all,
and every man is interested in concealing the
value of his property, while no one is interested
in establishing the truth. He adds a consider
ation which has lost none of its force, — for
the general method of cultivating land has
changed much less in France within one hun
dred and twenty years than many imagine.
It is, that while in districts where agriculture
is pursued on a great scale the value of rentals
gives a control of the revenue from land, this
kind of control does not exist in districts where

78 Turgot.
farming is carried on upon shares, — that is,
where there are no leases. And he adds that
it is far from true that all the land is rented :
" Scarcely a third of the kingdom is cultivated
by tenant-farmers."
As to trusting to the honesty of declarants,
he deems this an impracticable method of
collecting the tax ; and he ends with this not
very consoling but very penetrating observa
tion : " Fraud would become very common, and
would cease, from that time, to be dishonest!'
He therefore advises the state to adhere to
the apportionment of a fixed amount.
j' In his opinion, the land-tax must be an ap
portioned tax levied by means of a permanent
cadastre to be established upon the survey
and classification of lands according to their
quality. This system is none other than that
which was established in France by the Na
tional Assembly, and which still exists. Its
advantages and disadvantages are still those
ipointed out by Turgot; and the same questions
are raised to-day as at the time when the at
tempt was made to perfect the apportionment
in the provinces where apportionment was in
force, and to introduce it into those in which
the contrary system still prevailed.

Loans of Money, and Usury. 79
II.
In 1769 there occurred at Angouleme one
of those commercial crises which we now very
improperly call " monetary crises." The cause
of this one lay in the inability of speculators
to sustain an excessive circulation of accom
modation bills. Suspensions of payments, fail
ures, and even bankruptcies resulted ; engage
ments falling due were not renewed, discount
became impossible, trade was paralyzed ; mon
ey was not to be had for any purpose, and the
best merchants were absolutely discredited.
Local dealers in fabrics had as usual sent their
orders to Lyons, and had been answered
that no business would be transacted with
gentlemen in Angouleme except for ready
money. Since that time many similar crises have
been suffered. The excessive circulation of
paper always ends in an advance in the price
of money, compelling speculators to liquidate,
and dragging down along with the guilty ones
the imprudent lenders who have confided in
them. But the Angouleme crisis of 1769 had
a peculiar character that seriously aggravated
its consequences.
The authors of the accommodation bills
were a parcel of rogues who had connived to

80 Turgot.
profit by their own bankruptcy, by accusing
the lenders of usury and by laying informations
against them before the Seneschal of Angou
leme. "This disturbance of the operations
of trade," says Turgot, " this stoppage of the
circulation of money, this alarm among the
merchants of a city, this wrecking of their for
tunes, is a great evil ; but an equal evil is the
triumph of a set of knaves who, after imposing
upon the credulity of individuals to procure
money upon fraudulent bills, have had the
criminal cunning to find in misinterpreted
laws not only a screen from prosecution, but
also a weapon of cruel vengeance, — a means
of slandering and ruining their creditors, and of
enriching themselves with the spoils." Turgot
proposed, therefore, to appeal to the Council
the accusations of usury pending before the
Seneschal of Angouleme, and to remove the
cognizance to a commission, which was also to
be intrusted with the duty of drafting a decla
ration, and of determining the law touching the
use of interest-bearing loans in trade.
The Council, accordingly, took cognizance
of the appeals; the proceedings against the
lenders were annulled, and the institution of
similar proceedings was forbidden; but there
was no declaration, no new law, and the legis
lation touching rates of interest remained as

Loans of Money, and Usury. 81
obscure as ever, being left to the arbitrary
interpretation of the judges.
In support of his request for an appeal, Tur
got, faithful to his habit of treating particular
cases with the greatest possible breadth, sent
the Council of State a Memorial, which remains
the completest and most perfect work ever
written upon the question of interest-bearing
loans and usury, and which immediately placed
its author among our foremost writers.
Dividing his subject into three parts, in the
first he establishes the necessity of interest-
bearing loans for the exigencies of trade and
industry, and proves that the rate is variable
in proportion to the abundance or scarcity of
capital and to the nature of the risk. In the
second part he refutes the arguments of scho
lastic philosophers, of jurisconsults, and of
theologians. In the third part he seeks the
historic causes of the hatefulness of usury
and of the bad reputation of money-lenders.
Finally, in a strong-based conclusion, he prays
that interest-bearing loans be legalized, that the_
rate be left to the free agreement of borrower'
and lender, and that usurers who prey upon
the passions and inexperience of youth be pun
ished only by the laws relating to breach of
confidence and other kinds of imposition.
In every commercial centre, according to
6

8 2 Turgot.
Turgot, a majority of the enterprises are based
upon borrowed money, and no capitalist will
deprive himself of money of which he could
make use, without a prospect of some adequate
return. If money brought no interest, no
one would lend it; if the law forbids interest-
bearing loans, either the law will be violated or
trade will be crippled. But if interest-bearing
loans are necessary, and if money is an article
of commerce, money must be regarded as
actual merchandise, the price of which depends
upon the agreement of the parties, and is sub
ject, like all other merchandise, to the law of
supply and demand. What fault is to be found
with the borrower for consenting to pay a high
rate of interest to the lender who takes a risk
on his behalf, or with the lender who secures
himself from risk by an increase of price? No
law, either civil or religious, obliges a person
to furnish another gratuitous assistance ; why
should the civil or the religious law forbid the
procurement of money at the price which the
borrower finds it to his advantage to pay?
The lawfulness of interest is an immediate con
sequence of the right of ownership. The
owner of a thing may sell it or lend it, the rate
of the sale or loan being always just, when the
will of both parties is free, and when there is
no fraud on either side. These principles are

Loans of Money, and Usury. 83
admitted by every one touching everything but
money ; why should they not be applicable to
money, as to everything else? If it be said
that it is need which constrains the borrower
to submit to the lender's conditions, may it not
be replied that it is also need which compels
a man to buy bread of the baker? Has the
baker on this account any the less right to
receive the price of his bread ; and may the
buyer, on the score of need, take possession of
the bread without payment?
In their attack upon interest-bearing loans,
the scholastic philosophers started from an ar
gument which is said to be in Aristotle ; and,
on the pretext that money does not produce
money, they concluded that it was wrong to
make loans produce interest. The pretended
barrenness of money is a palpable error, based
upon a wretched juggle with words. The
holders and spreaders of this doctrine forget
that money is the necessary instrument of all
agricultural, industrial, and commercial under
takings ; and that, although called barren, it is
throughout the world the equivalent not only
of all merchandise, — of everything that might
be called barren, — but also of land, which pro
duces a very real revenue.
The argument of the jurisconsults, of Po-
thier among the rest, is different. " Equity re-

84 Turgot.
quires," says Pothier, " that in a contract which
is not gratuitous the values given on both sides
shall be equal ; so - that neither party shall
give more than he receives, or receive more
than he gives. Now, all that the lender exacts
beyond the principal of his loan is something
over and above what he has given; since in
receiving the mere principal he receives the
exact equivalent of what he has given."
Pothier's argument was also advanced by
Saint Thomas Aquinas. The fungibles forming
the material of a loan have no use distinguish
able from the thing itself; to sell this use in
consideration of interest is to sell something
that does not exist. Turgot considers this rea
soning to be a tissue of demonstrable errors
and verbal jugglery. In any agreement rest
ing upon mutual conditions there can be no
injustice done except by violence, fraud, bad
faith, or breach of confidence. Between values
exchanged, or between articles given and re
ceived, there is no such thing as nfetapnysiral
equality or inequality. Equality of~value-de-
pends upon the opinion of the contracting
parties touching the degree of utility of the
articles exchanged, for the satisfaction of their
desires or needs. Having discussed inequality,
they allege as an example of inequality the
fact that the borrower, in returning more than

Loans of Money, and Usury. 85
the principal, gives back more than he re
ceived ; and they infer that this is unjust. Such
reasoning takes it for granted that the money
received to-day, and the money which is to be
returned in a year, are two things perfectly
equal. Is there not, on the contrary, an ob
vious difference between the two values, — so
obvious as to be recognized by the vulgar
proverb, " A bird in the hand is worth two in
the bush"?
The final argument against the lawfulness
of interest-bearing loans is drawn from Holy
Writ. We read in the Gospel of Saint Luke :
" Lend, hoping for nothing again." 1 Sensible
men would have seen in these words merely a
precept of charity, and, placing them in their
context, it would be impossible to interpret
them otherwise : " But love ye your enemies,
and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing
again ; and your reward shall be great, and ye
shall be the children of the Highest : for he is
kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." Ac
cording to Turgot, any man reading this text
without prejudice will see in it a mere precept
of charity. The true sense of the passage is as
if it had been said : " As men, as Christians,
you are all brothers and friends; help one
1 In the revised version of 1881 : " Lend, never despair
ing," or, " Lend, despairing of no man." — Tr.

86 Turgot.
another in time of need, let your purses be
open to one another, and do not sell the help
you ought to give."
The real origin of the sentiment against in
terest-bearing loans is the outcry of the people ;
for to the people usurers have always been hate
ful. It is pleasant to receive money, and hard
to return it. In primitive society men borrow
little for purposes of trade; they borrow only
for their support, and can return the loan only
in case of some fortunate circumstance. As
the lender takes the risk that the fortunate cir
cumstance may not occur, the rate of interest
is naturally very high. In Rome, it was ex
cessive. The severity of the laws against debt
ors — laws always made by the rich — aroused
the people against their creditors. In all an
cient republics abolition of debt was always
the desire of the people, and the watchword
of demagogues seeking to gain popular favor.
Christianity, upon its appearance, offered itself
as the religion of the poor ; an opinion which
had become the passion of the poor was natu
rally adopted by its preachers, who confused
interest-bearing loans with the harsh prosecu
tion of insolvent debtors. Hence the tendency
among the ancient doctors of the Church to
regard interest-bearing loans as illicit.
Meanwhile, the causes that formerly made

Loans of Money, and Usury. 87
the taking of interest unpopular have ceased
to act with so much force. Trade has infi
nitely increased, and requires immense amounts
of capital. The sums borrowed by the poor
for subsistence are now but an insignificant
fraction of all the money loaned. The great
est borrowers are the rich captains of industry
who expect large returns from their borrowed
capital. The name of usurer is now applied only to
lenders for a short term and at a high rate, to
pawnbrokers, and to the contemptible men
who make a trade of furnishing the prodigal
sons of great families with sums of money at
enormous interest wherewith to support their
vices. The lenders for short terms are use
ful, after all, in placing petty tradesmen in a
position to earn their own livelihood; pawn
brokers make their loans upon articles which
it is possible for the borrower to do without,
and the poor man esteems himself happy to
obtain temporary relief with no risk but that
of forfeiting his pledge. People entertain a
feeling of gratitude rather than hatred toward
these petty usurers who relieve them in time
of need, although they sell this relief very
dear. The only usurers injurious to society, there
fore, are those who make a trade of lending

88 Turgot.
to dissipated young men. Their real crime is
not, however, usury, but that of aiding and abet
ting vice. For this they should be punished,
and not for their high rates of interest.
Reading through in the original the Me
morial which we have summarized, one is
struck with the strength of the arguments;
and one cannot help admitting that Turgot
has really said the last word upon the sub
ject. This discussion has frequently been
renewed since that time ; it is not yet closed,
perhaps will not soon be closed. The advo
cates of free rates of interest have made many
excellent speeches ; but whatever their merit,
their eloquence, their ease of exposition, they
have done nothing but reproduce in the lan
guage of the day the arguments of Turgot.
There is but one arsenal where are to be found
perfect weapons against the successors of Po
thier and the Scholastic philosophers. That
arsenal is the " Memorial on Loans of Money,"
sent to the Royal Council in 1769, in support
of the appeal to the Council of the prosecu
tions for usury pending before the Seneschal
of Angouleme.

Letters on Free Trade in Grain. 89
III.
After the dearth of capital, the story of
which we have told, the Generality of Limoges
was visited with another dearth much more
dreadful than that of money, — a dearth of
grain. This is at any time a fearful scourge ;
but it was especially to be dreaded in the
France of those days, where means of com
munication were so imperfect, and where pop
ular prejudice, countenanced by the most
influential personages of the administration
and the magistracy, rendered the grain trade
extremely perilous. The royal declaration of
1763 and the edict of 1764 had decreed "the
free circulation of grain " throughout the king
dom ; but this freedom was constantly threat
ened by parliaments and municipal officers.
Thus the Parliament of Bordeaux, by a de
cision of Jan. 17, 1770, had ordered the own
ers of land and farmers of land of Limousin
and Perigord to convey each week to the
markets a sufficient quantity of wheat to pro
vision the said markets, and had forbidden
them to sell, either by wholesale or retail,
any portion of the grain anywhere save at
these markets.
The aldermen of the little town of Turenne
had an equally small respect for the law. They

90 Turgot.
forbade any grain to be taken away, ordering
the owners to " relinquish their wheat upon
receiving the market price in ready money."
Again, at Angouleme, the lieutenant of police
took upon himself to order that all persons
who had grain, either in store or otherwise,
should keep no more than was absolutely
sufficient for feeding themselves and their
families, and that they should bring the resi
due to market on pain of a fine of one thou
sand francs. Thus, in addition to the local
scarcity — which on account of the loss of
the harvest was very real — there arose a
general dearth, owing to the impossibility of
making up by means of trade for the defi
ciency existing in the Generality. Warned of
the danger, Turgot took the most energetic
measures. He prevailed upon the Council to
quash the Bordeaux decision. He commanded
the Turenne municipality to withhold opposi
tion to the export of grain. He obtained a
decree of the Council forbidding the Angou
leme lieutenant of police to execute his ordi
nance. At the same time he distributed a
great many copies of the royal declaration of
1763 and of the edict of July, 1764, decreeing
free trade in grain; likewise the work of Le
Trosne entitled " Free Trade in Grain always
Useful, never Injurious." Turgot was wont

Letters on Free Trade in Grain, g i
to say : " Orders themselves must be sown in
prepared soil." Moreover, he did not stop at
these somewhat passive measures: he organ
ized charitable workshops, compelled land-'
owners to feed their laborers, and took active1;
measures for the construction of highways.
Meanwhile, political difficulties which did
not fail to raise the price of grain, not only at
Limoges but in many provinces, had strongly
shaken the confidence of the Comptroller-
General, Abbe Terray, — if ever he was sincere,
— in the efficacy of the freedom of the grain-
trade, which had been granted by Comptroller-
General Bertin's edict of 1764. Abbe Terray
therefore resolved to revoke the edict. Before
carrying out his intention, — although he was
perfectly decided to do so, being actuated by
all sorts of reasons, some of them far from
honest, — he made it known to the intendants,
and asked their advice.
This was the occasion of Turgot's famous
letters on Free Trade in Grain. He impro
vised them during a tour he was making for
the purpose of apportioning the taxes among
the " elections," the " sub-delegations," and the
" communes." The winter was cold among
the mountains, and inns were infrequent and
wretched. It was while travelling amid such
conditions, painful enough for a victim of

92 Turgot.
rheumatism and gout, that he dashed off these
letters. Nothing is more surprising than the
ease with which our Intendant finished this
classic work in circumstances so unfavorable.
In these famous seven letters, all the questions
at issue are stated with perfect clearness, and
solved in the interests of freedom, by means of
good sense and unanswerable logic. The first
is dated from Limoges, October 30, 1770; the
second, from Tulle, November 8 ; the third,
from Egleton, November 10; the fourth from
Egleton, November 11, and from Bort, Novem
ber 13 ; the fifth, from St. Angel, November 14;
the sixth, from Angouleme, November 27 ; and
the seventh, from Limoges, December 7. Un
fortunately, three have been lost ; the originals
were handed to Louis XVI. by Turgot himself
at the time of the Bread Riots, and were never
recovered ; the minutes have disappeared, and
nothing remains of them but abstracts and
fragments. The rest are complete.
Some months previously the Comptroller-
General, Abbe Terray, being at Compiegne
with Turgot, had expressed his doubts touching
the advantages of free trade in grain. " Three
classes of persons," said he, " are interested
in the regulation of the grain trade, — the
landowners, the cultivators, and the consumers.
I concede that the free system is extremely

Letters on Free Trade in Grain. 93
favorable to the landowners. As to the culti
vators, the profit they derive from it is merely
temporary, since at the expiration of their
leases the landowners take advantage of the in
crease in the price of grain to raise their rents.
The consumers, finally, suffer the greatest in
jury from the free system, which raises the
price beyond their means of subsistence, and
increases all their expenses." So the Abbe
Terray concluded that free trade was favorable
only to a very small number of citizens, indif
ferent to the cultivators, and very prejudicial
to a large majority of the king's subjects.
To this course of reasoning Turgot under
takes to reply in his letters. In the first place,
he deems it an error to hold that free trade can
result in raising the average price of grain ;
the contrary is true. He has no difficulty in
proving that if landowners and cultivators can
not dispose freely of their harvests, — if they
are compelled to sell cheap when the crop is
small, and are not allowed to make up for the
scarcity of the product by an enhancement of
price, — then they will naturally prefer some
kind of crop exposing them to less persecution.
The policy of intervention in trade can have
no result but to diminish the harvests, and this
inevitably raises the average price of grain.
Under the system of police regulations the

94 Turgot.
prices are more variable than under the free
system. " Regulations and restrictions do not
produce a single additional ear, while they pre
vent the superfluous grain of one place from
being carried to places where it is scarcer."
Turgot next examines what he calls the
three branches of Abbe Terray's opinion. To
begin with, he agrees with Terray that the land
owners are interested in free trade ; but not, as
the latter thinks, because free trade raises the
price, for, in fact, the contrary is true. One
of the results of restriction is, that in good years
the owner dares not store the excess of his
harvest, for fear of being prosecuted as a fore-
staller in the time of dearth. Thus it happens
that in times of abundance wheat is wasted,
fed to cattle ; and this amounts to a diminution
of production, and consequently to a lessening
of the income from the soil. In one of the
three letters that were lost with the papers of
Louis XVI., Turgot had made a comparative
and detailed estimate of the expenses of pro
duction and of the average price of the bushel
of wheat in France, in good, average, and bad
seasons; and had calculated that, under the
system of restriction, the impossibility of off
setting the years of scarcity by the years of
abundance represented an annual loss of reve
nue to the landowners alone, — not to speak

Letters on Free Trade in Grain. 95
of laborers and consumers, — of fifty million
francs. In his sixth letter, Turgot passes to what he
calls the second branch of Abbe Terray's argu
ment; namely, the cultivator's point of view.
The Comptroller-General considered the culti
vator's interest as not at stake, because, should
the farmer of land obtain any profit, the owner
of the land would be sure to take it from him
whenever his lease expired. But Abbe Ter
ray forgot that the cultivation of great estates
by tenant-farmers occupied, then as now, but
a portion of the territory of France. Four
sevenths of the land was cultivated by me
tayers, whose tillage was as wretched as their
income. These cultivators had no leases; they
received half the produce.1 Here the interest
of the cultivator could not differ from that of
the landowner, and free trade, which accord
ing to Terray must be profitable to the one,
could not but be profitable to the other. Tur
got hoped so to improve the condition of the
wretched metayers of his time as to enable
them to escape by degrees from their penury,
1 For an instructive account of the relations existing be
tween the metayers and the proprietors, see John Morley's
" Turgot " (Critical Miscellanies, vol. ii.); an essay which
will be found to furnish an admirable supplement to this
volume. — Tr.

96 Turgot.
gradually to accumulate a small estate in cattle,
and to transform themselves into farmers pay
ing a fixed rent to their proprietor.
In his opinion, this transformation would
have resulted in raising the agriculture of the
most backward provinces to a footing of
equality with the richest parts of Normandy,
Picardy, and Ile-de-France. " Though the
free system should produce no advantage save
that of raising the agriculture of these prov
inces to an equality with that of the provinces
now cultivated by tenant-farmers, though the
revenue and the productions of the latter
should not be equally increased, you cannot
fail to perceive the immense advantage accru
ing to the state from this revolution alone, the
immense increase of revenues and food-stuffs,
and in general all that agriculture everywhere
gains by freedom."
Turgot's last letter was devoted to Terray's
delusion that the consumer's interests would
be hurt by the suppression of the old-time po
lice restrictions. Turgot here reproduced and
developed all the arguments he had already
brought forward to prove that free trade, by
increasing the total production, could not fail
to diminish the general market price for the
benefit of consumers. There is no need of
recapitulating these arguments ; but a curious

Letters on Free Trade in Grain. 97
thing is his discussion of the state monopoly of
the sale of grain. It was in reality the royal
wheat speculations — so it was then said —
that Terray wished to favor by abrogating
the edict of 1764; and by entering upon the
discussion of monopoly, Turgot touched the
tender spot. He could not imagine how a
privileged company could exercise so disas
trous a monopoly, — a monopoly of purchase
against the laborer, a monopoly of sale against
the consumer. Moreover, were the company
composed of angels, it would be incapable of
equalizing prices and of providing for the sub
sistence of all, and men would still maintain
that it was composed only of rogues. " If a
series of losses is occasioned by a series of poor
harvests, — or, still more inevitably, by the mal
administration, the mistakes, the slackness, the
knavery of all kinds, connected with the man
agement of an unwieldy enterprise conducted
by too large a number of men, — what will
become of the food-supply which the com
pany is bound to furnish? The directors will
be hanged, but that will not give the people
bread." Meantime, Abbe Terray paid no attention,
contenting himself with praising the letters
and with holding them up to the other in-
tendants as models. By the edict of Dec. 23,
7

98 Turgot.
1770, he abrogated the main provisions of the
edict of 1764. All who wished to engage in
the grain-trade were required to inscribe in the
police registers their names, rank, places of
residence and storage, together with the papers
relative to their enterprises, and were compelled
under very heavy penalties to sell no grain ex
cept in the market-place.
" The lords, the parsons, the laborers, the
artisans of twenty villages, were compelled,"
says Voltaire, " to go or to send to the place
of the market; and if any one sold at his own
granary a bushel of wheat to his neighbor,
he was condemned to a fine of five hundred
francs, his wagon and horses being turned
over to those who came with a troop of sol
diery to perpetrate this outrage. Every lord
who gave wheat or oats to a vassal in his vil
lage was subject to punishment as a crimi
nal." To break up this abuse of power, it
was necessary that Turgot should be made a
minister.

CHAPTER V.
f. THE MINISTER. — II. FREE TRADE IN GRAIN.
 III. THE BREAD RIOTS. — IV. RECALL OF
THE PARLIAMENTS. I.
ON coming to the throne, Louis XVI. had
appointed old Count de Maurepas his
Prime Minister. This appointment broke up
the triumvirate of Aiguillon, Maupeou, and
Terray; but D'Aiguillon alone was dismissed,
the others being provisionally retained. But
although Abbe Terray still bore the title of
Comptroller-General, it may be said that his
successor was already found, and this successor
was Turgot. This choice had been deter
mined by Abbe de Very and the Duchess
(D'Enville. Very was an old schoolfellow of
Turgot, with whom he had never ceased to
keep up the closest intimacy. At Bourges,
where he had spent some years as Grand
Vicar, Very had become acquainted with Count
and Countess de Maurepas, then exiles from
the Court of Louis XV., and had often told

ioo Turgot.
them of his friend. The Countess admired
Turgot's character, and was won over to his
way of thinking. When, therefore, her hus
band became Prime Minister, she vigorousl
urged him to take into his ministry a ma;
whose genius and probity had inspired hejr
with such deep esteem.
The Duchess D'Enville belonged heart anc
soul to the party of the philosophers and econo
mists, whom she was wont to receive at her fint
castle of La Roche-Guyon. Being passion
ately in favor of free trade in grain, she wa?
not spared in the satires, the ballads, and the
caricatures with which the adherents of Courl
and Parliament incessantly pelted the new
reformers. She belonged to the La Roche
foucauld family, to which Count de Maurepat
was very proud of being related. She recom-i
mended Turgot to him with great urgency, at
the very time when Countess&de Maurepas
and Very were likewise recommending him.
Thus Turgot became a minister, — not, per
haps, called by public opinion, for, properly
speaking, public opinion did not yet exist, or
was at most but newly born, but pointed out
by admirers and friends to an omnipotent Prime
Minister. Great was the joy in the camp of
the economists and the Encyclopedists, though
the disappointment was sharp when it was

The Minister. 101
leWned that Turgot had been made Marine
Minister, instead of Comptroller-General of the
finances. T This choice meets general approbation,"
writAes Mercy to Maria Theresa; " not that
Turwot is supposed to have much talent for
marine affairs, but because he is known to be
^..wpright and honest to the core." Marie An
toinette is not ill pleased, and tells her mother
that " Turgot has the reputation of being a
very honest man." The Marine Ministry was,
however, a mere transition. A month later
(August 24, 1774), he was appointed Comp
troller-General. Upon thanking the king, Turgot was greatly
moved. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse relates
that he said, " I give myself not to the king,
but to the honest man ; " and that the king,
taking both his hands, replied, "You shall not
be deceived." Abbe de Very gives a similar
account of this scene. The whole court was
collected at Compeigne, when Maurepas came
to announce to Turgot his promotion to the
post of Comptroller-General. Turgot called im
mediately upon the king, and, on returning,
gave Very the following account of the inter
view he had just had with Louis XVI. " ' I
must beg leave, Sire, to set down in writing my
general views ; and, if I may venture to say so,

102 Turgot.
my stipulations touching the way in which yoi
must needs support me in the administratic
of the finances ; for, I confess to you, I treij
ble on account of the superficial knowledge
have of the subject.' ' Yes, yes,' replied
king, ' as you wish ; but I give you my
of honor in advance (taking Turgot's hanc
he spoke), to enter into all your views, arid t\A
support you always in the courageous courses
that you will have to take.' "
The next day Turgot laid before the king
his celebrated programme : " At this moment,
Sire, I confine myself to recalling to your mind
these three phrases, — no bankruptcy, no in
crease of taxation, no loans. No bankruptcy,
either avowed or masked by forced reductions ;
no increase of taxation, the reason being found
in the condition of your subjects, and still more
in your Majesty's heart; no loans, because
every loan inevitably diminishes the available
revenue, necessitating after a time either bank
ruptcy or increase of taxation."
He proposed but one method of carrying
out this programme; namely, to reduce ex
penditures below the sum total of the receipts.
He knows well, he says, that all those who con
trol expenditures in the different departments
will insist that these expenditures are all in
dispensable, and he does not doubt that they

The Minister. 103
will support their claims with excellent rea
sons. He knows, however, that all their rea
sons must yield to the absolute necessity of
economy. He forcibly represents to the king
that the people can be relieved only by reform
of abuses, and that this is difficult because so
many persons are interested in maintaining
these abuses, " for there is no abuse that does
not give some one a livelihood. ... I shall
have to struggle against the natural kindness and
generosity of Your Majesty and of the persons
dearest to Your Majesty. . . . Your Majesty
will recollect that it is to you personally, to
the honest man, to the just and good man,
rather than to the king, that I give myself."
It is plain that Turgot feared the queen's
influence. I have seen the original draft of
this programme. After having written the
words, " generosity of Your Majesty," Turgot
had already traced the words " and of the
qu — " when he checked himself, and wrote
instead, the word " persons."
On the morrow Turgot began his task. Ap
pointed Comptroller-General, Aug. 24, 1774,
he was to be dismissed May 12, 1776, at the
end of twenty months and eighteen days. He
enjoyed good health during but thirteen of
these months, and was racked with gout during
the remaining seven ; but disease took no hold

1 04 Turgot.
upon his work. It may be affirmed that he
never ceased for an instant frankly and straight
forwardly to pursue his policy: namely, res
toration of the finances, war upon abuses, de
struction of privileges, emancipation of labor,
trade, and manufactures, which were crushed
by restrictions and monopolies. Tlms^Jifteen
years before the Revolution of 1789, Turgot
sought to carry ouPwithout violence all the
reforms in the civil and economic order that
had afterward to be conquered at such a cost
of blood and tears.
Those who defended abuses in order to live
by them found Turgot implacable, whenever
he judged such persons intelligent enough to
be accountable for their deeds ; but to the igno
rant he was indulgent, although he vigorously
repressed the disorders. to which the ignorant
might be led. Moreover, he dealt prudently
with vested interests, never failing to offer
equitable compensation for the offices he sup
pressed. His arrival at the control of the
finances had struck the farmers-general with
consternation. " It is said that the financiers
are panic-stricken," wrote Abbe Baudeau;
" they need not be ; M. Turgot is not the man
incontinently to cancel the revenue-leases and
the other financial arrangements."
At the time of his discussion with Miromenil,

The Minister. 105
in I77^» about the suppression of the Corvdc,
he made notes in reply to the observations of
the Keeper of the Seals. In these notes is a
passage that should be taken to heart by those
who make of Turgot the chief of a sect of/
fanatics. " I know as well as any one that it
is not always advisable to do the best thing
possible, and that, though we should not tire
of correcting little by little the defects of an
ancient constitution, the work must go forward!
slowly, in proportion as public opinion and the)
course of events render changes practicable." |
In order to convince public opinion, and to
remove prejudices which he thought sprang
from ignorance, he had conceived the plan of
a Council similar to our Ministry of Public
Instruction. On this subject he wrote to the
king: —
" I think I can propose nothing more advanta
geous to your people, and better suited to maintain
peace and good order, to give activity to all useful
industry, to make your authority respected, and to
attach more closely your subjects' hearts to Your
Majesty, than to instruct them all touching their ob
ligations to society and to your protecting power,
touching the duties which these obligations impose,
touching their interest in performing these duties both
for the public good and for their private welfare.
This moral and social instruction requires books made

106 Turgot.
for the purpose by competing authors, and a silchool-
master in every parish who shall instruct the cli-iildren
in these subjects, and shall likewise teach the tt;tts of
writing, of reckoning, and of surveying. . . . The
civic education which the Council of Instruction
would cause to be given throughout the kingdom, and
the rational books which the Council would cause to
be made, and would require all professors to teach,
would contribute still further to form an enlightened
and virtuous people."
While preoccupied with the destruction of
prejudice for the future, and with the forma
tion, as he expressed it, of a new people, Tur
got did not forget the present, and sought the
readiest and surest means of healing the rooted
sore of financial disorder, — a sore made deeper
still by the corrupt administration of Abbe
Terray. He lost no time in confiding to those
of his collaborators in whom he had most
confidence the task of bringing together the
elements of what we to-day call the Budget
of Receipts and Expenditures. Says Dupont
de Nemours : " He ordered the construction of
a methodical and circumstantial table contain
ing the smallest details of all receipts and ex
penditures." This table has been preserved.
We likewise possess a similar statement
drawn up by his predecessor a few days ear
lier. Abbe Terray had hoped that he might

The Minister. 107
retain his place in the ministry by adapting
his policy to the new reign, and by changing
his principles at a time when new principles
appeared to be more in fashion. In his me
morial and table Terray threw the responsi
bility for the deficit upon D'Aiguillon and De
Boynes, the Ministers of War and of Marine
Affairs, and made a great show of his own
efforts to reduce expenses. Weber relates
that the Abbe said, in conversation with his
friends, that " he had succeeded by dint of
injustice, of bankruptcies, of spoliations, in re
ducing the deficit to five millions. He had left
fifty-seven millions in the Treasury, besides
fourteen millions as an emergency fund ; while
anticipations upon the revenue were reduced
to three months. He had supplied money for
ordinary expenses, for preparations for war,
for three weddings, and for many extraordi
nary expenses that must remain secret."
Turgot's enemies contrasted the condition
of the Treasury at the time of his fall with its
condition at the fall of Terray, and pretended
that Turgot had exhausted the reserve left
by his predecessor. Linguet called Terray a
Sully, because he had amassed a treasure of
fifty-six millions. According to this view,
Turgot could be compared only to Sully's suc
cessors, who squandered the millions heaped

108 Turgot.
up at the Bastille. Discussion of the question
at this time of day would be futile; posterity
has made its choice between the unscrupulous
minister of Louis XV. and the honest minister
of Louis XVI. II.
One of Turgot's first official acts was to
remove the Master of Requests, Brochet de
Saint-Prest, Director of the Wheat Monop
oly. " I am delighted," wrote Mademoiselle
de Lespinasse, " that M. Turgot has already
dismissed the ringleader in the wheat affair."
It will be remembered that four years pre
viously (in 1770) Abbe Terray had annulled
the liberal provisions of the declaration of
1763, and of the edict of 1764, concerning the
grain-trade, and that he had subjected this
trade anew to the former harsh police regula
tions. By this return to ancient usage he had
flattered the prejudices of the people and of
the parliaments, and had satisfied those publi
cists who thought the nation's food should not
be abandoned to what they termed the unre
strained cupidity of tradesmen. He had found,
moreover, a valuable defence of his policy in a
book by a man of considerable intelligence, a
particular friend of the men of letters and the

Free Trade in Grain. 109
Encyclopedists, Abbe Galiani, whose illiberal
economical ideas contrasted strangely with the
opinions of the majority of his friends. Galiani
had composed a series of dialogues on Free
Trade in Grain, full of keen thrusts, of wit,
and of examples drawn from general history,
wherein he asserted that the policy of the state
concerning grain must be merely an occasional
policy, — that it must differ in different coun
tries, and that in the same country there must
be one rule for the interior and another for
the seaboard.
Though Abbe Terray did not despise Gali-
ani's help, he cared very little for his argu
ments. At bottom, it was neither the groans
of the people, nor the wishes of the parlia
ments, nor Galiani's theories, that decided
Terray to abrogate the edict of 1764. He
was no more influenced by the arguments of
those who reasoned in his favor than he had
been by the advice of Turgot in the seven
admirable letters from Limousin. His aim
was nothing less than the establishment of
the monopoly of the wheat-trade in the hands
of his friends, of his partners, and perhaps,
as has often been asserted, of the partners of
Louis XV. It was his purpose to realize, if not
the grain-ring, to which the too strong name
of Pactede Famine ("starvation-contract) has

1 10 Turgot.
been given, at least a monopoly of speculation
in the commodity of prime necessity, — the
people's bread.
Much has been written concerning this
grain-ring. Popular rumor has considerably
magnified its importance; but there is no
doubt that its operations in wheat were accom
panied by theft, by embezzlement, by shame
ful speculation, — although no historian has
succeeded in giving an accurate account of it,
nor in furnishing a list of those who made a
fortune or otherwise profited by it. A lawyer
and man of affairs named Leprevost de Beau
mont had got wind of a partnership-agreement
between Malisset, a former Parisian baker who
had invented a more perfect process of grind
ing wheat, and a certain number of capital
ists. The aim of this society was to make a
contract with the state for handling the king's
wheat. This was in 1765. The agreement in ques
tion contemplated a permanent supply. The
wheat, or the flour into which it was made,
was to be constantly kept in a good state of
preservation ; and to this end the wheat mo
nopoly was authorized to sell the old stores
and to replace them with new, according to
the movement of prices. Thus speculation was
excused, authorized, encouraged. Leprevost

Free Trade in Grain. 1 1 1
de Beaumont saw in this agreement a contract
to starve the people, — the Facte de Famine.
He intended to inform against it; but before
he could remit to the Parliament of Rouen a
copy that he had prepared, he was seized and
thrown into the Bastille, whence he was re
leased only on the 14th of July, 1789, by the
Revolution. " It is not," said he, " on the faith
of suspicions, reports, conjectures, or false
statements, that I inform against this horrible
conspiracy ; it is on the faith of its contract."
And when Laverdy, the comptroller-general
who had signed this contract in 1765, appeared
before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 3d
Brumaire, Year II. , Leprevost voluntarily came
to add his accusation to that of Fouquier-Tin-
ville. In the mean time all those who had
formed this company, who had been parties
to the alleged starvation-contract, and who
were accused by Leprevost de Beaumont with
having gained " tens of hundreds of millions,"
had successively died ruined or insolvent ; and
Malisset himself, the general agent of the com
pany, though still alive in 1791, was languish
ing in extreme penury and partial insanity.
The accusations of Leprevost de Beaumont
were evidently exaggerated. It is possible that
the wheat company shared its profits with in
fluential personages, with the favorites of the

1 1 2 Turgot.
king, — perhaps with the king himself; there
is proof that such disposition was made of the
shares of the Farmers-General. No less clear
is it that certain agents of the company spec
ulated on their own account, and that some
clerks committed embezzlements and thefts,
squandering the products in a lordly luxury
inconsistent with their patrimonial fortunes;
but no traces have ever been found of the
tens of hundreds of millions, — that is, of the
billions, — which, according to Leprevost de
Beaumont, were wrung from the wretched peo
ple by the accomplices of Malisset during the
last years of Louis XV.
In consequence of the accusations of Lepre
vost de Beaumont, — whether it was feared
that they might become public, or whether
there were other reasons, public or private, —
the Malisset lease had been cancelled by Abbe
Terray himself. In its place a new combina
tion, that of the profit-sharing Commission
(re'gie intiresse'e), was devised. The aim of
this Commission was to be the same as that
of the preceding monopoly; namely, to su
pervise the distribution of the wheat, to the
end that well-provided provinces should send
of their abundance to those that lacked. " A
Commission had been formed," say the records
touching Terray, " to take charge of the wheat

Free Trade in Grain. 113
business. Under it were two directors, or gen
eral agents for purchase and transportation
[Sorin de Bonne and Doumerc] ; so that it
should seem that all abuses in this quarter
must have been instantly checked. But the
Councillors of State complained that they were
not consulted, that nothing was communicated
to them ; and in fact Abbe Terray had been
wont to bring them the business all cut and
dried. What had rendered this conduct more
suspicious was that his underling, Brochet de
Saint-Prest, who had entered the Council a
beggar, now made a prodigious show of opu
lence and luxury; whence it was inferred that
Messrs. Terray and Brochet, far from putting
down the monopoly, were carrying it on
through their henchmen, who were likewise
enormously rich."
A month after the dismissal of Brochet de
Saint-Prest, on the 17th of September, 1774,
two fishermen found under a great stone in the
Seine, near Suresnes, a bundle of papers con
cerning the Grain Commission. It came into
the hands of the Intendant of Trade, Turgot's
friend Albert the economist, who had taken
the place of Brochet. Albert immediately
placed seals upon the papers of Sorin and
Doumerc, and clapped them both into the
Bastille. Overwhelming evidence was discov-

1 14 Turgot.
ered against Brochet and his wife, who had
borrowed large sums from the treasury of the
Commission, but the accounts of the agents
appeared correct. Traces were indeed found
of some embezzlements, to which Comptroller-
General Terray had doubtless shut his eyes ;
but nothing came to light to justify a criminal
prosecution. Albert released the two agents,
and declared that their accounts could be set
tled before the ordinary tribunal. As to the
irregular profits gained in private speculations,
it was impossible to make any estimate of them.
After so many scandals and scandalous ru
mors, there was but one course to take, — to
return to free trade in grain, and to djssolve
all those companies and bureaus which "had
they been composed of angels " could not
escape popular wrath and suspicion. The
Comptroller-General rightly resolved, therefore,
to annul the law improvised in 1770 by Terray.
He returned to the freedom — very restricted,
indeed — of the declaration of 1763 and the
edict of 1764.
The decree making the grain-trade free
was signed in the Council of Finance, Sept. 13,
1774, but it was not published until the 20th.
As early as the 7th, Baudeau announces in
his journal that "the declaration of 1763 con
cerning domestic free trade is about to be

Free Trade in Grain. 1 1 5
reaffirmed by a decree of the Council, which
thus blots out all trace of Abbe Terray ; " but
on the 1 8th he was still in the dark as to the
decision, and said : " There are fine contradic
tory rumors about the future decree of the
Council concerning the grain-trade. Some say
it will confirm the old principles, or will at
most but change one company for another.
The purveyors, Sorin and Doumerc, brag that
they will continue their jobbery."
The truth is, that in the week following
Turgot's proposition there had been a debate
in the Council. The Minister of Agriculture,
Bertin, who as Comptroller-General had pro
mulgated the liberal declaraticgi of 1763 and the
edict of 1764, while sharing Turgot's opinions,
feared to shock popular prejudice. He was
convinced that in the grain question experi
ence sanctioned but one method, — that of
" advancing by slow and successive steps."
In September, 1774, after the first communi
cation of the plan to the Council of Finance,
and before anything had been made public,
Bertin wrote to Turgot: "The documents you
sent me, while arousing my hopes both for
the general welfare and for that of my depart
ment, have renewed all my regrets touching
the past. ... I exhort you to proceed slowly
and cautiously. I should venture to pray you,

1 1 6 Turgot.
if this were possible for you, as it is for me,
and had you not long since shown your colors,
to conceal your views from the child whom
you have to govern and to cure. You cannot
help playing the part of the dentist."
Bertin was not the only one to counsel pru
dence ; there were others who wished to divert
Turgot from his aim. These persons, being less
attached to him, were repulsed with a certain
disdain. Necker, who had just been crowned
by the French Academy for his Eulogy of
Colbert, requested an audience for the purpose
of setting forth his views upon the wheat ques
tion. Morellet gives the following account of
the interview : " M. Turgot replied to the
author somewhat dryly, giving a personal turn
to his observations, telling him he might print
what he liked, that nothing was feared, that
the public would judge, refusing moreover
a copy of the manuscript, — all with that dis
dainful air which he too often had in dealing
with ideas opposed to his own. I do not get
this at second-hand. I saw it and heard it.
M. Necker came with his manuscript ; I heard
the replies to his offers, and I saw him go away
with the air of a man wounded but not cast
down." Here is a glimpse of the minister
of whom Madame de Boufflers said, " He is
freezing."

Free Trade in Grain. 1 1 7
Necker had his book printed and exposed
for sale at the time of the disturbances ; he
sent a copy to Turgot, who acknowledged its
reception by this laconic and cutting note of
April 23, 1775 : —
" I have received, Sir, the copy of your work that
you caused to be left at my door ; I thank you for
this attention. If I had had to write upon this sub
ject, and had felt bound to defend the opinion you
have adopted, I should have awaited a more peace
ful moment, when the question would have interested
only those who can judge dispassionately. But upon
this point, as upon others, each man has his own
way of thinking. Sir, I have the honor to be," etc.
Necker did not delay to reply. He humbly
bases his justification upon the date of the
authorization to print, — a date anterior to the
disturbances, and even to the rise in the price
of grain. " At that time," says he, " there
was not the least dearth anywhere. If the
dearth that has since arisen in some places had
seemed to you, Sir, or to the Lord Keeper, a
motive for suspending the publication of this
work, I should have shown respectful defer
ence to your wishes. ... It is distressing
enough to me to differ with you upon some
subjects of political economy; I would not
have you suspect me of any other fault. Your

1 1 8 Turgot.
opinion on this subject is of great moment
to me."
Necker's book had an immense success, and
went into a great number of editions. Turgot's
adversaries, the parliamentarians, the adminis
trators of Colbert's school, extolled it to the
sky. Partisans of the protective system made
of it, and can still make of it, their manual;
and this they fail not to do, drawing from it
arguments whose value is increased by the
honesty of the man who furnished them.
There is another school attached to the doc
trines of certain adversaries of Turgot, and pro
fessing for Necker's book a no less passionate
admiration, — the socialistic school of labor
organization. Thus Louis Blanc writes in his
" History of the French Revolution " : " Then
Necker seized his pen, and, upon a subject that
Galiani seemed to have exhausted, wrote a
powerful book, a book pervaded with grave
eloquence, with restrained feeling, a book of
which certain pages might have been acknowl
edged both by a statesman and by a poet.
Seeking in the grain question only an oppor
tunity for opposing, in the interests of the
people, the system of individualism, Necker
went back to the first principles of society,
and subjected them to an examination as lofty
as it was audacious."

Free Trade in Grain. 1 1 9
M. de Molinari, in his edition of the Grain
Laws, pronounces a very different judgment, —
a judgment which some may deem severe, but
which no Liberal can call unjust. He finds
in this book " much method and a certain
warmth of style, but a complete want of prin
ciples and a puerile ignorance of facts. The
author constantly goes by hypotheses, and
more often than not his hypotheses are false.
M. Necker's book has contributed more than
any other to darken counsel on the important
question of food."
The decree of Tuesday the 13th of Sep
tember, 1774, was again submitted to the Coun
cil on the 20th, and finally published. Among
the Minister's friends there was great rejoicing.
What first struck every one, and secured the
approbation of all men of elevated views, was
the care taken by Turgot to explain in a long
preamble the reasons for this change in legis
lation. Such public discussion was a novelty ;
thus Turgot is the inventor of the now general
usage of free governments, — of accompany
ing bills with a recital of motives. Mademoi
selle de Lespinasse writes to M. de Guibert:
" There will appear in a few days from now an
edict on the grain-trade ; it will he justified, —
this form is new." Condorcet says : " He set
the useful example of giving the public a de-

1 20 Turgot.
tailed and reasoned statement of the principles
upon which bills were drawn up." La Harpe
writes : " He is the first among us to convert
acts of sovereign authority into works of reason
and persuasion." Nor does Voltaire withhold
his praise : " Till now, we have not seen edicts
in which the sovereign condescends to instruct
jhis people, to reason with them, to point out
their true interests, to persuade before com
manding ; the substance of almost all com
mands from the throne has hitherto been
summed up in the words, ' for such is our good
pleasure.' "
The preamble of the decree of the 13th of
September is, in fact, a genuine discussion of
principles, wherein Turgot triumphantly de
monstrates that free trade in grain secures,
more fully and conveniently than police regu
lations, the food-supply of nations. It is in
some sort a new exposition of the doctrines so
well upheld by him some years before in the
seven letters on grain addressed to Terray. '
* " The freer, more active, more extended is
trade," says this admirable statement, "the
more promptly, efficiently, and abundantly are
the people supplied: Prices become more uni
form, and vary less from that average scale of
prices in accordance with which wages are nec
essarily regulated. Food cannot be supplied

Free Trade in Grain. 121
with equal success by the agency of the gov
ernment* Its attention, divided among too
many objects, must be less alert than that of
merchants occupied with their own trade.
••Government ascertains needs and resources
more tardily and less exactly.' Its agents, hav
ing no interest in economy, buy at a higher
rate, transport at greater expense, preserve
with less precaution." Much grain is lost
and damaged. »For want of skill or through
unfaithfulness these agents may enormously
increase the expense of their operations.1
Without the knowledge of government, they
may permit themselves illicit manipulations.
Even when most innocent they cannot avoid
being suspected ; and the* suspicion is always
reflected upon the administration employing
them, which becomes odious to the people by
reason of the very efforts it makes to relieve
public distress."-
" No minister," says the Metra correspond
ence, " has made our masters speak a nobler
and gentler language." Baudeau writes in his
journal : " It is received with great applause
by the public. The enemies of the good
Turgot are somewhat abashed by the form of
this decree, and by the wisdom of the princi
ples which it most clearly explains." Vol
taire writes to D'Alembert: " I have just read

122 Turgot.
M. Turgot's masterpiece. It seems to me that
I behold new heavens and a new earth."
Unfortunately, the situation grew more and
more difficult. The crops, scanty in 1774,
promised to yield nothing in 1775. Bachau-
mont wrote in his " Secret Memoirs " : " The
Comptroller-General persists in his system of
free trade in grain, and is not moved by the
universal scarcity. He insists that it will be
no severer than in the time of the monopoly,
that the distress will be transient, and that the
forestallers, punished for their greed, will lose
forever the desire to hold their grain."
On the 18th of April, 1775, a band of peas
ants invaded Dijon, sacking houses, plundering
mills, and making search for suspected stores
of grain. The governor was threatened with
death, and was accused of having said, " My
men, the grass is beginning to sprout; go
browse upon it." The bishop came into the
street and harangued the peasants, finally pre
vailing upon them to leave the town. It has
been often asked, then and since, what was the
cause of an uprising so sudden and so soon
suppressed? Is it to be regarded as simply a
spontaneous movement on the part of a suffer
ing people ? It is certain that those who took
part in the Dijon insurrection had not read
Turgot's statement, and that they would not

Free Trade in Grain. 123
have understood his earnest and lofty discus
sion of the principles of free trade ; they were,
therefore, certainly not provoked by the pe
rusal of the edict and its preamble. It is
related that Turgot had smilingly said, as he
gave a copy of this preamble to a friend : " It
will be pronounced diffuse and flat; my mo
tive was this, — I wished to make it so clear
that every village magistrate could explain it
to the peasants ; this is a matter in which the
popular opinion avails much." The popular
opinion was potent indeed for evil, but the
village magistrates had not yet had time to
mould it for good. The task is not so easy to
dissipate the choke-damp of prejudice, which
sometimes clings to the low levels of society
for several centuries after all enlightened men
have emerged from it.
Always to explain popular movements by
the theory of a conspiracy is as cheap a pro
ceeding as to attribute the recurring phe
nomena of Nature to the special intervention of
a supernatural power. Such judgments are for
the most part a mark of short-sightedness, and
we should not be too ready to accept them.
Nevertheless, there occurred circumstances at
Dijon, as afterward at Pontoise, Versailles, and
Paris, which are difficult to explain except by
supposing that there was a junto of more or

1 24 Turgot.
less masked ringleaders egging on and guid
ing the multitude. " The first topic of my ser
mon," writes Voltaire to Condorcet, " is the
baneful popular superstition against free trade
in grain and against free trade in general. You
see what outrages have just been perpetrated
at Dijon. God grant that the fetiches have not
underhandedly instigated this little Saint-Bar
tholomew! " And a month later to Madame
de Saint-Julien : " Had you been at Dijon,
you would have prevented the criminal upris
ing underhandedly instigated by M. Turgot's
enemies." Turgot replied to the Dijon insurrection,
not by making a concession to the party of re
striction, but, most characteristically, by giving
new pledges of freedom of trade at Dijon, at
Beaune, at Saint-Jean-de-Losne, and at Mont-
bard. He endeavored to meet the dearth by
diminishing the taxes. In a decree of the
Council issued four days after the insurrection
(April 22, 1775), and at the moment when he
was informed of it at Paris, he said : " The
king, desirous of preventing the grain neces
sary for the subsistence of his people from ris
ing above the price which it must justly and
naturally have according to the variation of
seasons and the condition of the harvests, has
by his decree of Sept. 13, 1774, and by his

Free Trade in Grain. 125
letters-patent of November 2, established free
dom of trade, which by its sole activity will
bring grain to the districts that may be in need,
and will prevent by means of competition any
excessive enhancement of price. . . There- \
fore the collection of all duties upon grain
and flour, whether at the city-gate or on the
market-place, whether as town-dues, or corn-
dues, or alnage, or market-dues, or any other j
dues whatsoever, is suspended in the towns of;
Dijon, Saint-Jean-de-Losne, and Montbard."
Meantime the high prices continued, and all
whose interests had suffered by the destruction
of the monopoly incessantly accused the Comp
troller-General of looking with indifference
upon the popular distress. But far from being
indifferent, Turgot endeavored, as formerly at
Limoges, to relieve the utterly destitute by
theTesfablishment of charitable workshops. In
anticipation of a possible renewed rise in the
price of provisions, he distributed through the
priests of Paris a tract upon the means of pro
viding for the Parisian people by an increase
of work; and he sent instructions to all the
provincial intendants for the establishment and
management of charitable workshops in the
country. These two documents are dated the
1st and 2d of May, 1775. On the very day of
their promulgation the Bread Riots broke out.

Turgot.

III.
MOBS had been formed in the country, ap
pearing first at Pontoise near the domains of
the Prince of Conti, plundering, burning houses,
demanding bread, and destroying grain ; incit
ing the people to seize boat-loads of wheat and
to divide the contents, as at Mery-on-Oise ;. and
invading towns in order to disorganize the mar
kets. Turgot's brother, the Chevalier, after
ward told Soulavie that " the pillagers appeared
to be supplied with gold and silver, and that
their movements were directed according to
the best principles of the art of war, doubtless
by an experienced general."
On the 2d of May, 1775, the mob ap
peared at Versailles before the palace, filling
the courts and vociferating for bread. Turgot
was at Paris, whither he had gone to confer
with the Lieutenant of Police and with Mar
shal Biron. The king appeared upon the bal
cony and attempted to speak, but was not
heard. The report was spread that he had
yielded to the urgency of those about him,
and had promised to reduce the bread-rate to
two sous; to this assertion the king's corre
spondence with Turgot, preserved by Marquis
Turgot in the archives of Lantheuil Castle,

The Bread Riots. 127
gives a crushing denial. During the day the
king wrote two autograph letters to Turgot, at
eleven in the morning and at two in the after
noon, respectively.1 In the evening Turgot
returned to Versailles, countermanded M. de
Beauveau's order reducing the bread-rate, and
forbade any one to require the dealers or the
bakers to sell grain or bread below the market
price. The next day (May 3) the mob entered
Paris and began to plunder; "there were
some streets where one would have thought
one's self in a city taken by storm." The po
lice were lax, and did not interfere ; it is even
asserted that they forced several bakers to
open their shops so that the rioters could
carry off bread without paying for it. Turgot,
who was continually on the road from Ver
sailles to Paris, and return, called a meeting
of the Council in the night of the 3d and 4th
of May. He spoke with the greatest energy
1 These two letters are given in full by M. Say, but are
omitted in this translation. They relate merely to matters
of detail, and derive their special interest from their correc
tion of the histories touching the king's conduct on this oc
casion. It should be added, for the sake of the connection,
that during this afternoon the bread-rate had been reduced
at Versailles by M. de Beauveau, without the sanction of
the king, who seems to have behaved with spirit and firm
ness. — Tr.

1 28 Turgot.
against Lenoir, the Lieutenant of Police, who
had done nothing for the suppression of dis
order. Obtaining his dismissal, he appointed
his friend Albert to the place. The com
mander of the night-watch of horse and foot
was likewise dismissed, and Marshal Biron or
ganized the resistance on a war footing. Two
armies were immediately formed, — one for the
interior of Paris, commanded by Biron ; the
other for the exterior, commanded by one of
his lieutenants. On the 4th, the rioters at
tempted to continue their pillage, but were
overawed by the attitude of the troops. The
plunderers retired, and the Parisians went out
of doors to look for the riot, — so they said, —
and did not find it.
During the day Parliament assembled and
caused a decree to be posted, forbidding tu
multuous assemblages, adding that the king
would be urged to reduce the bread-rate.
Turgot immediately stopped the distribution
of this decree, and had the parliamentary post
ers covered with placards, forbidding, in the
king's name, tumultuous assemblages, on pain
of death. At the same time he issued an
edict assigning the prosecution of the sedi
tious to the Criminal Chamber of La Tour
nelle. The Parliament met a second time to
reply. It asserted that the edict assigning the

The Bread Riots. 129
jurisdiction to La Tournelle was an infringe
ment of its immemorial prerogative of " gen
eral police supervision." It issued a second
decree claiming the jurisdiction, and again
urging the king to reduce the bread-rate.
Turgot immediately summoned the Parliament
to Versailles, to receive the king's orders in a
bed of justice.
The sitting was held on the morning of the
5th. Turgot not being present, the king in
formed him, in a note dated at six in the even
ing, that everything had passed off quietly,
and that the counsellors " had much abated
their impertinence." He continues : " My
memory almost failed me during my first
speech, but I went on as well as I could with
out becoming confused." The decree of the
day before was quashed, and the jurisdiction
assigned to the Provosts of the Marshalsea.
The provostal court immediately sentenced
two poor men to be hanged ; these men
mounted the scaffold crying that they died
for the people. There were some engage
ments in the country, and it is said that
twenty-three peasants were killed on the road
to Versailles.
Meanwhile, in order to reassure the grain-
dealers, Turgot had them indemnified for the
merchandise of which they had been robbed.
9

1 30 Turgot.
The communes were compelled to pay for the
damage done by the rioters. A friend of the
Marquis de Mirabeau, named De Butre, wrote
to Turgot asking to be relieved of the tax
levied upon his estate in consequence of the
riots. Turgot answered : " Touching the tax
imposed upon you in order to make good the
injury to the grain-trade, I agree that it is dis
agreeable to you, as well as to many others
who certainly took no part in the riots; but
you must feel that although the general ap
portionment of such indemnifications is an evil
to the innocent individuals upon whom it falls,
yet it is indispensable for the purpose of estab
lishing in the minds of merchants confidence
against popular uprisings, and for interesting
the whole country in the prevention of such
movements." It was a great victory for Turgot. The king
had firmly supported him. " You are right,"
wrote the king to him on the 6th of May, " but
all this will cost a great deal of money, and will
necessitate great retrenchment; but, a little
more or a little less, to this we must needs
come. As good issues sometimes from evil,
it will be seen from this that I am not so weak
as was imagined, and that I shall have power
to carry out my resolves. This will make our
future proceedings easier ; the truth is that I

The Bread Riots. 131
am more embarrassed with one man than with
fifty." Thus Turgot was at this juncture in posses
sion of the entire confidence of the king; he
had triumphed, not merely over the riot, but
over the opposition of the Parliament, over the
captious spirit of the Parisians, over the indiffer
ence affected by his colleagues. The Parisians
had said that they had looked for the riot and
had not found it; they made songs about it;
the women wore caps a la rivolte ; and the
movement was derisively dubbed " The Flour
War." Every one believed in the existence of
a conspiracy. Turgot explicitly asserts it in
his instructions to the king, and in his decrees.
" Brigandage has been instigated," says he,
" by strangers to the parishes which they came
to desolate. . . . The aim of this conspiracy
seems to have been to cause a real famine in
the provinces around Paris and in Paris itself,
so as to lash the starving and despairing peo
ple to the last degree of excess." 1 Writing to
the King of Sweden on the 15th of July, fol
lowing, Louis XVI. said : " The bad harvests
and the evil spirit of some conspirators have
incited rascals to plunder some markets."
Maria Theresa, replying to Marie Antoinette,
1 " Instructions sent by the Order of His Majesty to all
the Parish Priests of the Kingdom," May 9, 1775.

132 Turgot.
says, " I think with you that there is some
thing underneath it. " A great many person
ages were accused of taking part in this con
spiracy. Some said it was Sartine; Turgot
thought the Prince de Conti to have been at
the bottom of it. " I should not venture to
assert that he was wrong," writes Marmontel
in his " Memoirs."
At all events, the hopes of the instigators
were thoroughly disappointed; never had
Turgot more ascendency over the king than
during the days following the suppression of
the riots. The support given him by Male
sherbes in his Remonstrance of May 21, and
the entrance of that great and good man to
the ministry (July 6, 1775), sealed the triumph
of Turgot. Even the queen, who was the sur
est support of the Choiseul party, appeared
disarmed, for a time, alas ! too brief.

IV.

BUT we must turn back. In order not to
interrupt the narrative of the grain troubles,
from the restoration of free trade (September,
1774) to the Bread Riots (May, 1775), we have
passed over the greatest event of the begin-

Recall of the Parliaments. 133
ning of the reign, — the recall of the Parlia
ment.1 Maupeou's Coup d'Etat, as it was
then called, had produced in 1771 a profound
sensation, which still existed with unabated
intensity at the accession of Louis XVI. The
suppression of the parliaments and the cruel
violence exercised against their members had
aroused an opposition in public sentiment, in
support of the formidable opposition of inter
ests aroused in the magistracy by Maupeou's
radical change.
The new reign had been strongly urged to
return to the ancient organization of justice.
Maupeou had not, indeed, been able to avoid a
rock that generally proves fatal to revolutions
in which are involved the interests of a large
body of office-holders. The appointments,
made in haste, left much to be desired ; the
new judges were men of less weight than the
old. It was not without reason that these
" sham judges '' failed to command popular re-
1 It may not be amiss to remind the reader that the French
parliaments (of which there were thirteen, that of Paris being
the most important) were courts of justice rather than legis
latures. Unlike the English Parliament, they were in no
sense representative bodies, their members forming a judicial
aristocracy, practically hereditary (noblesse de robe). With
infinitely more integrity and public spirit than the nobility
proper, they were, as might be expected, conservative in sen
timent and stubbornly reactionary in tendency. — Tr.

1 34 Turgot.
spect. A kind of public opinion, even beyond
the circles of those interested, seemed to de
mand the dismissal of the new judges and the
recall of the old. Let us not, however, suffer
ourselves to be misled. The destruction of
the ancient parliaments, and the organization
of a magistracy with the sole function of ad
ministering justice without meddling with gov
ernment or politics, was the essential condition
of the civil, economical, and political reforms
that might have anticipated the violence of
the closing century, and might have permitted
the French Revolution to accomplish its work
by a gradual substitution of the principles
of modern government for those of the Old
Regime. M. de Larcy considers the recall of
the parliaments as the first step in the direction
of a policy that could end only in danger.1
Turgot agreed with all his colleagues save
Maurepas in opposing the recall. " We are
assured," says the Metra correspondence, " that
the king was obliged to take everything upon
himself, and even to make use of his authority
to bring it about, the members of his Council
being of a contrary opinion." But Maurepas,
more dexterous than Turgot, finally isolated
him. Condorcet wrote to Turgot to urge him
1 " Le Correspondant," August, 1868. Article on Louis
XVI. and Turgot.

Recall of the Parliaments. 135
to maintain his opposition, and there is no
doubt that Turgot inwardly assented to most
of Condorcet's arguments. In October or No
vember, 1774, Condorcet writes: —
" It is said that the old Parliament is about to be
recalled unconditionally, — that is, with all its in
solence, claims, and prejudices. The following will
be the results of this arrangement : First, all reform
in the laws will become impossible, for our laws are ad
mirable for the judges and detestable for those judged.
The more cruel, secret, oppressive, is criminal juris
prudence, the more powerful are the parliaments.
Secondly, as these gentlemen are either ignorant of
public opinion or despise it, they will be solicitous
only of retaining favor with the masses ; they will
defend all the tyranny of the prohibitive system, will
oppose all freedom, and will arouse sedition against
any minister who may wish to establish freedom.
Thirdly, as these gentlemen still cherish the opinions
entertained by the fools of the fourteenth century, as
they are absurdly ignorant of everything outside the
covers of the Olim Register, as they despise all light,
all philosophy, and as they are puffed up with the pride
of ignorance, they will continue to be hostile to all
enlightenment, will persecute it, and will endeavor to
plunge us back into the barbarism which they style
in their remonstrances ' the simplicity of antique
manners.' . . . Adieu, Sir; I cannot bear to think
that while you are minister, the right is to become
impossible."

136 Turgot.
Doubtless Turgot took care not to communi
cate Condorcet's letter to the Council, and his
opposition to the restoration of the parliaments
was probably based simply upon the interests
of the royal authority. He had not been a
pupil of the Physiocrats without being influ
enced even by such of their doctrines as may
have appeared to him extreme. Moreover, he
very sincerely believed that the king had power
to alter ancient institutions whenever the public
welfare required it, and he did not admit that
the intervention of the Parliament was neces
sary in order to give the royal decisions the
binding force of law. The phrase so often re
peated by the Jacobin school — that is, by the
men who have always been most opposed to
his economical doctrines — is said to have
originated with Turgot: "Give me five years
of despotism, and France shall be free."
It must be acknowledged that Turgot was
not entirely free to oppose, in the Council and
before the king, Maurepas's proposition for
the recall of the parliaments. He had con
curred in the dismissal of Maupeou, and of
Terray, whom he had succeeded after endur
ing him as a colleague for more than three
months, with what impatience we know. The
exile of Terray and Maupeou had been deter
mined upon at a meeting of the Council, in

Recall of the Parliaments. 137
which Turgot sat as Minister of Naval Affairs,
on the 24th of August, 1774, the anniversary of
Saint-Bartholomew. He therefore shared with
his colleagues the responsibility for what has
been called a ministerial Saint-Bartholomew;
and he certainly would not have contradicted
the Count d'Aranda, who, hearing the jest, had
added : " Yes, but not a massacre of the inno
cents." The necessary consequence of Mau
peou's exile was the return of the parliaments.
When Maurepas proposed it, Turgot was forced
to submit, for it was a natural result of a policy
with which he had been identified. On the 1 2th
of November, 1774, Louis XVI. held a bed of
justice, at which he restored the members of the
Parliament of Paris to the functions of which
they had been deprived on the 21st of January,
1 77 1 ; while in a series of edicts registered at
the same bed of justice he took — or thought
he took — precautions against the administra
tive and political encroachments of the judiciary
bodies. Some days later the Parliament as
sembled to protest against the curtailment of
its authority; and soon, in spite of the royal
edicts, things resumed their former course.
The Parliament held that it was bound, even
more than formerly, to defend what it called
the ancient constitution of the kingdom against
the proposed reforms.

1 38 Turgot.
The day when the Parliament recovered its
authority was a fatal day for France. It was
easy to foresee that the Parliament would be
come the fatal instrument of Turgot's fall, and
that its stubborn adherence to the Old Regime
would render a peaceful revolution more and
more difficult.

CHAPTER VI.
I. PREPARATION OF THE GREAT EDICTS. — II.
ABOLITION OF THE CORVEE. — III. SUPPRES
SION OF TRADE-GUILDS ; FREEDOM OF LABOR.
— IV. THE BED OF JUSTICE. I.
INTERRUPTED by the Bread Riots, but ever
resolved to pursue prejudices, privileges,
and abuses, encouraged moreover by his recent
victory, by the king's confidence, and by the
entrance into the Ministry of his friend the wise
Malesherbes, Turgot resumed the already very
advanced study of his vast plans with all the
activity of which he was capable. This he did
without either ostentation or mystery, so that
those whose interests were to suffer had full
opportunity to prepare for defence. In the
front rank of his adversaries was the Parliament,
and behind it the clergy; then the Court,
the Choiseul party, the Parisian middle class
threatened in its six merchant-guilds; and
finally, in the Ministry itself, Hue de Miromenil,
Keeper of the Seals, and the Prime Minister,
Maurepas.

140 Turgot.
By the clergy Turgot was regarded, not
without reason, as a philosopher. They re
membered that phrase from the " Conciliator,"
in reference to the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes : " Religion was disgraced for the
sake of flattering Louis XIV. ; " and that other
vigorously worded opinion that the king should
not be the head of the Church, any more than
the head of the Church should be king. " The
English royal supremacy, the temporal power
of the popes, — these are the two abusive ex
tremes." Nor had the clergy forgiven the ef
forts he had made to obtain a modification of
the king's coronation oath. Turgot had urged
Louis XVI. to suppress the passage in which
he swore " to entirely exterminate from his
states all the heretics expressly condemned by
the Church."
Louis was moved by Turgot's representa
tions, and would probably have consented, had
he not been overreached by Maurepas, who
had no stomach for a quarrel with the bishops.
After feebly holding off, the king yielded, and
pronounced the ancient formula, — confining
himself, however, to some j inarticulate mum
blings. There remains in jthe Lantheuil ar
chives an interesting proof; of the impression
that Turgot had made upon the king's mind
by his spoken and written observations, and

Preparation of the Great Edicts. 141
by going to Rheims to expostulate with the
king at the last moment touching this grave
declaration of intolerance. This is an auto
graph note from the king to Turgot, dated at
Rheims, June 10, 1775 : l —
I have not had you summoned, Sir, to give you
an answer to your yesterday's letter, because I pre
ferred to send you a written token of my appreciation
of your course on this occasion. I think that the
step you have taken is a proof of your honor and of
your attachment to me. I am deeply indebted to
you, and shall always be grateful if you will address
me with equal frankness. Nevertheless, I cannot at
this moment follow your advice ; I have considered
the matter since, and have conferred with several per
sons, and I think it will be less embarrassing to make
no change. But I am none the less obliged for your
advice, and you may be sure that it will remain se
cret, as I beg you to keep this letter. Louis.
Turgot made no secret of his course, nor did
he consider himself beaten. After the king
had mumbled the famous formula at the coro
nation, Turgot addressed to him a long letter
containing the most admirable advice and in
struction touching toleration. " Can religion
then command, can it permit, crimes? To
decree a crime is to commit one ; he who
1 The day before the coronation. — Tr.

142 Turgot.
commands another to murder is looked upon
as a murderer. Now, the prince who orders
his subject either to profess or to renounce a
religion in which the subject does not believe,
commands a crime. The subject who obeys,
acts a lie, betrays his conscience, does what he
believes that God forbids." Turgot does not,
however, believe in the binding nature of for
mulas " drawn up in unenlightened ages. All
is not lost; Your Majesty cannot be bound to
do a thing that would be unjust."
The zealots, headed by the Count of Pro
vence, expressed themselves with the extrem-
est violence touching the Comptroller-General.
The future Louis XVIII. condescended even to
write with his own hand a diatribe against the
minister ; but his pamphlet, entitled " The
Dream of M. Maurepas," produced little effect.
It converted no one, being read only by those
whose opinions were already formed. The
zealots sought to disturb the king's conscience
by telling him that Turgot did not attend mass.
"Does M. Turgot not go to mass?" inquired
the king of Maurepas. " I do not know, Sire,"
replied that vivacious functionary; " M. Terray
went every day."
The queen submitted unwillingly to the con
trol of her expenditures. Bailly relates that
Turgot had obtained a promise from the king

Preparation of the Great Edicts. 143
that no order for cash should be issued within
a certain time. Not many days later a check
for 500,000 francs was presented at the Treas
ury in the name of "a certain personage of
the Court," presumably the queen. Turgot
went straight to the king for instructions. " I
was taken by surprise," apologized the king.
"Sire, what am I to do?" "Do not pay it."
The minister obeyed.
Marie Antoinette passionately defended her
favorites. It was in connection with an affair
involving one of Choiseul's friends, Count de
Guines, Ambassador to England, that she gave
Maurepas to understand that he had better not
fall out with her. This ambassador's secretary
claimed from his chief considerable sums that
the plaintiff had been compelled to pay, or
still owed, for margins in stocks. The plain
tiff alleged that he had acted as the ostensible
agent of his ambassador, who — so the plaintiff
said — was wont to gamble at the Exchange
on the strength of the diplomatic secrets of
which he was cognizant. Count de Guines
solicited permission to produce in his defence
before the court some of his despatches to the
king. This permission the Council refused.
Greatly incensed by this decision, the queen
obtained from the king the permission which
the Council had unanimously denied. It is

144 Turgot.
said that Maurepas was amazed at the ascen
dency exercised by the queen, on this occa
sion, over the king's mind ; and that Maurepas
forthwith resolved to leave Turgot to himself,
to take no further interest in his reforms,
and, in case of need, to throw the Comptroller-
General overboard in order to save the Prime
Minister. Although warned of the plots that were rife
about him, Turgot's activity in the furtherance
of his plan did not slacken. On the 5th of
January, 1776, Turgot laid before the Council
the six edicts that are his glory. These he
prevailed upon the king to accept after a most
thorough-going discussion ; these he compelled
the Parliament to register in a bed of justice,
despite the most strenuous opposition; and
these finally brought about his downfall. His
triumph was his ruin.

II.
The Six Edicts were of unequal impor
tance. The first required the suppression of
the corvde, or forced labor; the second, the sup
pression of the grain-police at Paris ; the third,
the suppression of the offices on the quays, at
the markets, and on the wharves of Paris ; the

^ 4 bolition of the - o^'6 • 1 4 7
urth, the su n nrivileg^Jf the exclusive ^
ustrial corpora^ equ? trade-guilds {jurandes s
maitrises~).\ the fifth, the suppression of the
easury of Poissy ; the sixth, the modification
f the duty on tallow.
We shall dwell only upon the edicts relating
the corvie x and to the jurandes. Several
ars before, while Intendant at Limoges,
urgot had made his first attempt to relieve
e peasantry from the burden of forced labor.
e recognized its extreme oppressiveness, and
w that the work thus done for the Board of
blic Works was very unproductive.. He
h|d therefore endeavored to substitute a tax
in money. Being powerless to modify the
law, he had given to this exemption-tax the
same distribution that obtained in the case of
the corve'e, making it a money-payment sup
plementary to the taille (ordinary tax). This
purchase in money of exemption from forced
labor was not without analogy with the present
method. It is needless to state that the money-
1 "Until the Regency," says John Morley, "this famous
word had described only the services owed by dependents to
their lords." From that time to the Revolution, it meant to
the peasants twelve or fifteen days of forced labor each year
for the construction and repair of roads, which, after all,
were of little advantage to the peasants, but of great advan
tage " to the town merchants and the country gentlemen,
who contributed not an hour nor a sou to the work." — Tr.
10

/

144 urgot.
. , ,/ment is to-day c , .A all the ta^
said , , nmazed at , i
payers take advantage i. d the proportiol
between the payments in money and paymen|
in labor varies from department to depail
ment Statistics have brought out, howev^
a remarkable fact, — the departments where til
largest proportion of this exemption-money-
paid, are those of the old Generality of LimJ
ges. This is a tradition dating from Turgot.l
In the general preamble to his six edicj
Turgot recalled this conversion of the a>r?B
into a tax payable in money, — a conversii^
effected in some other generalities in imitatid
of his example. Had he aimed simpljrat sul
pressing the corve'e, or if, converting it ir
a money-tax, he had imposed it only upd
those subject to the taille} he might, as
believed, have proceeded by decree withe
insisting upon the registration of a law. 1)
aim is, however, far wider: in the very fir'
line of his preamble he declares that what he
seeks to realize is nothing less than a revolu
tion in the assessment of taxes. His purpose
is, in fact, to abolish privileges, and to subject
the nobility and the clergy to taxation upon
an equal footing with other citizens. It was
because it embodied so formal and so direct
1 From which the clergy and the nobility were exempt.—
Tr.

Abolition of the Corvee. 147
an attack upon privilege, and because it was a
first step toward equality of taxation, that the
Jedict concerning the corve'e was singled out for
[the most strenuous opposition.
* " The weight of this burden falls," says the
preamble, " and must fall, only upon the poor
est class of our subjects, upon those who have
no property save their hands and their indus
try, — upon the husbandmen and the farmers.
The landowners, almost all of them privileged,
are exempt, or contribute but little ; yet it is
to the landowners that the roads are useful by
the increased value of the products of their
estates due to improved facilities for communi
cation and transport. ... It is therefore the
landowning class that reaps the fruit of the
labor expended upon roads ; and since it en
joys the interest, it alone should make the in
vestment. How can it be just to make those
pay who have nothing of their own, to force
them to give their time and their labor without
wages, to deprive them of their only resource
against penury and hunger, for the benefit of
citizens wealthier than they? . . . According
to the account that we have caused to be made
of the roads to be built and kept up in our
different provinces, we think we can assure our
subjects that the expenditure for this purpose
will in no year exceed ten million francs for

148 Turgot.
the entire territory of the elections.1 This
tax having as its object an expenditure ad
vantageous to all landowners, we desire thatf
all landowners, privileged and non-privileged,
contribute to it, as is usual in the case of all
'
local expenses."
The preamble and the purview of the edict
abolishing forced labor had been the subject
of very long study before they were sub
mitted to the king, and were afterward thor
oughly sifted and discussed by the Keeper of
the Seals, Hue de Miromenil. Cherest, in his
history of "The Fall of the Old Regime,"
says that the king asked also the advice of
another member of the Council, whom he
believes to have been Malesherbes. The me
morial attributed by Cherest to Malesherbes is
preserved in the National Archives.
In drawing up his observations, Miromenil
followed the preamble and the provisions of
the edict, paragraph by paragraph and article
by article. He begins by declaring his impar
tiality; he does justice to the intentions of the
author of the plan, and announces the intention
of setting up no formal contradiction, but of
1 Pays d'ilection : provinces subdivided into fiscal dis
tricts (Elections), in which. the taxes were assessed by officers
appointed for that purpose. The other provinces (pays
d'itat) had provincial Estates (assemblies) for granting or
assessing the taxes. — Tr.

Abolition of the Corvee. 149

discussMng an important matter upon its merits.
He thoiaJn recalls the labors of Orry and of Tru-
daine.ti who thought the corvie could be re-
formejJd but not abolished, and endeavors to
prover <# that all classes profit by the good con-
ditioi) Ii of the roads. " The landowners are not
the Qarfnly ones," says he, " to derive advantage
fromjt J ^veil-kept highways ; travellers, wagoners,
evenj tf' peasants who go on foot, derive equal
advfisjntage." T<rijb this Turgot rejoins: " Touching the pe-
desb.fjrian peasants, the honorable Keeper of the
Sc^f Ms will pardon me for believing that the
plAereisure of walking upon a well-gravelled road
dcfiajs not compensate them for their gratuitous
la|hh or in constructing it."
It would be interesting to cite the whole dis-
cfcfussion between these two eminent men. Miro-
Inenil displays great nimbleness of wit, and
ijsjirings forward, under various and rather novel
forms, arguments very old in substance. He
iseems to desire not to push the argument too
'far, and to think that some easy concessions
will be enough to win over the minds of his
opponents. Turgot permits himself to be
shaken or surprised by no argument ; he has
an answer to everything. Since the entire dis
cussion cannot be presented here, it is neces
sary to mention Miromenil's chief objections

150 Turgot. \
and Turgot's replies touching the tax This
substituted for forced labor on roads. *e ad-
" I shall not repeat here," says Miro: that*
" what I have said, in my observations o^ged,
preamble, concerning the general incokf all
iences that may be found in the establish
of a territorial tax as a substitute for the ^dict
of men and horses; I shall merely reijject
that it is perhaps dangerous , absoluteliub-
destroy all privileges. I do not mean t^ior-
attached to certain offices, which I prefer of
regard as abuses acquired by purchase ralhis
than as genuine privileges ; but I cannot ref\e,"
from saying that in France the privilega 0f
the nobility should be respected, and that \ he
the king's interest to maintain it." jj^-
Turgot replies : " The honorable Keeper <fe
the Seals seems here to adopt the principle
that, by the constitution of the state, the nol
bility should be exempted from all taxations
He seems even to think this to be a univer-l
sal prejudice dangerous to disturb. If this!
prejudice be universal, I must be strangely de-i
ceived touching the views of all the thoughtful
men I have met in the whole course of my
life ; for I can recall no company in which this
idea has been looked upon as anything better
than an obsolete claim, abandoned by all en
lightened persons, even in the order of the no-

Abolition of the Corvee. 151
discuss,. £ Since the expenditures of the gov-
He thf; are for the interests of all, all ought
daine„tibute^ and the more fully one enjoys
formej^antages of the social union, the more
provej one feel honored to share in its bur-
ditior/lFrom this standpoint, it is difficult to
the qh justice in the pecuniary privilege of the
fromijy.r In another passage : " There is a
even/Ieason why this privilege is more unjust
advc'ifurdensome, while at the same time less
Tffctable. j By means of the readiness with
dest*h titles may be purchased, there is no
S?* 1 man who may not become noble out of
pMid ; so that, as thenobility includes the whole
dcfiy of the rich, the cause of the privileged is
lao longer the cause of distinguished families
frsus commonersjj — it is the cause of the
cich against the poor/] The motives that might
ipad us to respect privilege if it were limited
f|o the race of the ancient defenders of the
Mate, no longer have the same validity when
jthis privilege is shared by the tribe of con
tractors who have robbed the state. Moreover,
'what kind of an administration would that
be, which should lay all public burdens upon
the shoulders of the poor, and let the rich go
free?" The memorial attributed by Cherest to
Malesherbes contains analogous observations

152 Turgot.
couched in almost identical terms. Tur^ q> S°t as
serted, not without reason, that his pre £ osition
had always been held by the statesmen tfn who
had attempted to regulate the financespeCrei> from
the time of Desmarets, of Orry, and cp0f \ Ma-
chault, to his own. ( " All the finance-numb, ^ters,"
said he, " have thought and done the !^edi|lrnei
all have sought to consolidate the tweneikjejphs^
and to restrict the exemption from the ^l^uRr*
The author of the memorial shares this ttho^jP'n_
ion ; he begins thus : " Not every noble, inieW jjjeed,
is rich, but every rich man is noble. . . . «l \0he
tax which in all reason and justice shouldle,'| be
proportioned to wealth, is, on the contrary o'. a
tax from which men are exempted on the scdfo ire
of wealth." And he closes as follows : fe...
From all this I conclude that the objectiokiMi
of the Parliament in favor of the privileges c\ uf
, the nobility is unfounded, and that it would bale
''; most dangerous for the king to allow this sysi,-
I tern to gain favor, because it tends to counter-l
; ; act all the great things that have been done fori
I a century, and all the good that can be donel
'j in the matter of taxation, j Finally, while as'i,
unfriendly to despotism as ever, I shall say con- '
stantly to the king, to the Parliament, and, if
necessary, to the whole nation, that this is one
of those matters that must be decided by the
absolute will of the king, — and for this reason :

(c

Abolition of the Corvee. 153
at bottom, this i.i a lawsuit between the rich
and the poor. Now, of what is the Parliament
made up? Of men wealthy in comparison
with the masses, and all noble, since their of
fices convey nobility. The Court, whose clamor
is so powerful, — of what is it composed? Of
great lords, the majority of whom own estates
that will be subject to the tax, and that have
not been subject to the corve'e. Of what is the
Parisian public composed ? Of many nobles,
or rich men enjoying the privileges of nobility,
— these are they whose talk, is loudest, — and
of a people subject to other taxes, but not to
the taille or to the corve'e. Consequently, nei
ther the remonstrances of the Parliament, nor
the applause of the Parisian public, nor even
the clamor of the Court, should in any wise
prejudice this case. . . . Let the States Gen
eral or the States Provincial of France be as
sembled, — this is the wish of my heart, and of
all good Frenchmen. Let these estates be so
constituted that the people may make itself
heard, — and not have, as its sole representa
tives, bailiffs, seneschals, officials, whose inter
ests are not those of the true people, and who
are always dependent upon a great lord or a
minister; then, indeed, will it seem just to re
fer to such an assembly the question of the
distribution of the taxes. But so long as the

1 54 Turgot.
people shall have no voice in the parliaments,
the king, after hearing them, must judge for
himself, and he must judge in favor of the peo
ple, because this estate is the most unhappy."
Turgot yielded to Miromenil only upon the
question of the clergy, but preserving his
opinion: 'J The privilege of the clergy is open
the same discussion as that of the nobility ;
I think it no better founded. As, however,
after deducting tithes and surplice-fees, eccle
siastical property forms no very considerable
object, I will consent to adjourn the discussion
of the principle, and to sacrifice the provision
relating to the clergy, notwithstanding the jus
tice of it." And, alluding to the opposition
of Maurepas, he adds : " And perhaps the
opinions of the king and of the Ministry are
undecided enough to make it worth while to
avoid having two quarrels at once."
Miromenil had asserted tfc*at there were in
France three great orders, 4->ihe Clergy, the
Nobility, and the Third Estate;) and that each
of these orders had its rights, its privileges,
perhaps its prejudices, which it was necessary
to preserve intact. Turgot replied : " The
honorable Keeper of the Seals talks of the
privileges of the Third Estate. It is known
that the Nobility and the Clergy have privi
leges, and that, in the Third Estate, some

Abolition of the Corvee. 155
cities and some private corporations have them.
But the Third Estate, as a whole, — that is,
the people, — is far from having privileges ;
it has them in inverse order, since the burden
that the exempted should have borne is always
shifted to the backs of those not exempted."
M. de Miromenil read the answers that Tur
got had written in the margin of his manu
script, and returned the packet with this note :
" M. de Miromenil sends, with a thousand
compliments to M. Turgot, the plan of an
edict concerning the corve'es, and his observa
tions. He also returns the papers concerning
compulsory feudal service {les banalite's") , and
confesses himself to be little impressed by the
replies to his observations."
The king was more impressed by them than
the Keeper of the Seals, and permitted the
edicts approved by him to be sent to the Par
liament on the 9th of February, 1776. The
time that had elapsed between the submission
of the edicts to the king and the 9th of Feb
ruary had been employed by opponents in
organizing their opposition. Turgot's friends,
made anxious by this, were eager to have the
matter settled. " The well-intentioned mem
bers of the Parliament," wrote Trudaine, " who
are few in number, desire a firm course, and
for that, haste is requisite. The more delay

156 Turgot.
there is, the more chance there will be for
systematic opposition." The Parliament reg
istered the edict suppressing the Treasury of
Poissy, and appointed commissioners to ex
amine the others. On the 17th of February
the Attorney-General and the commissioners
reported unfavorably on the edict for the sup
pression of forced labor. A vote was taken,
and it was decided " that a Remonstrance
should be laid before the king, entreating
him to graciously withdraw the said edict, as
being inadmissible both in substance and in
details." There was no longer any doubt that the bed
of justice was inevitable. As, however, Male
sherbes hesitated to have recourse to this final
measure, nearly a month was lost, and during
this time the cabals grew extremely violent.
Trudaine did not cease to urge haste. " All
interests," so he wrote, " are affected by the
public suspense ; a thousand cabals, active,
violent, audacious, openly attack the existence
of the Ministry. The ministers seem tranquil,
slow, often undecided ; they are thought to be
uncertain of their position, anxious, dismayed.
It is not even known that they are united
among themselves. In this condition, all de
lay is dangerous. . . . Since the assembling
of the Parliament, securities have considerably

Abolition of the Corvee. 157
declined on Change. This decline will continue
so long as the king remains undecided."
Meanwhile, the king appeared unshaken.
" The king has made edicts," wrote Marie
Antoinette to Maria Theresa, "which will per
haps occasion new broils with the Parliament;
I hope matters will not go so far as during the
last reign, and that the king will maintain his
authority." But Malesherbes, Turgot's friend
and collaborator, asked for modifications in
the purview of the edict concerning the cor-
vees, in order to prevent certain administrative
abuses ; and he desired, in case the consent
of the Parliament could not be obtained, that
recourse should be had to the Court of Aids.
Trudaine held that these half-way measures
would be taken for weakness, and Turgot was
naturally of his opinion. The king being with
Turgot, it was determined to proceed to the
bed of justice.
In the interval, the pamphleteering war
fare went forward with increasing vigor. Each
day saw the hatching of a new petition, a new
memorial, new ballads, epigrams, and puns.
" M. de Malesherbes does all ;
" M. de Sartine doubts all ;
" M. Turgot spoils all ;
" M. de Saint-Germain routs all ;
"M. de Maurepas mocks all."

158 Turgot.
Turgot's friends allowed themselves to be
moved by all these stings, — a great error ;
they even became angry, and thus put them
selves doubly in the wrong. The Council sat
isfied them by taking severe measures against
the authors of the memorials and pamphlets,
suppressing these works by a decree of the
22d of February, 1776. The Parliament saw
in this act of severity a challenge on the part
of Turgot's friends, and responded on the 23d
by proscribing a book against the privileged
classes, entitled " The Inconveniences of Feu
dal Laws," which was just then making a great
stir. The author, Boncerf, was one of Tur
got's secretaries ; he acknowledged the work,
and was ordered to be committed. This book
seems very moderate to those who read it to
day. The author enumerates, without exag
geration of language, the disadvantages of feu
dal laws, and proposes simply to authorize or
to command the purchase of exemption from
them. Present vassals were to be allowed to
redeem their lands ; their heirs were to be
obliged to do so. The Parliament looked
upon the discussion of this system as a kind
of criminal offence, and condemned the bro
chure "as prejudicial to the laws and customs
of France, to the sacred and inalienable rights
of the crown, and to the right of private own

Abolition of the Corvee. 159
ership of property, — as tending to shake the
whole constitution of the monarchy by arous
ing all vassals against their lords and against
the king himself, and by representing all feu
dal and domanial rights as so many usurpa
tions, vexations, and outrages, equally hateful
and absurd."
Turgot immediately called Boncerf to Ver
sailles to protect him from the Parliament, to
which he sent orders to desist from prosecu
tion. Hearing of this vigorous course, Vol
taire cannot contain himself for joy, and writes
to Audibert, February 28 : " Perhaps you already
know that this Parliament, having burned by
the hangman at the foot of its great staircase
an excellent book in favor of the people,
composed by M. de Boncerf, Chief Clerk to
M. Turgot, and having ordered the author to
be committed, His Majesty has commanded
them to annul their decree, and has forbid
den them to condemn books. His Majesty
gives them to know that such condemnations
must proceed from his Attorney-General, and
that he cannot make them without the king's
orders. Here are judgments worthy of Titus
and Marcus Aurelius; these legal gentlemen
are, however, not Roman senators. As to M.
Turgot, he has all the bearing of an ancient
Roman."

1 60 Turgot.
All these skirmishes had preceded the open
ing of grand hostilities. A war without quar
ter was about to begin, — to end, alas ! in the
downfall of the defenders of equality, and in
the triumph of the coalition of the privileged.
On the 2d of March, 1776, the Parliament
drew up the text of its Remonstrance. It sent
a deputation to Versailles to bear the Remon
strance to the king, and to ask him to fix a
time for its formal presentation by the Parlia
ment. On the 7th, Louis replied as follows to
a second deputation : " I have examined the
Remonstrance of my Parliament; it contains
nothing that had not been foreseen and ma
turely considered."
The Parliament urged in its Remonstrance
that if it had failed to register the edict on the
suppression of the corvee, this was because
such suppression would be a violation of jus
tice. " The first rule of justice is to preserve
to each one his own: a fundamental rule of
natural law, of the law of nations, and of civil
government, — a rule which consists not only
in maintaining the rights' of property, but in
conserving those which are attached to the per
son, and which grow out of the prerogatives
of birth and rank. . . . The right of the corve'e
belonged to the Franks over their men. . . .
When their serfs obtained emancipation, in

Suppression of Trade-Guilds. i6'i
becoming free citizens but commoners, they j
became subject to the corve'e. . . . To subject
the nobles to a redemption-tax for the corve'e^
to the prejudice of the maxim that ' no one is\
liable to the corve'e who is not liable to the!
taille! is to decide them liable to the taille like'
commoners." The refusal to listen to the Remonstrance
was the announcement of the bed of justice ;
before describing it, we must examine the edict
suppressing the trade-guilds.

III.
The suppression of the Exclusive Indus
trial Corporations1 and the establishment of
Freedom of Labor constitute Turgot's greatest
reform, — that in which his personal influence
is most plainly seen, and which won its final
triumph in the Revolution by the sheer force
of liberal ideas. Civil equality and the aboli
tion of privileges may be, and have been, the
result of another passion than that of freedom,
— of this our whole history since 1 789 is the
proof. The protective system and the organi-j
zation of labor are not incompatible with what^
1 Jwrandes and maitrises. Literally, wardenships and
masterships of guilds. — Tr.

1 62 Turgot.
are called modern governments, — the govern
ments that have succeeded the Old Regime.
Thus it is to Turgot much more than to the
Revolution that we are indebted for freedom
of labor; and it is to the freedom of labor
inaugurated by Turgot that, after the defini
tive triumph of his ideas, the France of the
nineteenth century owes the astonishing out
burst of industrial force which the present
generation has witnessed.
The preamble of the edict for the suppression
of the trade-guilds is a masterly work, of which
it is proper to give an analysis, with extracts
embodying the main considerations.
TJie__right to labor is a natural right. It
has been infringed, indeed, by"ancieiit Ihsfitu-
tions, but these infringements have been justi
fied neither by time, nor by public opinion,
nor by the acts of authority which seem to
have sanctioned them. I In almost all towns
the exercise of the different arts and trades was
centred in the hands of a small number of
masters united in guilds, who alone had the
freedom to manufacture and sell the articles of
the particular industry of which they held the
exclusive privilege. J He who devoted himself
to any art or trade could not exercise it freely
until after attaining the mastership, to which he
could be admitted only by submitting to long,

Suppression of Trade-Guilds. 163
tedious, and superfluous tests, and at the cost
of multiplied exactions depriving him of a
part of the capital requisite for establishing a
business or for fitting up a workshop. ( Those
who could not afford these expenses were
j reduced to a precarious existence under the
[sway of the masters, with no choice but to live
;in penury at home or to carry to some foreign
land an industry that might have been useful
to their country. )
Citizens of all classes were deprived of the
right of choosing the workmen whom they
would have liked to employ, and of the advan
tages in price and execution secured by com
petition. Frequently the simplest piece of
work could not be executed except by appli
cation to the members of different guilds, and
one had to bear the delays, the bad faith, the
exactions, encouraged by the claims of these
different corporations and by the caprices of
their arbitrary and selfish system.
(_[" These abuses crept in by degrees. They
were originally the outcome of the selfishness
of individuals, who established them against
the public. It was after a long period of time
that authority — now taken by surprise, again
deluded by a semblance of utility — gave them
a kind of sanction. The source of the evil
lies in the very permission granted to artisans

1 64 Turgot.
of the same craft to assemble and to unite in
an association." J
The preamble shows that the guilds origi-
nated with the fre^cities."" When towns began
to emancipate themselves from feudal bondage,
and to form free communities, it became the
custom to classify citizens according to theirj
trade. " Thus the various crafts became so)
many different communities, of which the gen-i
eral community was made up. The religious'
brotherhoods, by tightening the cords that
united the individuals of the same craft, gave
them more frequent occasions to assemble,
and to occupy themselves in these meetings
with the common interest of their particular
society, — an interest which they pursued with
continued activity, to the prejudice of the in
terests of society in general. Once formed,
the guilds enacted statutes, and under various
pretexts of public welfare obtained their au
thorization by the magistracy." The preamble
goes on to enumerate the provisions of the
majority of the statutes of the guilds, — provi
sions tyrannical, and opposed to public welfare.
The main object of these guilds was to restrict
the number of masters as much as possible,
and to render attainment of the mastership
almost insuperably difficult for all but children
of masters.

Freedom of Labor. 165
" ProTThe spirit of monopoly which dictated
tk °f Henactment of these statutes went to all
leriglnet <ths. Some of these statutes exclude from
appr^e Qfenticeship, and consequently from mas-
tersh ^Mip, young men who marry before be-
comi,rstVig masters. Women are excluded from
tkx' grades most natural to them, as embroid
ery, which they can exercise only on their
own account.
"We shall not continue the enumeration of
the strange and tyrannical provisions, contrary
to humanity and to good morals, that fill these
obscure codes enacted by greed, adopted in
times of ignorance without examination, and
needing only to be known, to be objects of
public indignation."
The edict is divided into twenty-four articles.
ArticleL_Jeclares Jhat all persons, even for
eigners, are free to practise their art, craft, or
tra^e~~m^Tri^iT^wrr"wa'y, and that they may
even combine several ; and it suppresses all
the companies anH"" guilds of merchants and
artisans, together with the masterships and
wardenships. Articles II. and III. command
all merchants and artisans to make a declara
tion in advance before the Lieutenant-General
of Police, for purposes of registration. Arti
cles IV. and V. except from the preceding con
ditions barbers, wig-makers, bath-keepers, their

1 66 Turgot.
masterships having been made official in <e con
sideration of certain payments to the Rj °yal
Bureau of Contingent Taxes. Goldsml'rig-'^i
apothecaries, printers, and booksellers tgzwere
likewise excepted on account of police re|agJu'a-
tions to which they were subject. Articles^ t1 VI,
VII., VIII., and IX. set forth the conditionk.ef.of
the registration of artisans, and the precautions'-^.
to be taken in the sale of drugs. Article X.
establishes syndics in the different quarters of
the cities, especially at Paris, to watch over
the tradesmen and artisans of their districts,
without distinction of condition or craft, to re
port to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and
to receive and transmit his orders. Articles
XI. and XII. lay down a summary form of pro
cedure, in accordance with which the Lieuten
ant-General of Police is to decide the disputes
that may arise on account of defective and
scamped work. Article XIII. expressly for
bids the sworn wardens to continue to exercise
their functions.
Article XIV is the one which since the
Revolution has been most frequently attacked.
It prohibits all masters, companions, journey
men, and apprentices of the companies and
guilds from forming any union or association,
no matter on what pretext. The remaining
articles relate to questions of jurisdiction and

The Bed of fustice. 167
procedure, and fix the methods of liquidation
of the guilds, especially those of Paris, whose
net assets, after the payment of debts, were to
be divided equally among the masters.
Such is the celebrated edict which for the
first time introduced freedom of labor into
France. Detractors of the reform were not
wanting then, and they still exist ; we shall re
produce their objections, which were appro
priated by the Parliament in its report upon
the bed of justice.

IV.
THE Bed of Justice for the registration of
Turgot's famous edicts was held at Versailles,
on the 1 2th of March, 1776. The speakers
were the king, Hue de Miromenil Keeper of
the Seals, First President d'Aligre, and Seguier
the Royal Advocate.
" Gentlemen," said the king, " I have called
you together to make known to you my will ;
my Keeper of the Seals will explain it."
Miromenil then made a summary statement
of the edicts and a justification of them, — in
cluding the one for the abolition of the corve'e,
which he had so perseveringly opposed in the
Council. His speech is a very short analysis

1 68 Turgot.
of the general preamble, and of the special
preambles of the several edicts. The duties
of his office obliged him to defend what he
had so sharply attacked.
The First President followed the Keeper of
the Seals, speaking for the Parliament, ex
pressing himself in a pompous style, and as if
terror-smitten. " Sire, on this day, when Your Majesty's
power is exerted only in the persuasion that
your goodness is displayed, the pomp that
surrounds Your Majesty, and the absolute use
that you make of your authority, fill all Your
Majesty's subjects with profound dismay, and
bespeak a grievous duress. . . . Why is it
that to-day deep gloom everywhere confronts
Your Majesty's august gaze? If Your Ma
jesty deigns to cast your eyes upon the peo
ple, you will see the people in consternation ;
if upon the capital, you will see the capital
in alarm. . . . This edict [touching the cor
ve'e^, by the introduction of a new kind of
perpetual and arbitrary taxation of real estate,
is essentially prejudicial to the property of
the poor as well as of the rich, and deals a
new blow to the natural freedom of the no
bility and the clergy, whose distinctions and
rights belong to the constitution of the mon
archy." Then, passing to the edict for the

The Bed of justice. 169
suppression of the trade-guilds, he declares
that " this edict sweeps away at once all the
ties of order established for the crafts of arti
sans and tradesmen. It leaves unchecked and
uncurbed the turbulent and licentious youth,
who, scarcely restrained by the public police,
by the inner discipline of the' guilds, and by
the domestic authority of masters over their
journeymen, are capable of rushing into all
kinds of excess."
Next, the Keeper of the Seals ordered the
edict concerning the corve'e to be read, and
said to the king's people that they could
speak. Seguier then made a first speech, re
producing all the arguments developed by
Miromenil in his non-public observations, and
closed by proposing to employ soldiers, in
time of peace, for the maintenance of the
roads. After this address, to which no answer
was made, the Keeper of the Seals received
the command of the king to proceed to the
formality of " opinions," beginning with the
princes of the blood ; then, having ascended
to the king's place and returned to his own,
seated, and with covered head, he pronounced
these words : " The king, being in his Bed of
Justice, has ordained, and ordains, that the edict
which has just been read be registered in the
Record Office of his Parliament."

" i 70 Turgot.
The same ceremonial was observed in the
case of the next two edicts ; the fourth edict
was the one for the abolition of the trade-
guilds. In setting forth the motives of the
Parliament in refusing to register this edict,
Seguier made a much longer harangue than
any of the preceding. According to him, the
guilds could be considered as so many little
republics solely occupied with the common
interests of their members ; and if it is true
that the general interest is made up of the
union of private interests, it seemed to him
equally true that each member, in working for
his own advantage, was really working — even
though involuntarily — for the advantage of
the whole community. To relax the springs
moving this multitude of bodies, to abolish the
masterships, to annul the regulations, to dis
unite the members of all these guilds, was to
destroy the resources that trade must desire
for its own preservation. The Royal Advo
cate then went on to describe the isolated
workman, free to follow all the vagaries of an
undisciplined imagination, thirsting for gain,
and secretly scheming to dupe both citizens
and foreigners. " These restraints it is, these
shackles, these prohibitions, that form the
glory, the safety, the immensity of the com
merce of France."

The Bed of fustice. 171
Seguier recognizes, however, that there are
faults in the constitution of the guilds ; " but
there are no institutions into which some abuses
have not crept, and the difference is immense
between destroying the abuses, and destroying
the body in which these abuses may exist."
The number of the guilds seems to him too
great. " Why, for example, is it necessary
that flower-girls should form a guild subject
to regulations? What need of statutes for
making and selling nosegays ? " He deems
some consolidations expedient, as of tailors
and old-clothesmen, of caterers and cookshop-
keepers, of bakers and pastry-cooks. He
would also admit women to the mastership
as milliners, embroiderers, hair-dressers. " But
we must preserve that which was sanctioned
by Henry IV., by Louis XIV, by Sully, and by
Colbert. Never was a prince more beloved
than Henry IV. ; and Colbert, who changed
the face of France and gave new life to com
merce, ordained that all persons engaged in
trade or traffic in the city of Paris should be
and remain forever united in exclusive indus
trial corporations."
At the close of this long harangue the edict
was registered. The edict for the reduction
of the duty on tallow was last read. After
a few words it was likewise registered, and

172 Turgot.
the long sitting of more than five hours was
ended.1 It is to be observed that Articles XIII. and
XIV. of the edict touching the exclusive in
dustrial corporations, or trade-guilds, — articles
which have since aroused so much discussion
in the economical and liberal school, — occa
sioned no remark at the time of the promul
gation of the edict, and provoked no opposition
either on the part of the merchant companies
in their memorials, or on the part of the Parlia
ment in its Remonstrance, or on thep.art of the
Royal Advocate in his harangues. j^The reader
will recollect that these articles are the ones
prohibiting all union or association of work
men and employers of the same craft.~^That
famous principle with which Adam Smith has
been much reproached, and which has been
sometimes excused by treating it as a whim,
has only in our own time been embodied in
law. Nevertheless, it was a sincere expression
of the fear that the law would not efficiently
enough protect the freedom of consumers.
Adam Smith's words are : —
" People of the same trade seldom meet to-
1 These proceedings were called a bed of justice in allusion
to the comfortable upholstery of the king's seat. Evidently
the long-windedness of the speeches rendered cushions some
thing more than a luxury. — Tr.

The Bed of fustice. 173
gether even for merriment and diversion, but
the conversation ends in a conspiracy against
the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices." x
It cannot be denied that in forbidding ar
tisans to form unions and combinations Tur
got set up a barrier against the exercise of what
the modern liberal school has always claimed
as a right. But it should be clearly understood
that when Turgot suppressed the exclusive in»
dustrial corporations, he had no thought of
legislating upon the right of combination and
association, — a right not then recognized in
France by the common law. The attempt
to reconcile this right with the right of the
state to protect itself against what has been
called " a state within a state," is an entirely
new problem. Turgot, in 1776, had not to
vex himself with a question that had not yet
arisen. Even if, foreseeing the future, he had
sought to solve it, would he have been to blame
had he failed ? For a hundred years this prob
lem has been, in France, the most constant
preoccupation of statesmen of all parties. We
have had governments based upon the princi
ple of authority, and governments based upon
the principle of freedom, and the latter have
failed as signally as the former to answer liberal
1 " Wealth of Nations," book i. chap. x. part ii., i.

1 74 Turgot.
notions of justice in this matter. The laws
upon freedom of association are still to be
made; the rights of the unions and the rights
of the state are still in conflict. The debate
is still open ; for no one has yet succeeded in
finding the formula that shall guarantee these
respective rights, without either enslaving the
citizen or disarming the state.

CHAPTER VII.
INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.  RESIGNATION OF
MALESHERBES.  TURGOT'S SECRET LETTERS
TO THE KING. — TURGOT IN DISFAVOR. 
HIS RESIGNATION.  HIS DEATH.
WHAT impression this day left upon the
king it is hard to discover. Had Tur
got wearied him by exacting this new and con
siderable effort? What we know is, that the
influences hostile to Turgot began from that
moment to be felt with a growing might that
soon became irresistible. The queen had suc
ceeded in obtaining complete ascendency over
the king ; of this she gave a final proof in the
case of that same Count de Guines in whose
favor she had once before overruled the unani
mous advice of the Council. The end was
near.
i At the moment when the Ministry began to
be preoccupied with American affairs, M. de
Vergennes and Turgot had vigorously urged
the king to authorize them to recall Count
de Guines from London. They justly deemed

1 76 Turgot.
him unfitted to conduct delicate negotiations.
To their representations the king had yielded,
and had even written to Count de Vergennes
authorizing him to change the ambassador.
Greatly irritated by this decision, the queen
ascribed her favorite's disgrace rather to Tur
got than to Vergennes. She could not give
back to Count de Guines the place that had
been taken from him, but she had the title of
Duke conferred upon him, with a letter of con
gratulation signed by the king. " I do justice
to your conduct," wrote Louis XVI., " and I
grant you the honors of the Louvre, with per
mission to bear the title of Duke. You may
show this letter." Count de Mercy wrote to
Maria Theresa: "In the affair of the Count
de Guines the king stands in manifest contra
diction with himself, by reason of letters written
with his own hand to Count de Vergennes and to
Count de Guines, — letters entirely opposite in
tenor ; he compromises himself and all his min
isters in the eyes of the public, which is un
aware that all this is done by the will of the
queen, and by a kind of violence exercised by
her over the king. The Comptroller-General,
aware of the hatred the queen bears him, has
decided, largely on this account, to retire ; the
queen's plan was to require of the king that
Turgot be dismissed, and even thrown into the

Increasing Difficulties. 177
Bastille on the very day when Count de Guines
was declared Duke ; and the most urgent rep
resentations have been necessary in order to
neutralize the effects of her wrath, which had
no other motive than the steps that Turgot
thought it his duty to take toward the recall of
Count de Guines." After the bed of justice,
the enemies of Turgot were exultant; they
knew the king to be fatigued, and they foresaw
the approaching downfall of the Comptroller-
General. Trudaine's prophecy to Turgot, on the
eve of the sending of the edicts to the Parlia
ment, was coming true : " Be sure, there is not
a Parliament-Counsellor who does not regard
the promulgation of the edicts as the end of
your ministry. Should this misfortune come,
I think the authority of the king would be lost
for the rest of his reign."
The Choiseul party no longer concealed their
delight. " The Turgot is going to pieces," wrote
Madame du Deffant to the Duchess du Choi
seul ; and when she heard " the Turgot news "
she wrote : " What events, what surprises, and,
I may add, what joy and delight ! I confess
that what has pleased me most of all is the
triumph of M. de Guignes [Guines]." The
Duchess replied : " Like you, I was transported
with joy at the triumph of M. de Guignes ; the
accompanying disgrace of the two ministers

1 78 Turgot.
makes him seem to me like a victorious Roman
proconsul, dragging his captives at the tail of
his triumphal car." On the 1st of June, 1776,
Galiani wrote to Madame d'Epinay : " From
the ambassador's brother-in-law I had heard of
the change of ministry, and I heard nothing
more than I knew when M. Turgot was made
Comptroller-General. I pray you to re-read
what I then wrote you." The remarkable
prophecy to which Galiani refers does great
honor to his sharp-sightedness ; it is to be found
in his letter from Naples, of the 17th of Septem
ber, 1774 " M. Turgot is at last Comptroller-
General. He will hold office for too short
a time to carry out his plans; his financial
administration will be like his brother's in
Cayenne. He will punish some rogues, he
will fret and fume, he will desire to do right,
and will meet thorns, obstacles, rascals, every
where. Credit will decline; he wilj be de
tested ; it will be said that he is not good at
the work ; enthusiasm will grow cold ; he will
withdraw or will be dismissed ; and they will
once more repent of the error of wishing to
give such a post, in a monarchy like yours, to
a virtuous and very philosophic man." There
were minor intrigues, like that of Marquis de
Pezay, who succeeded in drawing the king's
attention to certain notes upon Turgot's Bud-

Increasing Difficulties. 179
get, — notes, said to have been drawn up by
Necker himself, skilfully presenting the sub
ject very much to the disadvantage of the
Comptroller-General. It was said, as Abbe
Galiani had prophesied, that he was " not good
at the work." There was also an affair of
forged letters seized by the Bureau of Inter
cepted Letters.1 Dupont de Nemours gives a
full account of the matter.
These secondary manoeuvres may have con
tributed to imbitter the king's mind ; but the
queen's opposition, the resignation of Male
sherbes, and the singularly harsh and somewhat
haughty letters written by Turgot to the king
for the purpose of counteracting Maurepas's
influence and of obtaining a suitable successor
to Malesherbes, suffice to explain the final
crisis. In an absolute monarchy like that of Louis
XVI., ai'well as in a modern parliamentary
government, ministerial crises always hinge
upon questions of confidence. Having lost
the king's confidence, Turgot could regain it
by no ministerial arrangement. It was too
late to look for support in his crusade against
the privileged, by introducing this or the other
personage into the combination. Just as a
parliamentary minister can do nothing after
1 Cabinet noir.

1 8b Turgot.
a majority of the two Houses have once
withdrawn their confidence, so Turgot had
no resource left when the king no longer
wanted him, and he would have been better
advised had he submitted his resignation at
the same time with Malesherbes. For some
time the king had avoided any interview with
Turgot; but instead of retiring, he wrote the
king four secret letters, — memorials they may
be called, — two of which have fortunately
reached us. Of these letters Abbe Soulavie
talked in his confused and lengthy history,
averring that in one of them Turgot had told
the king " a harsh, terrible, frightful truth, — he
hints to this young prince, born faint-hearted
and timid, that the fate of weak princes is
that of Charles I. or of Charles IX." Soulavie
asserted that he had seen these letters among
the papers of Louis XVI., the one containing
the reference to Charles I. having been en
closed by the king " in an envelope sealed
with the little seal-royal, with this inscription
in the king's hand : ' Letters from Turgot' "
Soulavie's assertion had never been taken
very seriously by historians, when, in 1 868,
M. de Larcy discovered the entire text in Very's
Memoirs. This document is so curious, and
throws so much light upon the last days of
Turgot's ministry, that we shall transcribe, far-

Observations of Malesherbes. 181
ther on, some passages from it. A more recent
discovery has, moreover, dissipated any doubt
that might still have been entertained touch
ing the existence of these letters, and touching
the authenticity of the one published by M. de
Larcy. In the archives of Lantheuil Castle,
Marquis Turgot has discovered a paper that
once served as the envelope of a package of
which nothing remains ; on this wrapping
stand written, in the hand of Malesherbes, the
following observations : —
"This bundle, contains four letters written
to the king by M. Turgot at the time when
the appointment of my successor was under
discussion. M. Turgot wrote to the king
with all the zeal of the most devoted minister,
and with all the confidence one feels in the
trustiest friend.
" He tells the king in the clearest terms his
opinion of the men at the head of the admin
istration, and of those qualified to fill the va
cant place. And even when he speaks of his
friends, he thinks it his duty not to conceal
from the king the faults he knows them to
have. " These four letters are marked by the aus-
terest virtue ; but it would be very vexatious
for those of whom he speaks to have these
confidential remarks published, and certainly

1 82 Turgot.
nothing is more contrary to M. Turgot's inten
tions than to have written notes of what he
thought it his duty to say to the king alone.
" For my own part, I have no personal in
terest in the matter, for he praises me unre
servedly. This is surely not because he did
not know me to have faults, for I have many ;
but as I was about to retire from office, the
interests of the royal service did not require
that they be mentioned ; therefore they were
passed over. But there are several persons
mentioned here in whose behalf I demand
the most absolute secrecy, although they have
not asked me to do so, not knowing what is
said of them ; and those for whom I do not
presume to speak have no less right to request
the family to suppress these documents. Nor
need M. Turgot's family feel any regret; for
these are not memorials by him setting forth
his principles of administration, — such memo
rials are very precious. These treat only of the
necessity of maintaining authority, — an argu
ment in the mouths of all at that time ; they
treat of the application of the principles set
forth in his long memorials ; they treat of the
characters of individuals, — • and all this does
not deserve preservation.
" I hope that the letters themselves, writ
ten to the king, will be buried in the deepest

His Secret Letters to the King. 183
oblivion. If the reverse occurs, it will not be
Turgot's fault nor that of his family; but they
ought not to have to reproach themselves with
contributing to this result by the preservation
of the minutes. I even exhort my lord the
Marquis Turgot to forbear reading them him
self; I repeat to him that he will sacrifice
nothing by this course. I read them only
seven or eight days after having been intrusted
with them, and now I wish I had not read
them, so much do I fear lest, in case the min
ister's secrets should one day be divulged, I,
should be accused of having done it. I add
that, since these secrets are those of the king
as well as those of the minister, it is due to the
king as a mark of respect that these minutes
be burned, if possible, in the presence of some
one who can certify the fact to his Majesty."
The papers contained in this wrapper are
evidently the minutes of the letters — now
lost — seen by Soulavie in 1793. These min
utes were doubtless burned, as Malesherbes
advised. The copy of one of the four letters
was probably sent to Very by Turgot himself,
who had wished to inform Very in what terms
he had insisted upon the latt'er's appointment
to the Ministry of the Royal Household in
place of Malesherbes. Another of the letters
was copied by Soulavie and inserted in the

184 Turgot.
appendix to his " Historical Memoirs." It
treats of the request of one Chanvallon, who
was soliciting the reconsideration of a lawsuit,
and was endeavoring to compromise the judge,
Turgot's brother, and Turgot himself. This
was a plot of Sartine's, and Turgot exposed
it to the king in the following letter : —
" Last year M. de Sartine informed me of all the
steps, almost asked my consent, which I was far from
refusing, wished me to be present, against my will,
at the private report made to him by M. Chardon
concerning the whole affair, — and to-day everything
takes place mysteriously and comes to light only in
despite of M. de Sartine. I am no longer the one to
be notified beforehand. Nevertheless, they know that
I am not a man to ask for a denial of justice to any
one ; but M. de Choiseul is the one to be notified
before his departure for Chanteloup. Now, why this
difference ? It is easy to explain : last year, the en
trance of M. de Malesherbes into the Ministry and
Your Majesty's kindness to me gave them no hope of
overthrowing me ; they wished therefore to win me
over, or at least to appear to desire my friendship.
This year, the retirement of M. de Malesherbes, the
more decided union of all parties against me, my ab
solute isolation, the well-known hostility of M. de
Miromenil and his influence over M. de Maurepas, all
indicate that I hold by a mere thread. In order to
break this, a new plot is concocted, bringing up an
old forgotten affair, and giving rise to the circulation

His Secret Letters to the King. 185
of slanderous memoirs, — first in manuscript, after
ward in print, — consuming my time in defending
my brother or myself, and at the very least making
known my discredit. This, Sire, is the reason why
the conduct of M. de Sartine in 1776 is so different
from his conduct in 1775."
The other letter, of which Abbe de Very
received a copy, was likewise dated April 30,
1776. This remarkable letter casts so new a
light upon Turgot's relations with the king,
that it deserves to be carefully considered :
" Sire, I will not conceal the fact that my heart is
deeply wounded by Your Majesty's cruel silence last
Sunday, after I had pointed out with such detail in
my preceding letters the circumstances of my own
and Your Majesty's position, the danger threatening
your authority and the glory of your reign, and the
impossibility of my continuing to serve you unless
you come to my aid. Your Majesty did not deign
to reply to me. ... I have braved the hatred of all
those who profit by abuses. So long as I could hope
to retain Your Majesty's esteem by doing right, noth
ing was too hard for me. To-day, what is my recom
pense? Your Majesty sees how impossible it is for
1 me to make head against those who injure me by
the evil they do me, and by the good they keep me
from doing by thwarting all my measures ; yet Your
Majesty gives me neither aid nor consolation. How
can I believe either in your esteem or in your friend-

1 86 Turgot.
ship for me ? I venture to say, Sire, that I have not
deserved this. . . .
" Your Majesty has urged the need of reflection,
and has pleaded lack of experience. Sire, you do
lack experience. I know that at the age of twenty-
two, and in your position, you have not the training
in the judgment of men which private individuals
obtain from habitual association with equals ; but
shall you have more experience in a week ; in a
month? And is your mind not to be made up until
this slow experience has arrived ? . . .
" I have pictured to you all the evils caused by the
weakness of the late king ; I have traced the course
of the intrigues ending in the degradation of his
authority. I venture to beg you to re-read that letter,
and to ask yourself whether you wish to run the
risk of equal dangers, — I may say of still greater
dangers. " At the age of forty, Louis XV. was in the pleni
tude of his authority, and there was no heat in men's
minds. No corporation had tried his strength ; and
you, Sire, at twenty-two, find the parliaments already
more restless, more audacious, more mixed up with
court-cabals, than they were in 1770 after twenty
years of encroachments and successes. The public
mind is a thousand times more heated upon all sorts
of questions, while your Ministry is weaker than that
of your predecessor, and almost as much divided.
Reflect, Sire, that in the course of nature you have
fifty years to reign, and think of the possible progress
of a disorder which in twenty years has reached such

His Secret Letters to the King. 187
dimensions. Oh, Sire, do not await the coming
of such experience, but learn to profit by that of
others !
" Sire, I owe to M. de Maurepas the place Your
Majesty has given me, — never shall I forget it, never
shall I be wanting in due deference to him ; but I
owe a thousand times more to the state and to Your
Majesty. To sacrifice such interests would be crimi
nal. It costs me an extreme effort to tell you that M.
de Maurepas is really guilty in proposing M. Amelot
[to replace Malesherbes] ; at least, his weakness would
be as fatal to you as a voluntary crime. . . .
"At all events, Sire, it is so plain to me that I
cannot remain alone and isolated as I am, that even
if my duty did not urge me to tell you the whole
truth, I could have no interest in keeping it from
you. If in telling you the truth I displease you, I
beg Your Majesty to write me or tell me so. I do
not wish to shake your confidence in M. de Mau
repas ; he deserves it in many ways, — by his expe
rience, by his intelligence, by his great knowledge of
affairs, by his prodigious memory, by his amiability,
by his genuine attachment to the right and to your
person. " But, Sire, do you know how weak is the charac
ter of M. de Maurepas ; how much he is governed
by the ideas of those about him ? Every one knows
that Madame de Maurepas, who has infinitely less
mind but much more character, constantly inspires
his will. Public opinion also makes an impression
upon him almost incredible in the case of a man of

1 88 Turgot.
such intelligence, who ought to have an opinion of
his own. He changed his mind ten times concern
ing the bed of justice, accordingly as he saw the
Keeper of the Seals, or M. Albert, Lieutenant of
Police, or myself. It was this wretched vacillation,
of which the Parliament was fully apprised, that
so prolonged the resistance of that body. Had
Abbe de Very not contributed to fortify his mind,
I should not have been surprised to see him relin
quish all, and advise Your Majesty to yield to the
Parliament. It is this weakness that moves him to
fall in so readily with the clamor of the Court against
me, and that deprives me of almost all power in my
department. . . .
" Forget not, Sire, that it was weakness that
brought to the block the head of Charles I. ; that
made Charles IX. cruel; that allowed the forma
tion of the League under Henry III. ; that made
Louis XIII. a crowned slave ; that makes a crowned
slave of the King of Portugal to-day ; and that brought
about all the misfortunes of the last reign.
" Sire, you are deemed weak, and upon occasion
I have feared lest your character had this defect;
nevertheless, I have seen you, upon other more diffi
cult occasions, exhibit genuine courage.
" You have said, Sire, that you lack experience ;
you have need of a guide. Such a guide must have
light and strength ; M. de Maurepas has the first of
these qualities ; in order that he may have the sec
ond, he himself needs a support. He does not feel
this, — he even fears such support ; I know it by the

His Secret Letters to the King. 189
appointment he has in view, and by the few efforts he
has made to influence you in favor of Abbe de Very.
I see that he fears precisely what would strengthen
him. He fails to perceive that, after having isolated
me, after having inspired Your Majesty with dislike
for me, after having forced me to resign, the whole
storm now brewing against me will beat upon him,
and that he will fall at last, dragging your authority
down with him, — perhaps after having shattered
it. . . . Such, Sire, is your real condition : a Ministry
weak and disunited, fermentation in all minds, the
Parliaments in league with all the cabals and em
boldened by a notorious weakness (Your Majesty
has seen, in a letter I have confided to you, the very
frank expression of their thoughts), revenues below
expenditures, the stubbornest resistance to indispen
sable economy, no uniform policy, no continuity of
plan, no secrecy in the resolutions of your Coun
cils ; and it is in circumstances like these that there
is proposed to Your Majesty a man of no talent, a
man who has no merit but docility — to whom ?
Not to that one of your ministers who shows some
vigor, but to the honorable Keeper of the Seals,
who by his insinuations increases the tendency to
weakness. At such a time can Your Majesty fail to
be struck by the dangers I have so plainly pointed
out? " Indeed, Sire, I do not understand you ; it is very
well for them to tell you that 1 am hot-headed and
visionary ; but does what I have been telling you re
semble the discourse of a madman ? It even seems

1 90 Turgot,
to me that the measures I aave carried out have
succeeded, despite the clamorous opposition, pre
cisely as I had announced; and if I am no mad
man, if there is any reality in the dangers I have
pointed out, Your Majesty cannot, without being un
true to yourself, yield out of complaisance for M. de
Maurepas. . . .
" I entreat you to reflect again before determining
upon a choice bad in itself and fatal in its results. . . .
If, in fine, it be my fate that this letter shall draw
upon me Your Majesty's disfavor, I beg you to in
form me of this yourself. In any case I count upon
Your Majesty's secrecy."
To this letter the king made no more reply
than he had made to the others of the same
kind that Turgot had written him on the same
day, or on the days immediately preceding.
He had to choose between Maurepas and
Turgot, and his choice was made before
hand, — it could not be altered by Turgot's last
effort in writing to him with such bluntness.
Far from it ! The king must even have felt
this to be an attempt to take possession of his
will, and to govern by turning him out of the
government. On the 30th of April, the very day when he
sent the king this fourth and last letter, Turgot
wrote to Very, — saying nothing, as yet, of the
supreme step he had just taken, — begging him

His Dismissals 191
to come to Paris to work upon ,he mind of his
old friend Maurepas for the purpose of ob
taining a successor to Malesherbes from the
ranks of the reformers. Ten days later, Tur
got wrote Very that all was over, and that the
new minister was definitively Amelot. Turgot
still hoped, however, to have time to formu
late a plan for reforming the royal household.
"The plan will certainly not be adopted, and
I shall demand my release." On the next day,
another letter : " The Marquis de Noailles is
Ambassador to England, M. de la Vauguyon to
Holland; M. de Guines has the title of Duke,
and is therefore white as snow."
At length, on the 12th of May, 1776, Tur
got's colleague, Bertin, brought him an order
from the king to resign his functions. Maure
pas wrote him : " Had I been free, Sir, to fol
low my first impulse, I should have been with
you. Commands from a higher source have
checked me ; I beg you to be assured of my
concern about your situation." Turgot's reply
begins with these words : " I have just received,
Sir, the letter with which you have honored
me ; I do not doubt your concern in the event
of the day, and am duly grateful." Two days
later he writes to Very : " Your old friend has
had me dismissed without waiting for me to
resign."

192 Turgot.
On the 1 8th, -of May, after having asked per
mission of the king, Turgot wrote him a letter
which forms a worthy counterpart to that in
which he had accepted the post of Comptroller-
General two years before. He alludes to the
four secret letters : " The proceeding on my
part which seems to have displeased you has
proved to you that I was bound to my place
by no interested motive, for I could not be un
aware of the risk I was running, and I should
not have exposed myself to that risk if I had,,
preferred my fortune to my duty. You havef
also seen by my letters how impossible it was
for me to serve usefully in that place, and con
sequently to remain there, if you left me alone
and without aid." It has been supposed that, ,
in speaking of his " proceeding," Turgot alluded
to his intervention in the affair of Count de
Guines ; but there can now be no doubt that
the offensive proceeding was the correspond
ence, by which the king had been sharply
stung. Immediately after his disgrace Turgot re
tired to the Chateau de la Roche-Guyon, the
home of the Duchess d'Enville ; then he re
turned to Paris. The remaining five years of
his life he passed in the study of science and
of letters. He was deeply affected by the uni
versal reproach that he had lost his influence

In Retirement. 193
ough the stiffness of his disposition, — in a
rd " by his maladroitness." 1 Of this he
aks in his great letter to Dr. Price 2 (March
1778):-
I owe you double thanks, — first, for your work ;
secondly, for your kindness in withdrawing the
Dutation of. maladroitness which you had mingled
Ih the good you said of me in your additional ob-
jrvations. I might have deserved this, if you had
h?nt nc other maladroitness than that of not being
Y* discern the wires of intrigue that were pulled
It me by people much more adroit in this line
ft am, or expect to be, or wish to be. But it
;j;d that you imputed to me the maladroitness
ving grossly shocked the public opinion of my
n ; and herein I think you did justice neither to
or to my nation, where there is much more en-
nment than is generally supposed among you,
vhereit is perhaps easier than with you to win
ublic over to reasonable ideas."
le opinion expressed by Dr. Price passed
lat time almost without question. Until
death, and after, Turgot was thought to
1 1. Say here appends a note quoting from a letter from
! to Hume (May 28, 1776) accusing Turgot of "stub-
ess and coldness." See J. Hill Burton's " Letters of
' :nt Persons addressed to David Hume." — Tr.
s ["he Dr, Richard Price against whom Burke fulminates
" Reflections on the Revolution in France." — Tr.
13

\

194 Turgot. j
have failed for want of power to comma
himself, and because the asperity of his disr!
sition prevented him from winning over the
whose good-will was essential to success. Tl
contemporary judgment must be revised
the generation born of the Revolution ; for t
friends and the collaborators, the opponei
and the enemies of the great minister, confus
his personal cause with that of his doctrin
and did not know that the imputed faults
character which brought about his fall v
to become, fifteen years afterward, one o/a
chief reasons for the final triumph of his i
Long experience of government by op
has taught us of the present day that the
throw of a minister on a question of princ;
usually results in the formation of a parti
take up his programme, and in giving stren
to such a party, when circumstances have j
mately become more favorable, to realize'
reforms which had seemed compromised i
that very overthrow. The democracy
made the French Revolution certainly neo
not to remember Turgot in destroying pi
lege and in equalizing French society;
the other hand, it was undeniably influei
most strongly by the memory of Turgot ii
treatment of all economic and financial q
tions, — especially on the day when it s;

In Retirement. 195
tioned the principle of freedom of labor, which
was opposed to the aspirations of certain Rev
olutionary leaders, who thought they could
stop short of that principle without denying
their love of equality.
After leaving office, Turgot devoted himself
at first almost exclusively to the Academy of
Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, where he pre
sided in 1777 as Vice-Director; and afterward
to the literary studies that had been the delight
of his youth. He loved to meet his numerous
friends, although he called them, in the phrase
of Bacon, " the thieves of his time." He
eagerly sought the scientific works appear
ing throughout Europe. He studied higher
geometry with Abbe Bossut, chemistry with
Lavoisier, and astronomy with Rochon. Con
dorcet kept him apprised of what was going
on at the Academy of Sciences.
When Franklin reached Paris, toward the
close of 1776, Turgot often met him, and con
versed with him about the constitutions of
the different American States. He even wrote
expressly for Franklin an essay on the taxa
tion of consumable commodities. He also
sent one day to Sartine an unsigned note on
Captain Cook's third voyage of discovery, pro
posing that Cook's ships should be treated as
though they belonged to a neutral power.

1 96 Turgot.
" Captain Cook is probably on his way back to
Europe," wrote Turgot. " Since his expedi
tion has for its sole aim the progress of human
knowledge, and therefore interests all nations,
the king would show worthy magnanimity in
not permitting its success to be compromised
by the hazard of war." Sartine secured the
royal approval of this proposal ; but neither
the king nor Sartine ever knew that this gener
ous thought had emanated from the disgraced
minister. During the first period of his retirement
Turgot learned with profound grief that a
reconsideration of his great reforms was in
tended. Hearing that there was talk of ab
rogating his edict for the suppression of the
exclusive industrial corporations, he began a let
ter to Maurepas, but did not finish it. Could
he hope for a hearing from those who had
deprived him of power in order no longer to
be annoyed by his pleas in behalf of reform?
The unfinished draft has been found among his
papers at Lantheuil Castle.
" Notwithstanding all that I had heard, Sir, since
my removal from the Ministry, of the plan attributed
to you of engaging the king to revoke the edicts sup
pressing forced labor and the trade-guilds, I had
never been able to persuade myself that you would
persist in any such course. It would be incredible to

In Retirement. 197
me that you could have entertained the thought of
this, were I not assured that you have already con
sulted the Parliament about the new edicts, which
are to recall those that formed the object of the last
bed of justice. It will doubtless seem strange to
you that I should think of writing to you on this
occasion ; it is not from me that you expect advice,
and I cannot presume that my advice will alter your
opinion ; the very considerations that I am about to
present are so simple, so palpably obvious, that it
seems morally impossible that they should not have
presented themselves to your mind. But the more
natural and palpable they are, the more they conform
to what I have always known your way of thinking to
be, so much the more I am bound to believe that
some extraordinary motive has made you shut your
eyes to their evidence. I will therefore endeavor to
recall you to yourself, to what you have a thousand
times thought and said, to what you owe to the public,
to the king, to your own reputation, and I will enlist
your conscience against the passion which, permit me
to tell you, conceals from you your own interest.
Pardon this frankness, Sir ; it is not my intention to
wound you with harsh truths ; but you know me well
enough to judge that I cannot without deep grief see
the destruction of a great good to which I have had
the good-fortune to contribute, which the royal will
sustained against the obstacles opposed to it, and
which I had reason to think solidly established. To
this interest I am certainly alive ; I venture also to be
alive to the king's honor, — liable to be compromised

198 Turgot.
by a change so sudden, — which is dear to me both
as a citizen and as one who has shared his confidence
and his favor."
From this point the letter was not continued.
Turgot suffered the pain of seeing his edicts
annulled. Had he lived ten years longer he
would have had the joy of seeing them take
their place anew, and forever, in our code of
laws. But his health was precarious, and his
attacks of gout were incessantly renewed ; he
had but a few months to live. His last days
were occupied with poetry. He had finished
his metrical version of the fourth book of " The
^Eneid," and was making rhymed translations
from Horace. From his death-bed Turgot
dictated to Dupont de Nemours a verse trans
lation of the ode " ^Equam Memento." J
Turgot died at Paris on the 18th of March,
0 1°.
1 78 1, with the constancy of a man of whom
Malesherbes could say that he had the heart
of L'H6pital and the head of Bacon. He
1 " Un meme torrent nous entraine j
Un mime gouffre nous attend.
Nos noms jetes confusement
S'agitent dans l'urne incertaine.
T6t ou tard le sort les amine
Et designe a chacun son tour,
Pour passer l'onde souterraine
Dont le voyage est sans retour."

His Death. 199
was first interred in the Church of the Incu
rables, Sevres Street, according to M. de Ney-
marck ; but his coffin was afterward removed to
the graveyard at Bons, in Normandy. It is a
family tradition that at the time of the requisi
tion for lead in 1793 his coffin was drawn from
the tomb and opened for the purpose of taking
out the leaden case. Several of those engaged
in this operation had known Turgot. They
were frightened to find his body in a perfect
state of preservation, and it seemed to them
that his still living features were reproaching
them for disturbing his rest. At this sight
they left the work unfinished and fled. The
municipal authorities hastily placed the coffin
in a grave, but without marking the spot. All
that we know to-day is that Turgot sleeps in a
forgotten corner of this little country .grave
yard.

CHAPTER VIII.
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL REACTION AFTER
TURGOT'S DEATH.  DEFINITIVE TRIUMPH IN
1789.  NEW REACTIONS UNDER THE EMPIRE,
THE RESTORATION, AND THE REPUBLIC OF
FEBRUARY (1848).
TURGOT could have succeeded only by
the authority of the king; and the con
cessions that a more flexible minister might
have made in a spirit of conciliation to Court
and Parliament would have had no useful effect
toward the ultimate success of his enterprise.
The Old Regime, after its slow transforma
tions, consisted, in the eighteenth century, of a
despotism tempered by the privileges enjoyed
by certain bodies, such as the nobility, the
clergy, the magistracy, the army, the mer
chant-guilds, etc. The destruction of these
privileges, and the exchange of the special
guaranties they secured to a certain number
of individuals for a general guaranty to the
whole nation, — such was Turgot's aim. " The

Economic and Political Reaction. 20 1
cause of the evil, Sire," said he in his Memo
rial upon Municipalities, " lies in the fact that
your kingdom has no Constitution ; you might
govern like God, by general laws."
Nothing short of a revolution — the over
throw of the old order of things — could real
ize such progress ; and this revolution could
have come about without violence only on con
dition that the two powers, the two active
principles of that order of things, the king and
the privileged classes, — or one of the two, —
should have consented to undertake it. Turgot
could not reckon upon the privileged classes,
who were at that time far from dreaming of
such a night as the 4th of August, 1789, who
fancied themselves very strong, and had no idea
of disarming. Consequently he had no chance
of success except by persuading the king to
place himself at the head of the movement,
and to stand firm there. But if Louis XVI.
had at times a feeling of what he might ven
ture to do in that direction, he never had the
strength to pass from sentiment to action.
Might not Turgot have overcome the hesita
tion of the king if he had humored the person
ages of Court and Parliament, and if he had
not fallen out successively with everybody?
To put the question thus is to emphasize the
contradiction. His aim was to abolish an

202 Turgot.
order of things resting upon the very ones
whom, we are told, he ought to have humored.
To humor them would have been to do hom
age to them in a certain way, and to respect
their authority as if it had been regular; while
he wished, on the contrary, to destroy them
as organs of government, and to disable them
from exercising, as a body, any influence what
ever upon the administration.
After Turgot's fall the reasons which, instinc
tively or not, inspired the resistance of the
privileged classes to his reforms, became ap
parent. The reaction was not limited to the
abrogation of the edicts that had just been
registered in the bed of justice; it pursued
likewise a general political aim, namely, — to
consolidate the system and to carry it to its
ultimate consequences. After having served
the reaction, Necker was swept away by it, as
Calonne was afterward to be swept away. The
Constitution of the state, patiently remodelled
by the nobility and the Parliament, assumed
1 a more and more tangible form. TheFrencJi
monarchy degenerated into an oligarchy of
i privileged masters of the crown, powerful
| enough to prevent the king — even had he so
i desired — from playing the part of protector of
ilthe people against the encroachments of the
I ; great.

Economic and Political Reaction. 203
Nothing can be at once more distressing and
more extraordinary than the reaction after
Necker's first ministry. Never did the spirit
of privilege show itself more exacting than in
1781. Till then, commoners had been per
mitted to serve as officers, and a goodly num
ber of them had held an honorable place on
the staff of the French army under Louis XIV.,
under Louis XV., and even in the first years
of the reign of Louis XVI. The regulation of
1 78 1 concerning army grades is more stringent
than any preceding regulations. Whoever,
in the future, would aspire to the rank of offi
cer either in the infantry or in the cavalry,
was bound to make proof of four degrees of
nobility. " Instead of gently yielding to the action of
time, to the influence of enlightenment," wrote
Sieyes in his famous brochure of 1788, " the
nobility stiffens itself against them. It pro-
poses to lose none of its privileges. What
do I say? It extends them. . . . Quite re
cently they have absolutely presented to the
nobility the posts of councillors and of chief-
justices." Joly de Fleury, Necker's successor,
pushed the narrowness of the reactionary spirit
to its extreme limit. In a note accompanying
his translation of Marcus Aurelius, he finds it
strange that the most useful of all laws has not

204 Turgot.
yet been enacted. " This would have been to
command men, on pain of the severest punish
ment, to restrain their natural curiosity within
just bounds, and to forbid their speaking or
writing upon subjects beyond the range of
their intelligence."
The men who had heard Turgot, who had
been his friends, his collaborators, who went
into disgrace with him after having served in
his ministry, could read in 1784 and again in
1786, — only three and five years, respectively,
after his death, — a decree of the Parliament
of Paris prohibiting the harvesting of grain
with a scythe; while, touching manufactures,
it was enacted that the length of all handker
chiefs woven in the kingdom should be pre
cisely equal to their breadth. Reaction in the
army, in the magistracy, in industry, — a re
action even in the direction of enforcing the
feudal rights of lords, — the march toward the
precipice was headlong and dizzy.
The reaction could not, however, at once
strengthen privilege and fill the Treasury; ruin
the Third Estate by oppression, and extort
from it funds for feeding all abuses ; open the
pension-list largely to favorites, and make re
ceipts balance expenditures. Calonne, amiable
and shrewd as he was, was not the man to res
cue the kingdom from the gulf in which it was

Calonne's Return to Him. 205
foundering. This man of many devices de
cided at length to return to the financial re
forms of Necker and to the economic reforms
of Turgot. For us, it is a recommendation of
Calonne's plan that it really proceeded from
the two ministers who had attempted to bring
order out of the chaos of the Old Regime.
" Why, this is sheer Necker that you are bring
ing me ! " said the king, as he listened ; and
he might have added that it was also sheer
Turgot. Calonne's territorial subvention, bearing upon
all landowners and upon all estates without ex
ception or privilege, was nothing more or less
than the land-tax of which Turgot was develop
ing the plan at the very moment of his dis
missal, and which was to have been the object
of his next reform. It must also have been the
plan of Malesherbes, if it be true that Male
sherbes is the author of the Memorial in the
Archives which says, speaking of the necessity
of subjecting the privileged classes to taxa
tion : " This evident truth has been felt by
all administrators. It would have been felt by
the whole nation, had the people been permit
ted to know and discuss their own interests."
Calonne showed the nation the naked truth,
and, by the Convocation of the Notables, pre
pared the way for the appeal "to the whole

206 Turgot.
nation for the discussion of its own interests."
But if Calonne had the ideas of Turgot and
the shrewdness of Maurepas, if he united in
himself saving virtues and pleasing vices, if he
was of the Court without being any the less a
philosopher, an economist, a statesman, how is
that he did not succeed where Turgot failed ?
And if it may be said of him that he was the
exemplar of all that Turgot is reproached with
not being, if, according to the testimony of
those who blame Turgot for inflexibility and
haughtiness, Calonne possessed just what his
illustrious predecessor lacked, why has Ca
lonne not been held to deserve all the praises
heaped upon Turgot, augmented by all the
praises that are denied him? The reason is not
far to seek: it is that the Revolution was not
to be avoided bycompromises with the privi-
legecITcame they from Calonne or from Tur
got. History proves it, — TurgoT would have
losf by being a Calonne, and Calonne gained
nothing by wishing to be a Turgot.
On the night of the 4th of August, 1789, the
National Assembly decreed the reformation
of the exclusive industrial corporations. On
that famous night Turgot's apotheosis began.
His faithful friend, Dupont de Nemours, be
came the inspirer of the Committee of Finance,
and drew up the address to Frenchmen upon

Definitive Triumph in 1 789. 207
direct taxes. The master-thought in the finan
cial system of the Revolution, as it appears in
the programme of Dupont de Nemours and in
the deliberations of the National Assembly, is
this thought of Turgot's: Taxation must be
direct; taxes must therefore be assessed only
upon visible wealth, and must give rise to no
arbitrary act in their collection.
Article VII. of the law of 1791 puts in force
again, in some sort, Turgot's edict concern
ing trade-guilds, and reproduces almost all its
expressions: "On and after the 1st of April
next following, every citizen shall be free to
exercise whatever profession, art, or trade he
may think fit, after having provided himself
with a license, so long as he conforms to the
regulations that may be made." Again, Arti
cle I., of the decree of June 14-17, 1791, de
finitively condemns the old industrial system.
" The abolition of all kinds of corporations of
citizens of the same condition and profession
being one of the fundamental principles of the
French Constitution, it is forbidden to re-estab
lish them upon any pretext or in any form<
whatsoever." Meanwhile the germ of dissent
was already perceptible among the reformers,
— some devoted to freedom, granting it to
their opponents as they assured it to them
selves, others prone to defend the rights of the

208 Turgot.
state, even to the oppression of individuals, —
the Liberals and the Jacobins. Says Louis
Blanc: " Other Revolutionists were found, giv-.
ing to liberty as understood by the Revolution
ists of '89 a new definition. We shall hear
them saying, ' Liberty consists not in the right,
but in the power, granted to a man to exercise
and develop his faculties under the sway of
justice and the safeguards of law.' "
Marat undertook the defence of the trade-
guilds in his journal, " The People's Friend."
He said (March 16, 1791): "Certainly noth
ing can be better than to free citizens from
shackles that hinder the development of talent
and that keep the unfortunate in poverty. But
I know not whether this entire freedom, this
exemption from all apprenticeship, all novi
tiate, for the exercise of a given trade or pro
fession, be politically advisable. . . . The first
result of these mad decrees is to impoverish
the state by the decline of trade and manufac
tures ; the second result is to condemn the con
sumer to eternal expenditures. ... In any state
which has not glory as its ruling motive, if
from the desire to make a fortune be taken
away the desire to establish a reputation, fare
well to good faith ; soon every profession and
all traffic will degenerate into knavery. As, in
that case, the sole thought of the manufacturer

New Reactions. 209
and the vender is to make their goods salable,
they deem it sufficient to give them a certain
attractive look, and to offer them at a low price,
without troubling themselves about genuine
solidity and finish. . . . And as the goods have
then neither value nor solidity, they must de
generate into botchwork, and so determine the
consumer to make use of his freedom to pur
chase abroad."
Louis Blanc takes a different standpoint; he
sees in Turgot's work, as resumed by the
Constituent Convention of 1789, the triumph
of individualism against fraternity. Thus in his
" History of the French Revolution '' he says :
" The whole truth must be told. Turgot^pro-
claimed the right to labor, — he proclaimed it
in magnificent terms ; in the future this will be
one of his titles of honor! Do not be deceived,
however ; Turgot never went so far as to rec-
ognize the right to employment. He wished
that the poor should be left free to develop
their faculties, but he did not admit that so
ciety owed them the means of succeeding. He
meant to destroy the obstacles that may arise
from the action of authority, but he did not
impose upon the state the obligation of serv
ing as guardian to the poor, to the weak, to
the ignorant. . . . What use to shout to the
poor man, ' You have the right to labor,'
14

210 Turgot.
when he must answer by the inquiry, ' How am
I to make use of this right ? ' " The self-styled
school of fraternity reproached Turgot with
thinking, first, that the whole duty of govern
ment is to destroy obstacles and then to let
alone ; 1 afterward, with finding no guaranty
against monopoly save isolation.
What hindered the Revolutionists, however,
from returning to the guilds, and what com
pelled them, despite Marat and so many
others, to maintain the work of Turgot, was
that, as they plainly saw, the guilds involved
a principle of exclusion and oppression ; and
that though, by corporative association, these
bodies might constitute a kind of family, it was
an exclusive family, which did not admit to its
privileges all who had need to labor.
Napoleon could have no such scruples.
There was consequently under the Consulate
a marked and offensive reaction in favor of the
corporations. The Council of State caused a
great number of memorials to be laid before it
in favor of the restoration of the trade-guilds,
and Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angely made
himself their advocate.
Under the Restoration, the partisans of the
corporations took heart again. In 1817 a
lawyer named Levacher-Duplessis, who claimed
1 Laisser faire.

The Restoration. 211
to act in the name " of thirty-four commercial
and industrial professions," presented a peti
tion to the king for the re-establishment of
the merchants' companies and the guilds of
art and trade. This petition rehashed the ar
guments of the Parliament of 1776 and of
the Royal Advocate Seguier, and referred to
Turgot in a very strange style. Turgot was,
it seems, " born with an inflexible and domi
neering disposition, and his opinions, taking
color from his character, had degenerated into
sectarianism." The corporations he had de
stroyed had been reconstructed after his dis?
grace, their abuses had disappeared, and they
had rendered the greatest service to trade and
industry. To these corporations, wisely regu
lated, Levacher and the Parisian merchants
demanded a return. A bar must be placed
against " that mercantile mania which pre
cipitates into the career of industry a crowd of
adventurers who dishonor it." This petition
was examined by the Paris Chamber of Com
merce, which remained faithful to the view it
had several times expressed, " time and reflec
tion having only strengthened, in this matter,
the opinion of the Chamber." In 1821, a new
petition, a renewed deliberation of the Chamber
of Commerce, and a fresh affirmation of the
unshaken convictions of its members.

2 1 2 Turgot.
" The Chamber, deliberating upon this com
munication . . . and considering . . . moreover
that the immense progress of French industry
since the time when it was emancipated from
the monopoly of guilds constitutes a sufficient
warning of the danger of the proposed in
novations in the legislation of the present
time, . . . pronounces as in the past, and with
the same unanimity, against the memorial ad
dressed to the two Chambers."
Tn_ Ferirnary, i848L the corporations came
again into favor. Those who proclaimed the
right to employment, and whose doctrine was
summed up in the formula, " organization of
labor," seemed for a moment masters of the
situation ; but they frightened the nation, and
their ideas perished in the days of June.
Thus Turgot's doctrines had passed un
scathed through the epochs most perilous to
liberal economic ideas, — the Convention, the
Empire, the Restoration, the February Revo
lution. Napoleon would fain have made of
the corporations — reconstructed and held in
his iron grasp — an instrument of police; he
caused a bill to this effect to be drafted, but
he had to give it up. The Restoration filled
with courage those who deplored the over
throw of the ancient institutions of France;
nevertheless, the Restoration took no step

The Republic. 213
toward a return to the ancient industrial or
ganization. All attempts successively miscar
ried on account of the general indifference, on
account of the suspicion aroused by the claims
of the spirit of monopoly, — which would sat
isfy a single interest by endangering all the
rest, — and on account of fears of a popular
and revolutionary tyranny.
It is to Turgot's memorable struggle in 1776
that modern France owes her escape from the
reaction against the emancipation of labor.
The blow he struck was mortal to the corpora
tions. Their restoration after his disgrace was
incomplete, inasmuch as the ancient guilds
were not restored, the reaction consisting sim
ply in authorizing or prescribing the formation
of new associations. Their corporate spirit
had been so thoroughly crushed that it was
unable to rise again under Necker, under the
Revolution, under the Empire, or under the
Restoration.
j If equality among citizens, admissibility to
All employments, abolition of all social dis
tinctions, must be considered necessary conse
quences of the French Revolution, and if these
democratic conquests constitute in some sort
what is called the Modern Regime, the same
is perhaps not true of a system of interference
with labor, with manufactures, or with com-

214 Turgot.
merce, proceeding according to general laws,
and not extending to exclusive corporations a
protection that would seem to restore a privi
lege of the Old Regime. Had such protection
been extended to open associations, it might
perhaps have been acceptable to those innumer
able unknown actors in the Revolution to
whom liberty usually meant the right to deny
it to their adversaries. We may therefore
believe that it was not from principle, but
from a peculiar sentiment arising from their
education, — a sentiment which they might
well fail to transmit to their successors, — that
the statesmen of the Revolution rescued our
country from the reactions against freedom of
labor. They were, in reality, still under the
personal influence of the departed Turgot:
he invisibly guided them ; their economic
conscience was in his keeping.

CHAPTER IX.
RADICAL SOCIALIST SCHOOL. — CATHOLIC ECO
NOMIC SCHOOL.  CONCLUSION : DIFFICULTY
OF RECONCILING THE PRINCIPLES OF FREE
DOM OF LABOR AND FREEDOM OF ASSOCIA
TION.
THERE are to-day two schools that de
mand the re-establishment of the indus
trial corporations by the unrestricted applica
tion of the principle of freedom of association :
the Radical Socialist school, and the Catholic
economic school. Both these schools would
extend the powers of the state beyond what
economists consider the natural limit of these
powers, with a view to state interference in
labor problems ; but the Radical Socialist
school is inclined to recommend close cor
porations, and the Catholic economic school
open corporations. Turgot is the great enemy
at whom both schools strike. The one up
braids him with abolishing the privileges of
the workingman, the other with failing to re
spect the workingman's freedom.

2 1 6 Turgot.
The French Catholic economic school grows
out of the Christian German Socialism which
sprang up in Prussia after 1848, and which
professed to have found the solution of the
social problem in the union of the Church,
with her thousand forms of beneficence, and
the State, penetrating, by means of taxation
and by the organization of a number of local
services, the inner life of the nation. Chris
tian German Socialism opposed with equal
warmth the liberal economic school of Adam
Smith and J. B. Say, and the liberal political
school, which, starting from England, has car
ried the system of representative parliamen
tary government to all parts of Europe.
Christian German Socialism has put forth
several shoots. Bismarck professes to derive
State Socialism from it. He said one day in
the Reichstag : " What we want is not social
ism ; it is rather Christianity without phrases :
the question is to give people, not hollow
speeches, but something solid." The Aus
trian Catholics have been inspired by it. In
1875 the popular Convention of Lower Aus
tria declared in a solemn resolution that " the
social question can be solved only by legis
lative autonomy of the corporations in their
own affairs, under the protection of a Chris
tian government." Prince Lichtenstein, as

Catholic Economic School. 217
spokesman of the party, asked and obtained
the re-establishment of obligatory corporations
for petty industry. The bill concerning petty
industry was carried in 1883, but the enact
ment of a law for the formation of local corpo
rations for great industrial establishments was
postponed. The French Catholics have entered upon
the same path as the Austrian Catholics, the
long residence of the Count de Chambord in
Austria contributing to this result. It must
however be said that, in comparison with
the Austrian Catholics, the French Catholics
have made incontestable progress. The cor
porations which they demand are to be anti-
monopoly, free, open, and based upon a very
broad application of the principle of associa
tion. Turgot's great crime, in their eyes, is
not that he suppressed the ancient guilds, — ¦
into which many intolerable abuses had evi
dently crept, — but that he prevented the re
organization of new associations free from the
sptrttof monopoly, whose sole aim should be
the protection of their members.
TKis schooT asserts"that family industry per
ished with the trade-guilds. Family industry
was crowded out by the system of great indus
trial establishments which with its train of evils
— pauperism, strikes, class conflicts, family dis-

218 Turgot.
organization, and the rest — has taken posses
sion of our century. All the evil has come,
they add, not from the abolition of corrupt
and degenerate guilds, but from an oppressive
Jacobin law, copied from Turgot's edict, Article
XIV. : " All masters, companions, journeymen,
and apprentices of the said corporations and
guilds are forbidden to form any association
or union among themselves, upon any pretext
whatsoever." 1
When it is said that family industry has per
ished because freedom of labor isolates the
workman, and because it permits employers to
enlarge their workshops, to absorb all indus
try in immense mills and all trade in colossal
shops, — when these extensions are referred
to as the cause of all the miseries of our cen
tury, — there is a double exaggeration: first,
in representing the family industry of the eigh
teenth century in a much too favorable light ;
secondly, in attributing to freedom of labor
effects that it has not produced, and to the
present time vices not peculiar to the present.
The eighteenth century is pictured as if it had
known neither wretchedness, nor class conflicts,
nor labor troubles, nor strikes ; as if the mo-
1 This chapter may seem incomplete unless the reader
bears in mind the concluding paragraphs of Chapter VI. See
p. 172, — Tr.

Freedom and the Workingman. 219
rality of workingmen's families had been then
much higher than now ; as if journeymen had
always been brothers, and apprentices always
sons, to the virtuous masters who employed
them, and who were not yet vexed by that
greed for gain which is said to characterize
the modern captains of industry.
The truth is that the condition of the labor
ing classes under the old system was neither
happier nor more moral than to-day. Those
who have studied the history of labor cannot
doubt that the progress of the workingman's
material welfare during the past century has
been enormous, and that the progress of his
moral welfare, though less rapid, has been
considerable. The workingman of the nine
teenth century has in these respects no reason
to envy the workingman of the past. More
over, it is a mistake to think that it was free
dom of labor which disorganized family labor
and gave birth to the great modern industrial
establishments. Freedom of labor has, indeed,
enabled industry to keep up with the growth
of human needs, because it has put industry
in a position to study and submit to the con
ditions of cheap production. But if family
industry has disappeared, it is not the fault of
freedom of labor, but because family industry
was unable to produce cheaply enough. Is

220 Turgot.
the restoration of family industry desirable at
the cost of a factitious enhancement in the
prices of all the necessaries of life, added to
the natural and progressive increase in the
expenses of a more intense existence? If we
did not flinch at such a consequence, would it
be possible to hope for success? Evidently,
it is not to be thought of.
All discussions about excess of production,
about the obligation imposed upon manufac
turers to produce on a great scale in order
to lessen the burden of general expenses on
each article, are in reality of a different order
from economic discussions. Their real sub
ject is the increase of human needs, the taste
for luxury, the progress of civilization, the
destiny of the race. Those who deplore the
development of industry on a great scale, de
plore the growing needs of humankind ; they
would fain check this movement of the race,
and they condemn the means employed by
industry to satisfy these needs. But is it not
idle to attempt to create man anew? Is it not
Utopian to imagine that we can refuse man
kind the gratifications they demand, on the
ground that these gratifications are useless or
opposed to morality? Such discussions have
small practical value; they do not prevent
mankind from moving on in obedience to

Freedom versus Organization. 221
those natural laws which cannot be abrogated
in a Chamber of Deputies.
The new schools are weak when they attack
freedom of labor, — when they think to find
in the suppression of freedom a remedy for
the industrial disturbances of our time. They
run a constant risk of relapsing into the va
garies of labor organization, to which they
will find it difficult to rally public opinion in
an era of discussion and of political liberty.
They are stronger when they ask merely the
common law and freedom. But what free
dom is meant? Should not precautions be
taken against the possible oppression of indi
viduals by associations that are free to do any
thing? Turgot did not hold that man to be
a wise servant of Freedom, who prostitutes the
name of freedom by applying it to the power
of imposing upon others anything to which a
majority may be brought to consent. Here
is what he wrote to Dr. Price in the letter of
March 22, 1778 :a —
" How happens it that you are about the first among
your men of letters to set forth just notions of free
dom, and to expose the fallacy of that notion, harped
upon by almost all republican writers, ' that freedom
consists in being subjected to laws alone,' as if a
man were free who is oppressed by an unjust law?
1 See Chapter VII. p. 193-

222 Turgot.
This would not be true, even supposing all laws to be
the work of the assembled nation ; for, after all, the
individual has also his rights, of which the nation can
deprive him only by violence and by an illegitimate
use of the general power. Although you have had
regard for this truth and have expressed yourself
upon it, perhaps it deserves of you a more extended
development, considering the scant attention it has
received even from the most zealous followers of
Freedom." I do not know how to conclude this discus
sion of Turgot more worthily than with these
noble and courageous words.

INDEX.

"Advantages that the Establish
ment of Christianity has conferred
upon the Human Race," Turgot's
dissertation at the Sorbonne, 26.
Advice concerning the levy and dis
tribution of the Taille ', 73.
jEneid (the), Turgot's translation of
the Fourth Book, 27, 198.
Agriculture, free trade secures its de
velopment, 47 ; the only source of
wealth, 48 ; capital essential to, 51 ;
error of supposing the soil to be the
sole source of wealth, 54 ; the error
of the " net product," 55; Hume's
refutation of Turgot's theory that
land alone should be taxed, 56 ;
agriculture as affected by free trade
in grain, 93-96.
Albert, makes Turgot's acquaintance,
38; succeeds Brochet, 113 ; ap
pointed lieutenant of police at Paris,
128.
Aligre. See D'Aligre.
Amelot, Maurepas's preference of him
to Very as Malesherbes's successor,
187 ; has no talent, 189 ; his ap
pointment, 191.
America, Turgot's prophecy about
the colonies, 27.
AngoulSme, commercial crisis at, 79 ;
Turgot's remarks concerning, 80;
infringes the law of free trade in
grain, 90.
Antoinette. See Marie Antoinette.
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, his argument
against interest on loans, 84.
Army, French, spirit of privilege in,
203.

Association, freedom of, prohibited by
Turgot's Article XIV., 166, 172 ;
Adam Smith on, 172, 173', conflicts
with the rights of the State, 173,
174; French and Austrian Catho
lics laboring for, 216 et seq. ; may
result. in the oppression of the in
dividual, 221.
Austrian Catholic Socialism, 216, 217.

Bachaumont, on Turgot's persist
ence in free trade in grain, 122.
Bacon, Francis, quoted by Turgot,
195 ; Turgot compared to, 198.
Baudeau, Abbe, on Turgot as a doc
trinaire, 72 ; quoted, 104, 114,115;
tells how the decree of 1774 was re
ceived, 121.
Beaumont, Leprevost de, his accusa
tions touching the starvation-con
tract, 110-112.
Bed of Justice, of May, 1775, 129 ; of
Nov. 1774, 137; of March, 1776,
detailed account of, 167-172.
Bertin, Minister of Agriculture, his
warning to Turgot, 115.
Bible, argument against interest-bear
ing loans drawn from, 85.
Bibliography. See Works.
Bismarck, Prince, on Christian Ger
man Socialism, 216.
Blanc, Louis, criticises Turgot's the
ory of wages, 59 ; eulogizes Necker's
treatise on the corn-laws, 118; on
the conflicting definitions of liberty,
208 ; thinks Turgot's work a tri
umph of individualism, 209.

224

Index.

Boncerf, chief clerk to Turgot, his
book on "The Inconveniences of
Feudal Laws" burned by the Par
liamentary hangman, 158, 159.
Bons, or Bons-Turgot, in Normandy,
residence of Turgot's father, 1,9 ;
Turgot's burial-place, 198.
Bordeaux, Parliament of, opposes the
law of free trade in grain, 89.
Bossut, Abbe", studies geometry with
Turgot, 195.
Boufflers, Madame de, remark upon
Turgot, 116.
Bread-riots. See Corn-riots.
Brochet de Saint-Prest, director of
the wheat-ring, dismissed by Tur
got, 108; his ill-gotten wealth, 113.
Brucourt, Turgot of, Turgot's name
for a time, 19-

Cadastre, Turgot's, in Limousin,
75-
Caillard, Turgot's intimate friend, 28 ;
Turgot's correspondent on poetical
subjects, 74.
Calas, Turgot one of the judges at the
review of his trial, 35.
Calonne, C. A. de, his return to the
reforms of Necker and of Turgot,
204-206 ; contrasted with Turgot,
206.
Capital, accumulation and use of, 51 ;
Quesnay and Turgot would exempt
it from taxation, 52.
Catholic Economic School, 215;
French, German, and Austrian
branches, 216 et seg.
Chamber of commerce of Paris, its
firm resistance to the re-establish
ment of the guilds, 211, 212.
Chambord, Count de, influence of
his residence in Austria upon the
French Catholic economic school,
217.
Charles I. of England, Turgot warns
Louis XVI. by his fate, 180, 188.
Charles IX. of France, Turgot makes
him a warning to Louis XVL, 180,

Cherest, historian of " The Fall of the
Old Regime," attributes an impor
tant memorial to Malesherbes, 148,
Choiseul, Duke de, his remark about
Turgot, 10 ; Turgot's chief adver
sary, 39 ; delight of his party in the
defeat of Turgot, 177 ; Turgot's ref
erence to, 184.
Christian German Socialism, 216.
Christianity, advantages of to man
kind. See Advantages,
Church (the), Turgot's renunciation
of, 29 ; his remarks on religion and,
140.
Clergy (the), opposed to Turgot's re
forms, 139, 140; insist on the royal
oath to suppress heretics, 140 ;
Turgot forced to waive their taxa
tion, 154.
Colbert, his sanction of the guilds,
171.
Colonies, Turgot's famous remark
upon, 27.
Condorcet, cited, 34; meets Turgot,
36 ; describes Voltaire's last meet
ing with Turgot, 43 ; corresponds
with Turgot, 74, 195; quoted, 119;
denounces the old parliaments, 135.
Conti, Prince de, thought to have in
stigated the corn-riots, 132.
Cook, Captain, Turgot's humane
proposition concerning, 195.
Corn-laws. See Grain and Free Trade.
Corn-riots, at Dijon, 122-124; at and
near Paris, n, 126-132.
Corporations, exclusive industrial
(see Guilds), their establishment ad
vocated by the Catholic economic
school, 216 et seg.
Corvee (or corvies), definition of,
145, note; Turgot's exemption-tax,
146; where the burden fell, 147,
148 ; discussion of, between Miro
menil and Turgot, 148-155 ; the
Parliament's remonstrance against
the edict abolishing it, 160; argu
ments at the bed of justice against
its abolition, 168, 169.
Court (the), opposed Turgot's re-

Index.

225

forms, 139 ; should Turgot have
sought to conciliate it? 201, 202,
206.
Cousin, Victor, estimate of Turgot as
a metaphysician, 44.
Crisis, commercial, at Angouleme, 79.
D'Alembert, meets Turgot, 36; en
lists Turgot for the " Encyclo
paedia/* 41 ; correspondence with
Voltaire concerning Turgot, 42.
D'Aligre, first president of the Par
liament, 167 ; speech at the bed of
justice, 168.
Deffand, Marchioness du, Turgot for
sakes her salon, 39; delighted with
the defeat of Turgot, 177.
Delort, his explanation of Turgot's
celibacy, 37.
D'Enville, Duchess, her enlightened
friendship for Turgot, 100 ; Turgot
retires to her castle, 192.
Dijon, the corn-riot there, 122-124.
Dissertations at the Sorbonne, Tur
got's, 25-27.
Duplessis. See Levacher.
Economists of the eighteenth centu
ry, their tendency to lean upon au
thority, 40 ; their sectarian spirit,4& ;
Hume's opinion of them, 61 ; the
rival schools of Gournay and Ques
nay, 65 ; Catholic economic school
of the present time, 215 et seq.
Economy, Political, of the present
time, founded by Turgot, 13 ; eco
nomic laws inseparable from other
moral laws, 45 ; Turgot's economic
doctrine, 48.
Edicts, the six great, enumerated, 144,
145 ; general preamble, 146-148 ;
discussion of the edict to suppress
the corvSe, 148-161 ; articles of the
edict for the suppression of guilds,
165, 166; their registration in bed
of justice, 167-172; the edict for
the suppression of guilds reproduced
under the Revolution, 207.
Education, Turgot's plan for the re
form of, 105.

Eighteenth century, condition of the
laboring classes in, 218-220.
Elections {Pays d'ilection\ fiscal dis
tricts, 148.
" Encyclopaedia,'7 the, Turgot's ar
ticles in, 43 ; his article on Exist
ence, 44.
(( Essay on the Formation and Distri
bution of Wealth," 48.
"Eulogy of Gournay," an important
doctrinal work, 67.

Family industry, errors of the Catho
lic economic school concerning, 217-
219.
Fleury, Joly de, Necker's successor,
his reactionary narrowness, 203.
Flour war (the). See Corn-riots.
Forced labor on roads. See Corvie-
Franklin, Benjamin, Turgot's verse
upon, 29 ; Turgot's intercourse with,
195-
Free cities, guilds originated with, 164.
Freedom, various definitions of, 208 ;
what is it ? 221, 222.
Freedom of labor, the present at
tacks upon, 14 ; a fundamental
principle, 47 ; Gournay's doctrine
summarized by Turgot, 68 ; Tur
got's greatest reform, 161 ; its final
triumph due to Turgot, 212-214;
condition of the workingman then
and now, 218-220; defended from
the attacks of the Catholic eco
nomic school, 218-222.
Free trade, its relation to agriculture,
47 ; Gournay's principles summa
rized by Turgot, 67 ; decreed as to
grain in France in 1763, 89; Le
Trosne's work on free trade in
grain, 90 ; Turgot's letters on free
trade in grain, 91-97; free trade in
grain abolished, 97, 108 ; Galiani's
dialogues on free trade in grain, 109 ;
free trade in grain finally decreed
by Turgot, 119; Turgot's defence
and discussion, 120.
French Catholic Economic School,
216, 217 et seq*

is

226

Index.

Galiani, Abbe", 10S ; dialogues on
free trade in grain, 109 ; shrewd
prophecy of Turgot's failure, 178.
Generality (the), defined, 70.
GeofFrin, Madame de, Turgot fre
quents her salon, 36.
German Christian Socialism, 216,
Gold, origin of its use as money, 50.
Gournay, meets Turgot, 38 ; Turgot's
preference of him to Quesnay, 46 ;
his doctrine compared with Ques
nay's, 47 ; Turgot's intimacy with
him, 62 ; Turgot's illustration of
his theories of freedom, 63 ; his
biography, 64 ; Turgot his disciple,
66; " Eulogy of Gournay," 67 ; his
doctrine of freedom summarized, 67.
Graffigny, Madame de, her habit of
nicknaming, 36.
Grain, dearth of, in Limousin, 89;
Turgot's letters on free trade in,
9*~97i government monopoly of,
97; free trade in grain abolished,
97, 108 *, Galiani' s theories, 109 ;
the grain-ring, no; opposition to
Turgot's decree making the grain
trade free, 114-119 : the decree
finally passed, 119 ; reactionary de
cree touching the harvesting of, 204.
Guerre des Farines. See Corn-riots.
Guilds, exclusive industrial corpora
tions (j'urandes et maitrises), 11,
145 ; defined, 161-163 ; history and
constitution, 164, 165 ; edict for
their suppression, 165-167 ; argu
ments at the bed of justice against
their suppression, 169, 170; Siguier
admits their abuses, 171 ; their re
form under the Revolution, 206-208 ;
defence by Marat, 208, 209 ; Louis
Blanc's views, 209; why the Revo
lutionists abolished them, 210; Na
poleon's attitude, 210, 212 ; attempt
to restore them under the Restora
tion, 210-212; again in 1848, 212;
failure of all these reactions, 212-
214. {See Freedom of Labor.)
Guines, Count de, the queen's pas
sionate defence of, 143 ; recalled by
Turgot and Vergennes and promoted

by the queen, 175-177 » delight of
the Choiseul party in his triumph,
177.
Hausset, Madame du, anecdote ot
Turgot, 39.
Helvetius, Turgot condemns his
ethics, 44.
Helvetius, Madame, Turgot's "Mi
nette " (Mile, de Ligne ville), 9 ; at
tachment to Turgot, 36; why did
Turgot not marry her? 37.
Henry IV., his sanction of the guilds,
171.
History, Turgot's taste for, 31.
Horace, Turgot's death-bed transla
tion from, 198.
Human mind, successive advances of,
26.
Hume, David, refutation of Turgot's
theory that land alone is taxable,
56; his opinion of the French econ
omists, 61 ; of Latin pronunciation,
74-
Hutcheson, Francis, influence upon
Adam Smith and Turgot, 33.
Intendant (the), functions defined,
70.
Interest on money. See Loan and
Usury.
Jacobins, their opposition to Turgot's
doctrines, 136 ; their prohibition of
free association based upon Turgot's
edict, 218.
Jurandes et maitrises, n, 145. {See
Guilds.)
Laage, Abbe* de, Turgot's pseudonym
as a poet, 27.
Labor, freedom of. See Freedom.
Labor, organization of. See Associa
tion, Guilds, Freedom.
Laboring classes, their condition un
der the old system and at present,
217-220.
La Harpe, commends the preamble of
Turgot's edict, 120.

Index*

227

Lantheuil Castle, seat of the Turgot
family, 19 ; Hume's letter preserved
in its archives (quoted), 56 ; obser
vations by Malesherbes in its ar
chives (quoted), 181 ; unfinished
draft of a letter to Maurepas found
there (quoted), 196.
Larcy, M. de, on the recall of the
parliaments, 134; his discovery of
Turgot's secret letter to the king,
180.
Laulne, Abbe* de, Turgot's name at
the Sorbonne, 19.
Lavoisier, taught Turgot chemistry,
195-
Law, John, his financial system re
futed by Turgot, 23.
Laws, economic, inseparable from
moral laws, 45 ; freedom consists
not in being subject to laws, 221.
Lespinasse (L'Espinasse), Mile, de,
meets Turgot, 36 ; Turgot frequents
her salon, 38; quoted, 101, 108, 119.
Le Trosne, his work on free trade in
grain, 90.
"Letters on Free Trade in Grain,"
Turgot's, 9X-97.
Letters to the king, Turgot's secret,
180- 190.
Levacher-Duplessis, advocate of the
guilds, 210, 211.
L'Hopital, Chancellor, Turgot com
pared to, 195.
Liberty, Louis Blanc on, 208 ; Turgot
on, 221, 222.
Liclitenstein, Prince, advocate of the
industrial corporations in Austria,
217.
Ligneville, Mile. de. See Helvetius.
Limoges (generality of), Turgot in
tendant of, 71 ; its condition, 71 ;
Turgot's popularity there, 72 ; its
Agricultural Society offers a prize for
an essay on taxation, 76 ; the dearth
of grain, 89 ; still bears the stamp
ofTurgot, 146.
Loans of Money and Usury, Turgot's
memorial on, 81 ; attack of scholas
tic philosophers upon, 83 ; argu
ment of Pothier, 83 ; of Aquinas,

84; from Bible, 85; real origin of
the sentiment against interest, 86.
Locke, John, Turgot of his metaphysi
cal school, 44.
Louis XIII., "a crowned slave,"
j 88.
Louis XIV., religion disgraced for the
sake of flattering him, 140; his
sanction of the guilds, 171.
Louis XV., favorable opinion of the
Turgot family, 40 ; Turgot contrasts
him with his successor, 186.
Louis XVI., aware of Turgot's shy
ness, 21 ; Turgot's first conversation
with him after becoming minister,
101 ; conduct during the corn-riot
at Versailles, 126, 127; behavior at
the bed of justice (May, 1775), 129 ;
letter to Turgot, 130 ; letter to the
King of Sweden, 13/ ; mumbles the
oath to suppress heretics, 140 ; the
queen acquires complete ascendency
over him, 175, 176 ; Turgot loses his
confidence, 179 ; Turgot's secret let
ters to him, 180-190; his choice in
favor of Maurepas, 190; too weak
to second Turgot, 201.
Louis XVIII. (then Count of Pro
vence), his diatribe against Turgot,
142.

MAiTRiSES. See Guilds.
Majority, rule of, may be fatal to free
dom, 221, 222.
Malesherbes, reproaches Turgot with
haste, 12; great and good, 132;
memorial attributed to him by
Cherest, 148, 151 ; quotation from
that memorial supporting Turgot
touching the corvSe, 152-154; hesi
tation, 156, 157 ; effect of his resig
nation, 179; observations on Tur
got's secret letters to the king, 181
-183 ; Turgot's reference to his sup
port, 184 ; his brief eulogy of Tur
got, 19S.
Malherbe, quoted, 17.
Marat, J. P., his defence of the trade-
guilds, 208.

228

Index,

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France,
acknowledges Turgot's integrity,
101 ; her influence feared by Tur
got, 103 ; disarmed for a time, 132 ;
strenuous opposition to Turgot's
measures, 142-144; letter to her
mother concerning Turgot's edicts,
157 ; her conflict with Turgot and
Vergennes over Count de Guines,
175-177.
Marmontel, " Eulogy of Gournay "
addressed to, 67 ; quoted, 132.
Masters of Requests, their functions,
35-
Maupeou, member of ministerial tri
umvirate, 99 ; his coup d'etat, 133 ;
dismissal of, 136.
Maurepas, Count de, assists Gournay,
65; made prime minister, 99; his
wife admires Turgot, 100 ; isolates
Turgot on the recall of the parlia
ments, 134; will not quarrel with
the clergy, 140 ; anecdote, 142 ;
forced to choose between the queen
and Turgot, 144 ; " mocks all,"
158; Mirom^nil's influence over,
184; Turgot's analysis of his char
acter to the king, 187-189 ; has
Turgot dismissed, 191 ; Turgot's
unfinished letter to, 196, 197.
Memorial attributed by Cherest to
Malesherbes, 148, 151-154.
" Memorial on Loans of Money,"
Turgot's, 81-88.
Mercy, Count de, letter to Maria The
resa touching Turgot's appointment,
101 ; ibid, touching Turgot's con
flict with the queen, 176.
Metayers and tenant-farmers, 77, 95.
Metra correspondence, quoted, 121.
Metrical experiments, Turgot's. See
Versification.
Minette. See Helvetius (Madame).
Ministerial crises, always hinge upon
questions of confidence, 179.
Mirabeau, " the friend of men," meets
Turgot, 38.
Miromdnil, Hue de, Keeper of the
Seals, opposes Turgot, 139; his
great discussion with Turgot touch

ing the corvie, 148-155 ; his part in
the bed of justice, 167, 168, 169;
Turgot's reference to his hostility.
184 ; ibid, to his insinuations, 189.
Molinari, strictures on Necker's trea
tise on the corn-laws, 119.
Monetary crises, improperly so called,
79-
Money, Turgot's correct conception
of, 23; the origin of, 50; his me
morial on loans and usury, 81 ; law
fulness of interest, 82 ; alleged bar
renness of, 83.
Monopoly, of graimtrade by govern
ment, 97 ; spirit of in the guilds,
163-165.
Montchretien, his encounter with Tur
got's ancestor, 16 ; author of the
first " Treatise of Political Econ
omy," 17.
Montesquieu, the greatest mind of the
eighteenth century, 12.
Morellet, Abbe\ relations with Turgot
at the Sorbonne, 25 ; laments that
Turgot did not marry Minette, 36 ;
quoted touching Adam Smith, 38 ;
quoted touching Necker's interview
with Turgot, 116.
Morley, John, his essay on Turgot,
95, note ; definition of the corve'e,
145, note.

Napoleon Bonaparte, favored the
guilds, 210, 212.
Necker, Jacques, his interview with
Turgot, 116; correspondence, 117;
treatise on the corn-laws, 1 18 ; notes
upon Turgot's budget, 179 ; his
ministry swept away by the reaction,
202, 203.
Nemours, Dupont de, quoted, 35,
38 ; insists on the harmony of
Quesnay and Gournay, 65 ; quoted,
106 ; referred to, 179 ; at Turgot's
death -bed, 198; inspires the finan
cial system of the French Revolu
tion, 206, 207.
Nineteenth century, the true century
of Turgot, 13, 14, 15; improvement

Index.

229

in the condition of the laboring
classes, 219.
Old Regime, ministerial crises in,
179; Turgot's effort to modify it,
200; its resistance to his reforms,
201-205.
Organization of labor. See Associa
tion, Guilds, Freedom,
Facte de Famine, 109-112.
Paris. See Chamber of Commerce,
Parliament.
Parliament, of Bordeaux, decides
against free trade in grain, 89 ; of
Paris, opposition to Turgot during
the corn-riots, 128, 129 ; remon
strates against suppression of corve'e,
156,160; proscribes Boncerf's book,
158; reactionary decrees after Tur
got's death, 204.
Parliaments, the thirteen French,
expulsion and reorganization by
Maupeou, 133; different from the
English Parliament, 133, note; their
recall, 134-138; headed opposition
to Turgot's reforms, 139 ; composed
of a privileged class, 153 ; should
Turgot have conciliated them ? 201,
202.
Peasants, how the corvke affected
them, 145, note, 147-149, 151, 153.
Philosophers (the), Turgot welcomed
to their circle, 36 ; ranked by Cou
sin as one of, 44.
Physiocrats, 33 ; their doctrines, 47 ;
their errors, 52, 54 ; the great truths
they taught, 53 ; Hume's opinion of
them, 6r ; enumeration of them, 65.
[See Economists.)
Pithou, Pierre, an ancestor of Turgot,
1 8.
" Plan of a Memoir on Taxation,"
Turgot's, 76.
Poetry, Turgot's. See Versification.
Pompadour, Madame de, favorable
opinion of Turgor, 40.
Pothier, his argument against interest
on loans, 83.

Price, Dr. Richard, Turgot's great
letter to him cited, 193, 221.
Pulteney, Sir William, remark upon
Adam Smith, 34.
Quesnay, Turgot his guest, 38, 40 ;
sectarian spirit of his followers,
46 ; compared and contrasted with
Gournay, 46 ; great laws discovered
by him, 52 ; his errors, 54 ; Tur
got's faithful adherence to his doc
trine, 62 ; his errors useful as
hypotheses, 63.
Radical Socialist School, 215.
Reaction, economic and political, after
Turgot's death, 200-206.
Religion, disgraced for the sake of
flattering Louis XIV., 140. {See
Advantages, Church.)
Revolution, French, influence of Tur
got's ideas in, 161, 194, 195 ; its
return to Turgot's plans touching
taxation and the guilds, 206, 207 ;
economic discussion during, 207-
209 ; Turgot the educator of its
statesmen, 213, 214.
¦Rochon, Turgot studies astronomy
with, 195.
Saint-Aignan, Duchess de, Turgot's
sister, 20.
Saint-Bartholomew, a ministerial, 137.
Saint-Prest. See Brochet.
Sartine, minister of marine, accused
of instigating the corn-riots, 132 ;
"doubts all," 157; Turgot's expo
sure of a plot by him, 184, 185;
Turgot's note to him concerning
Captain Cook, 195, 196.
Say, Jean Baptiste, refuted the errors
of Quesnay and Turgot, 54.
Scholastic philosophers, their argu
ments against interest on loans, 83.
Secret letters to the king, Turgot's,
180-190.
Sect, spirit of, Turgot on, 46.
Seguier, the royal advocate, 167 ;
speeches at the bed of justice, 169-
171.

230

Index,

Sieyes, Abbe", on the reactionary stub
bornness of the French nobility,
203.
Silver, origin of its use as money, 50.
Smith, Adam, compared and con
trasted with Turgot, 32 ; mutual
influence of Turgot and, 33 ; Pul-
teney's remark upon, 34; first
meeting with Turgot, 38 ; debt to
Turgot, 52 ; exposed the errors of
Quesnay and Turgot, 54; remark
on freedom of association, 172, 173.
Socialism, Christian German, 216.
{See Catholic Economic School.)
Sorbonne, the House of the, described,
24.
Soulavie, Abbe", his testimony touch
ing Turgot's secret letters to the
king, 180, 183.
Starvation-contract (the), 109-112.
State (the), its rights in conflict with
those of labor organizations, 173.
Suard, J. B. A., his letter to Hume
concerning Turgot, 193, note.
" Successive Advances of the Human
Mind, The," Turgot's second dis
sertation at the Sorbonne, 26.
Sully, his sanction of the guilds, 171,

Taille (the), 72 ; abuse of in Limou
sin, 74 ; classes exempt from, 146.
Taxation. See Taxes.
Taxes, subject to a natural law of in
cidence, 53; shall the "net pro
duct " alone be taxed ? 54; Hume's
refutation of Turgot's theory, 56 ;
the taille, 72 ; Turgot's theory of
the land-tax, 76 ; comparative merits
of the quota system and of the ap
portionment system, 76 ; Turgot's
exemption-tax, 145 ; Calonne's ter
ritorial subvention, 205 ; financiers
of the French Revolution governed
by Turgot's principles of taxation,
207. (See Corvee, Taille?)
Tenant-farmers and metayers, 77, 95.
Terray, Abb£, Turgot's predecessor
as Comptroller-General, his doubts
touching free trade in grain, 92 ;

Turgot's reply, 93-97 ; the reply in
effectual, 97; his attempt to retain
his place, 106; contrast between his
administration and Turgot's, 107 ;
abolishes free trade in grain, 97,
108 ; his aim the monopoly of the
wheat trade, 109 ; enormous pecu
lations under his administration,
112-1.14 ; always attended mass, 142.
Theology, Turgot's studies in, 24.
Third Estate, what privileges had it ?
154-
Tourny, Turgot's predecessor at Li
moges, his plan for correcting the
•abuses of arbitrary taxation, 74.
Trade-guilds. See Guilds.
Trade-unions. See Association.
Trudaine, meets Turgot, 38 ; quoted,
I5S> *56 j opposes half-way meas
ures, 157; his prophecy touching
the end of Turgot's ministry, 177.
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques (1727-
1781), introductory outline of life,
character, influence, 9 ; ancestors,
16 ; father, 18 ; brothers, 20 ; shy
ness, 20; theological education, 21 ;
on money, 23; dissertations, 25;
verse translations, 27 ; refuses to
wear the mask of the Churchman,
29; early maturity, 30; resemblance
to Adam Smith, 32 ; master of re
quests, 34 ; philosophers, econo
mists, men and women of letters
receive him, 36 ; writes for the
" Encylopasdia," 42 ; Voltaire's
friendship, 42; economic doctrine:
" Essay on the Formation and
Distribution of Wealth," 48 ;
economic doctrine : " Eulogy of
Gournay," 67; Intendant of Li
moges, 71; "Advice concerning
the Levy and Distribution of the
Taille" 73 ; " Plan of a Memoir
on Taxation," 76 ; " Memorial on
Loans of Money," 81 ; " Letters on
Free Trade in Grain," 91 ; minister
of marine, 100; Comptroller-Gen
eral, 101 ; exact length of his minis
try* 103 5 plans for education of the
people, 105 ; attacks the grain mo-

Index.

231

nopoly, 108 ; decrees free trade in
grain, 114; his haughty treatment
of Necker, 1 16 ; preamble of the de
cree, 120 ; Dijon insurrection, 122 ;
diminishes taxes, 124 ; the corn-
riots, a victory, 130; vainly opposes
the recall of the parliaments, 134;
the coronation oath, 140; economy,
142 ; the great edicts, 144 ; General
Preamble, 146 ; discussion of the
corvie, 148 ; Preamble of the Edict
for the suppression of trade-guilds,
162 ; articles of the edict, 165 ; the
edicts become law, 167 ; struggle
with the queen, 175 ; loses the king's
confidence, 179; Secret Letters to
the king, 185 ; dismissal, 191 ; liter
ary and scientific pursuits, 192 ;
death, 198 ; reactions, 200 ; his in
fluence triumphant in the Revolu
tion, 206 ; more reactions, 210 ;
what we owe him, 213 ; his concep
tion of freedom, 221.
Usury, Turgot's memorial on loans
and, 81 ; real origin of the sentiment
against, 86 ; what usurers are inju
rious to society? 87.
Vergennes, Count de, unites with
Turgot in urging the recall of Count
de Guines, 175, 176.
Vergil, Turgot's translation from, 27,
198.
Versification, Turgot's experiments
, in, 27 ; Voltaire's opinion of Tur
got's verses, 28.
Very, Abbe* de, contributed to the

choice of Turgot as minister, 99 ;
his memoirs contain a famous letter
by Turgot, 180 ; that letter sent to
him by Turgot, 183, 185 ; his good
influence over Maurepas, 188 ;
Maurepas prefers Amelot to him as
successor of Malesherbes, 189.
Voltaire, on Turgot's appointment as
intendant, 10; on Turgot's enemies,
12 ; takes Turgot's verses for prose,
28 ; Turgot's visit to him, 42 ; sati
rizes Turgot's theory of taxation,
42 ; his constant loyalty to Turgot,
42 ; his description of the tyranny
of the grain laws, 98 ; on the pre
amble to Turgot's edict of 1774, 120;
tbid. to D'Alembert, 121; to Con
dorcet touching the Dijon insur
rection, 124 ; on the burning of
Boncerf's book, 159.

Wages, regulated by the law of supply
and demand, 56 ; Turgot's theory
of, 58, 60 ; that theory criticised by
Louis Blanc, 59.
Wealth, Formation and Distribution
of, Turgot's treatise on, preceded
" The Wealth of Nations," 33 ;
analysis of this treatise, 48; agri
culture the source of wealth, 48 ;
threefold freedom essential to, 53.
"Wealth of Nations, The." See
Smith, Adam.
Workingmen, their condition under
the guilds compared with their pres
ent condition, 217-220. (See Guilds,
Freedom, Association.)
Works, Turgot's, note upon, 7.

THE END.

M8 5459