Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot

“ Turgot drew up a list of questions for them to answer, and prepared the Reflections to enable them the better to understand the purpose of his interrogations (see Appendix, Excerpt 6) . In 1769 he yielded to the insistence of Du Pont de Nemours, then editing the Éphémérides du Citoyen, the organ of the Physiocratic party, who was in chronic want of copy, and gave him the Reflections to print. ”

“ A really critical edition of the Reflections would come with good grace from the inheritors of the Turgot tradition,—the group of Parisian economists associated with the Journal des Économistes and the house of Guillaumin. It must be observed, also, that unless the manuscript of Turgot's other writings published posthumously by Du Pont can be recovered, they must remain under some suspicion. ”

“ Out of Turgot's one section (xxi) on cultivation by slaves. Du Pont made three; his additions (more than equal in extent to Turgot's own text) not only emphasizing the moral evil of slavery, but also maintaining that slave labour was unprofitable even to the masters: and from the heading and opening sentences of § lv Du Pont omitted altogether the enumeration of slaves among moveable riches. Turgot was exceedingly annoyed (see Appendix, Excerpts 7, 8) ”

“ It has recently been shewn by M. G. Schelle (in his Du Pont de Nemours et l'école physiocratique, 1888, pp. 126-129, and in an article in the Journal des Economistes for July 1888) , that Du Pont took upon himself, without consulting the author, to modify the text in more than one direction. In § xvii (infra, p. 16) the adjectives "human" and "civil" were omitted before "conventions" and "laws" ”

“ But Du Pont could not allow Turgot's language in § lxxviii, about saving ("l'épargne") as the source of capital, to pass uncriticised; and accordingly he appended a long note, urging that "the formation of capitals arises much less from saving out of the expenditure of revenues than from the wise employment of the expenditure" (see Appendix, Excerpt 9) , and added one or two other fussy notes. ”

“ Every commodity is a pledge representing all the articles of Commerce; but it is more or less convenient in practice, according as it is more or less easy to transport & to keep without alteration 35 XXXIX.
Every commodity has the two essential properties of money, those of measuring and representing all value ”

“ Valuation of lands in accordance with the proportion which the revenue bears to the amount of moveable wealth, or the value, for which they are exchanged: this proportion is what is called the penny of the price of lands 49 LVIII.
Every capital in money, or every sum of value whatever it may be, is the equivalent of a piece of land producing a revenue equal to a definite fraction of that sum. ”

“ This discussion, though it has received of late some valuable contributions, (S. Feilbogen, Smith und Turgot, 1892; E. Cannan, Introduction to his edition of Smith's Lectures, 1896; H. Higgs in Economic Journal, December 1896; and W. Hasbach in Political Science Quarterly, January 1898) cannot be regarded as concluded. It is now generally recognized that there are not inconsiderable portions of Adam Smith's treatise of a distinctly Physiocratic character. ”

“ Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of Marie Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody who dared to mention the word "economy" within her hearing. Soon Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary" and a "theoretical-professor" and then of course his position became untenable. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.
After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Business Sense. He was an industrious Swiss by the name of Necker who had made himself rich as a grain speculator and the partner in an international banking house. ”

“ An Italian economist, when he heard of Turgot's appointment, wrote to a friend in France as follows: "So Turgot is controller general! He will not remain in office long enough to carry out his plans. He will punish some scoundrels; he will bluster about and lose his temper; he will be anxious to do good, but will run against obstacles and rogues at every turn. Public credit will fall; he will be detested; it will be said that he is not fitted for his task. Enthusiasm will cool ”

“ Alas! philosophers are being beaten everywhere. Reason and liberty are unwelcome in this world.”
An alliance with no hatred for the common enemy Another of the master minds of the day, the economist, thinker, and reformer Turgot, the one whose advice, if followed, would have possibly secured for us a bloodless revolution, was of the same opinion. In the famous letter written by him on the 22d of March, 1778, to his English friend, Doctor Price, Turgot showed himself, just as the French nation was, ardently pro-American, but not anti-English. ”

“ During the interval between his retiring from office, and his death, Turgot devoted himself to literary and scientific pursuits. His works are contained in nine volumes octavo, 1808–11; they are composed principally of state papers connected with his administration, of some articles written for the Encyclopédie, and a few translations from classical and modern literature.
Turgot was a great and a good man; endowed with depth and originality of thought, he discovered and acted upon sound principles of political economy, before the science had been even dignified with a name ”

“ In their fine hotel in the Rue Sainte-Anne (Rue Helvétius, the municipality of 1792 rechristened it, and Rue Saint-Helvétius, the cochers of Paris!) he and his wife received the flower of French society. Turgot introduced to them Morellet, who soon became a daily visitor, rode with them in the Bois, and stayed with them{200} in the country. To their Tuesday dinners at two o’clock came Condorcet, d’Alembert, Diderot, d’Holbach, Galiani, Marmontel, Saint-Lambert, Raynal, Gibbon, and Hume—‘the States-General of the human mind,’ says Garat. ”

“ Intimately connected with the most esteemed magistrates and economists, such as MM. Trudaine, Quesnay, and Gournay, at the same time that he was writing in the Encyclopaedia, and constantly occupied in useful work, Turgot was not yet five and thirty when he was appointed superintendent of the district of Limoges. There, the rare faculties of his mind and his sincere love of good found their natural field; the country was poor, crushed under imposts, badly intersected by roads badly kept, inhabited by an ignorant populace, violently hostile to the recruitment of the militia. ”

“ It is supposed that through this popular dramatist Franklin maintained communications with the French Government until the mask was thrown aside. [24]
Beyond all doubt, Turgot is one of the most remarkable intelligences which France has produced. He was by nature a philosopher and a reformer, but he was also a statesman, who for a time held a seat in the cabinet of Louis XVI., first as Minister of the Marine, and then as Comptroller of the Finances. Perhaps no minister ever studied more completely the good of the people. ”

“ Turgot went as a boarder first to the college of Louis-le-Grand, then to that of Plessis; thence to the seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he took the degree of bachelor in theology; and from Saint Sulpice to the Sorbonne. His childhood and youth, like that of other men who have afterwards won love and admiration, have their stories. The affection of one biographer records how the pocket-money with which the young Turgot was furnished, used always instantly to disappear, no one knew how nor on what. It was discovered that he gave it to poor schoolfellows to enable them to buy books. ”

“ Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to play his great part as an enlightened minister, as much from the principle of hard work and domestic economy traditional in his family, as from a maturity of mind Turgot 1774-1776. developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and by frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists. He had proved this by his capable administration in the paymaster’s office at Limoges, from 1761 to 1774. ”

“ As it was, the French owe in great part to Vergennes that peaceful accumulation of energy which permitted the Revolution to triumph.
In the nomination of this considerable diplomatic force the Queen had no part at all.
She had no part in the nomination of Turgot.
It is difficult to write the name of “Turgot” without admitting a digression, though such a digression adapts itself but ill to any account of the Queen.
Turgot is the name that dominates the first two years of the reign for every historian. The time has hardly come to criticise him. Criticism of his faults is easy ”

“ The occasional visits of the writer to the Scottish court are not incompatible with Turgot's duties at Durham, where he was prior four years before Margaret's death. The Bollandist version of the ‘Life’ under 10 June is printed from a foreign manuscript, which gives Theodoricus instead of T., and Papebroch, the editor, attributes it to an unknown monk of Durham of that name. But this seems to have been either another name for Turgot or the error of the transcriber. The ‘Life’ has been translated into English by Forbes Leith, S.J., (3rd edit. Edinburgh, 1896) . ”

“ What wonder that many men gave up such a task in despair; that many even good men found it easier to prophesy a Golden Age in luxurious Paris than to fight hand to hand against the awful odds of such an awful reality? Turgot was thirty-four when he went to Limoges, and forty-seven when he left it. ”

“ It was the custom in France, during the period of Turgot’s boyhood, that parents should decide upon the profession to which their children should be educated, even from the cradle; little voice in this most important question being allowed to those who were most deeply interested in it. Turgot was the youngest of three sons; of whom 176the eldest was destined to the magistracy, the second to the army, the third, the subject of this memoir, was set apart for the church. The premature determination of his parents seemed amply justified as his character was gradually developed. ”

“ It is strange to hear a pre-Revolutionary Frenchman urging love-marriages—‘Because we are sometimes deceived, it is concluded we ought never to choose’—and strange also that, out of all the great reformers with whom his name is associated, Turgot alone perceived the fearful havoc which neglect of family duties makes in the well-being of the State. ”

“ But he was most at home with Madame Helvétius, the widow of the rich and handsome philosopher, whose name, derived from Holland, is now almost unknown. At her house he met in social familiarity D'Alembert, Diderot, D'Holbach, Morellet, Cabanis, and Condorcet, with their compeers. There, also, was Turgot, the greatest of all. ”

“ And never did any statesman devote himself with greater singleness of purpose or more earnest endeavour to the service of his country than Turgot, who was the principal practical representative of the school. ”

“ All our small benefits are transitory, while the light that a man of letters is able to diffuse must, sooner or later, destroy all the artificial evils of the human race, and place it in a position to enjoy all the goods that nature offers.' It is clear that we can only accept Turgot's preference, on condition that the man of letters is engaged on work that seriously advances social interests and adds something to human stature. ”

“ French history informs us what becomes of social order so served. After all, no man can be sure that it is required of him to save society; every man can be sure that he is called upon to keep himself clean from mendacity and equivoke. Such was Turgot's view.
We have said that Turgot disdained to fight under a mask. There was one exception, and only one. In 1754 there appeared two letters, nominally from an ecclesiastic to a magistrate, and entitled Le Conciliateur. ”

“ The most memorable example in modern times of a man who united the spirit of philosophy with the pursuits of active life, and kept wholly clear from the partialities and prejudices both of the student and of the practical statesman, was Turgot ”

“ He soon began writing articles for the Encyclopædia,{213} though he never joined in that battle-cry of the Encyclopædists, Écrasez l’infâme, and was wholly without sympathy for the atheism of d’Holbach and the materialism of Helvétius. Turgot, indeed, may be said to have been, in the broadest acceptation of the term, a Christian; or rather he would be called, and call himself, a Christian to-day. But his Christianity was not of Rome nor yet of Protestantism, but that in whose honest doubt there lives more faith than in half the creeds. ”

“ The Count of Provence, afterwards Lewis XVIII., wrote a satire on the government during Turgot's ministry, and in it there is a picture of the great reformer as he appeared to his enemies: 'There was then in France an awkward, heavy, clumsy creature; born with more rudeness than character, more obstinacy than firmness, more impetuosity than tact; a charlatan in administration no less than in virtue, exactly formed to get the one decried and to disgust the world with the other ”

“ In affairs of government, the priceless qualities are not merely originality of resource, but a sense for things that are going wrong, and a sufficiently vigorous will to set them right.
One general expression serves to describe this most important group of Turgot's undertakings. The reader has probably already observed that what Turgot was doing, was to take that step which is one of the most decisive in the advance of a society to a highly organised industrial stage. ”