The Statesmanship of Turgot

I

When the flood which sweeps through modern society, and which still carries with it good and evil, shall have deposited its impurities, what names will float on the surface of the quiet waters ? Who will then be considered the true precursors of the modern world ? — those who gave the terrible signal call for revolution, or those who have wished to found the progressive reign of liberty and fraternity among men by peace, by the power of natural order, and by universal harmony ? — LEONCE DE LAVERGNE.

I PRESENT to-day one of the three greatest statesmen who fought unreason in France between the close of the Middle Ages and the outbreak of the French Revolution, — Louis XI and Richelieu being the two others. And not only this: were you to count the greatest men of the modern world upon your fingers, he would be of the number: a great thinker, writer, administrator, philanthropist, statesman, and, above all, a great character and a great man. And yet, judged by ordinary standards, a failure. For he was thrown out of his culminating position, as Comptroller-General of France, after serving but twenty months, and then lived only long enough to see every leading measure to which he had devoted his life deliberately and malignantly undone; the flagrant abuses which he had abolished restored, apparently forever; the highways to national prosperity, peace, and influence, which he had opened, destroyed; and his country put under full headway toward the greatest catastrophe the modern world has seen.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l’Aulne, was born in 1727, of a family not only noble but of characteristics which had become very rare among the old French nobility.

Several of his ancestors had been distinguished for public spirit and for boldness in resisting tyranny. His father had been Provost of the Merchants of Paris, or, as we might say, mayor of the city, for a longer term than had any of his predecessors, and had won fame not only by enterprise in works of public utility but by resisting the fury of mobs.

The son, at an early age, showed himself worthy of this lineage. As a boy at school he was studious, thoughtful, modest, dutiful, firm in resisting evil; and it throws light on personal tendencies which continued through his life to learn that his pocket money was quietly lavished upon those of his fellows who were meritorious and needy.

Yet his condition was not at first entirely happy. He was diffident, shy,and greatly lacking in the manners necessary to social success. In all lands and times, simple, easy, good manners have been of vast value to any young man, but in the first years of the reign of Louis XV, manners were everything. Reversing the usual rule in such cases, his father appreciated and admired him, but his mother misunderstood him and had, apparently, little hope for his future.

Being the youngest of three sons, and not having the suppleness necessary to success at court, it was thought best that he should become a priest; and, after a very successful course in two of the best lyceums of Paris, he was sent to the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. That divinity school included among its professors, then as ever since, many noble and earnest men, but it was, of course, mainly devoted, not to the unbiased search for truth, but to the buttressing of dogma.

With ninety-nine young men in a hun,dred, the régime then applied to Turgot produced the desired effect. The young man destined for an ecclesiastical career was placed within walls carefully designed to keep out all currents of new thought; his studies, his reading, his professors, his associates, — all were combined to keep from him any results of observation or reflection save those prescribed: probably, of all means for stifling healthy and helpful thought, a theological seminary, as then conducted, — whether Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or Mohammedan, — was the most perfect.

The greatness of Turgot now began to assert itself: while he performed all the duties of the seminary and studied thoroughly what was required, he gave himself to a wide range of other studies, and chiefly in two very different directions: to thought and work upon those problems in religion which transcend all theologies, and upon those problems in politics which are of vast importance in all countries, and which especially needed discussion in his own.

But the currents of thought which were then sweeping through Europe could not be entirely kept out of Saint-Sulpice. The French philosophy of the eighteenth century was in full strength. Those were the years in which Voltaire ruled European opinion, and Turgot could not but take account of his influence. Yet no one could apparently be more unlike those who were especially named as the French philosophers of the eighteenth century. He remained reverential; he was never blasphemous, never blatant; he was careful to avoid giving needless pain or arousing fruitless discussion; and while the tendency of his whole thinking was evidently removing him from the established orthodoxy of the Church, his was a broader and deeper philosophy than that which was then dominant.

As to the two main lines of his thinking, it is interesting to note that his first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period, suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times.

Theology becoming less and less attractive to him, he turned more and more toward his other line of thought, — upon the amelioration of the general wretchedness in French administration; and he now, in 1749, at the age of twenty-two, wrote to one of his school friends a letter which has been an object of wonder among political thinkers ever since. Its subject was paper money. Discussing the ideas of John Law, and especially the essay of Terrasson which had supported them, he dissected them mercilessly, but in a way useful not only in those times, but in these.

Terrasson’s arguments in behalf of unlimited issues of paper had been put forth in 1720. He revived the old idea which made the royal mint mark the essential test of value, and he declared that the material used for bearing the sign of value is indifferent, that it pertains to the ruling monarch to determine what the material object bearing this sign shall be, and that if there be placed in circulation a sufficiency of such objects thus authorized, the people thereby secure the capital necessary for commercial prosperity.²

Warming with his subject, Terrasson claimed that paper money is better than any other, and that if a sovereign issues enough of paper promises he will be able to loan or even to give money in unlimited amounts to his needy subjects.³

The French have generally, and most unfortunately, gone to the extreme length of their logic on all public questions, and Terrasson showed this national characteristic by arguing that, as business men constantly give notes for very much greater sums than the amount of money they have on hand, so the government, which possesses a virtually unlimited mass of property can issue paper to any amount without danger of depreciation. One premise from which this theory was logically worked out was the claim asserted by Louis XIV, namely, that the king, being the incarnation of the State, is the owner of all property in the nation, including, to use Louis’s own words, “the money we leave in the custody of our people.” ⁴

Terrasson also made the distinction between the note of a business man and notes issued by a government, that the former comes back and must be paid, but that the latter need not come back and can be kept afloat forever by simple governmental command, thus becoming that blessed thing, — worshiped widely, not many years since, in our own country, — “fiat money.”

This whole theory, as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American “ Greenbackers ” in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation.

Never was there a more perfect demonstration of the truth asserted by Daniel Webster, that of all contrivances for defrauding the working people of a country, arbitrary issues of paper money are the most effective.

Turgot’s attempt was to enforce this lesson. He showed how the results that had followed Law’s issues of paper money must follow all such issues. As regards currency inflation, Turgot clearly saw that the issue of paper money beyond the point where it is convertible into coin is the beginning of disaster, — that a standard of value must have value, just as a standard of length must have length, or a standard of capacity, capacity, or a standard of weight, weight. He showed that if a larger amount of the circulating medium is issued than is called for by the business of the country, it will begin to be discredited, and that paper, if its issue be not controlled by its relation to some real standard of value, inevitably depreciates, no matter what stamp it bears.⁵

Out of this theory, simple as it now seems, Turgot developed his argument with a depth, strength, clearness, and breadth which have amazed every dispassionate reader from that day to this. It still remains one of the best presentations of this subject ever made; and what adds to our wonder is that it was not the result of a study of authorities, but was worked out wholly from his own observation and thought. Up to his time there were no authorities and no received doctrine on the subject; there were simply records of financial practice more or less vicious; it was reserved for this young student, in a letter not intended for publication, to lay down for the first time the great law in which the modern world, after all its puzzling and costly experiences, has found safety.

His was, indeed, a righteous judgment on the past and an inspired prophecy of the future. For refusing to heed his argument the French people had again to be punished more severely than in John Law’s time: the over-issue of assignats and mandats during the Revolution came forty years after his warning; and paper money inflation was again paid for by widespread bankruptcy and ruin.⁶

For similar folly, our own country, in the transition from the colonial period, also paid a fearful price; and from a like catastrophe the United States has been twice saved in our time by the arguments formulated by Turgot.⁷

Having taken his bachelor’s degree in theology at Saint-Sulpice, he continued his studies at the Sorbonne, the most eminent theological institution in Europe. The character of this institution was peculiar. It had come to be virtually a club of high ecclesiastics united with a divinity school. Around the quadrangle adjoining the sumptuous church which Richelieu had made his mausoleum, were chambers for a considerable number of eminent theologians, and for a smaller number of divinity students of high birth, great promise, or especial influence. Though fallen from its highest estate, its prestige was still great. Its modes of instruction, its discussions, its public exercises, futile though they often were, certainly strengthened many men intellectually, but generally in ways not especially helpful to their civic development. With Turgot it was otherwise. He soon won the respect and admiration of all in the establishment by his moral earnestness, by his intellectual vigor, by the thoroughness of his general studies, and by his devotion to leading lines of special study, theological and political.

So rapid was this recognition that within six months of his entrance at the Sorbonne his position as a scholar and thinker was recognized in a manner most significant: he was elected by his associates to be their prior; the highest distinction they could offer.

It thus became his duty to deliver two discourses, one on taking office, and one several months later.

The subject of the first of these was “The Services rendered to the World by Christianity.” In this he laid stress upon the morality developed by the Christian religion, upon its ideals and its practices as compared with those of the pagan world, upon its nobler view of the relations of mankind to God and to one another, upon the beneficent impulses which had proceeded from it, upon the salutary restraints it had imposed, upon its incidental benefits to science, and upon the new fields it had given to literature and art. But to its theological garb, — its dogmas, forms, observances, and even to its miraculous sanctions, there was hardly a reference.

There were, indeed, a few perfunctory limitations and concessions due to his environment, but throughout the whole discourse he showed clearly that he cared nothing for proselytism, and abhorred intolerance. Noteworthy was it that his tributes were paid, not to churchmanship, but to Christianity. Curious, as showing the ideas of his time, is his reference to the architectural triumphs of the Roman Empire. Speaking especially of the circus and amphitheatre as monuments of Roman skill, power, greatness, and inhumanity, he bursts forth into an apostrophe: “How much more I love those Gothic edifices designed for the poor and the orphans! Monuments of the piety of Christian princes and of religion: even though your rude architecture repels us, you will always be dear to tender hearts.” Here is manifest the spirit shown at that same period by the wife of John Adams, who, when she passed Canterbury Cathedral, had no thought of entering, but compared it in appearance to a prison; and the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, who, while he adored a ruined classic temple, — the Maison Carrée at Nimes, — drove for days through eastern France, so rich in cathedrals and churches, and never noticed them.

Many expressions give evidence of Turgot’s keen vision. Of certain philosophers he speaks as “indifferent to the gross errors of the multitude, but misled by their own, which had only the frivolous advantage of subtlety.”

This discourse, while causing misgivings among the older sort of theologians, increased his influence among the younger; even sundry bishops and archbishops expressed almost boundless admiration for him. But their tributes seem to have had no injurious effect upon him; they seem only to have increased his zeal in seeking truth and his power in proclaiming it.

Some months later came his second discourse, — its subject being “The Successive Advances of the Human Mind.”

This was vastly superior to his earlier effort, especially in originality, breadth, and clearness. Its fundamental idea was that the human race, under the divine government, is steadily perfecting itself. In view of the discouragements and disenchantments the world has encountered since that day, it is difficult to appreciate the strength of this belief; but there can be no doubt that it inspired and sustained him throughout all his labors and disappointments, even to the end of his life. In combination with this was his fundamental idea on the philosophy of history, given in these words: “All the ages are linked together by a sequence of causes and effects which connects the existing state of the world with all that has preceded it.”

No doubt that, as to its form, there was a hint from Bossuet’s famous discourse on universal history; but in Turgot’s work one finds a freedom and breadth of vision greater by far than had been shown in any other historical treatise up to his time. In every part of it were utterances which, though many of them have now become truisms, were then especially illuminative. One passage shows a striking foresight. Speaking of colonial systems, he develops an idea of Montesquieu, and says: “Colonies, like fruits, are only held fast to the trees up to the time of their maturity. Having become ripe, they do that which Carthage did, and which America will one day do.”⁸ Thus was the American Revolution prophesied by Turgot in 1750, nearly a quarter of a century before leading American patriots began to foresee it. Bear in mind that Franklin denied a tendency in America toward independence very nearly up to the time of the Declaration, and that, less than two years before the Declaration, Washington wrote that independence was desired by no thinking man in America.⁹

In close relations with this second discourse were Turgot’s sketches in Universal History and Geography. Only fragments of these remain, but they give us the torso of a great philosophic and historic creation. As in all his writings in this field, the fundamental idea was that the development of the human race goes on, ever, by the methods and toward the goal fixed by the Almighty, and is proof of the divine forethought and wisdom. While one does not find in it the confident theological statements of the first Sorbonne discourse, the theistic view is never lost. Regarding this work, the most sober and restrained among all the modern historians of France declares, “There is nothing greater in the eighteenth century than Turgot’s plea against Rousseau, regarding the tendency and high destiny of universal humanity.” ¹⁰

In taking account of Turgot’s writings, both at this period and during his after life, his early training may well be noted. It not only included a vast range of general reading, but the foundation of the whole was the best discipline and culture to be obtained from mathematical and classical studies, while not neglecting natural history. Like Lord Bacon, he seemed “to take all knowledge for his province.” With leading philosophers of his time he corresponded on even terms. As to mathematics and astronomy, he occupied himself at various periods, even to the end of his life, with the works of such princes in that realm as Newton, Euler, and their disciples; as to natural science, he interested himself especially in geology and kindred studies, and corresponded with Buffon; as to the classics, the range of his reading was astonishing, and as to his faculty in Latin, it may be mentioned that the two great discourses at the Sorbonne, as well as other writings during his scholastic life, were first written and delivered in that language. In this field bloomed one of the flowers of modern Latin poetry: his tribute to Franklin,—

Of all tributes ever paid to the American philosopher, this line undoubtedly sped farthest and struck deepest.

As to modern languages other than his own, he made extended translations of leading English and German writers. Light is thrown upon his character by the fact that he wrote out, carefully, Pope’s Universal Prayer.

On leaving the Sorbonne, at the age of twenty-three years, he was confronted by the question as to his future profession. This he solved at once, declaring that he could not enter the priesthood, and that he purposed devoting himself to the law and the civil service.

From this decision several of his companions sought to dissuade him. They had, apparently, no more belief in the dominant theology than had Turgot. Though they were under the influence of the eighteenth-century philosophy, they evidently held that the great mass of people can never rise above the current beliefs of their time, and that certain men are appointed to control them by means of these beliefs, and to be well rewarded for exercising this control. They held up to Turgot the prospect of wealth and power in the ecclesiastical career, showed him that the most lofty positions in the Church would be his, and, knowing his patriotic aspirations, they especially displayed his opportunities in these positions to be of use to his country.

To all this Turgot made a reply which has passed into history. Thanking his friends for their kind efforts, he said, “Take for yourselves, if you like, the counsels which you give me, since you feel able to do so. Although I love you, I cannot understand how you are able to do it. As to myself, it is impossible for me, during my whole life, to wear a mask.” ¹¹

Here these friends separated. Of those who became ecclesiastics, and sought to persuade Turgot to do likewise, were Véry, later Grand Vicar of Bourges; De Cicé, afterward a bishop; Boisgelin, who became an archbishop and a cardinal; and, above all, Loménie de Brienne, who secured the utmost of place and pelf which an ecclesiastic could obtain in France: two archbishoprics, a cardinal’s hat, the post of Prime Minister, and, finally, retirement after merited political failure, with the plunder of several abbeys and the unbounded scorn of every right-thinking Frenchman from those days to these.

It may be remarked here that Brienne’s effort to combine his “philosophic” views with the duties of a high ecclesiastic brought him to ruin. Rebuked by Pius VI, he flung back to the Pope his cardinal’s hat; but not all his concessions to the Revolution could save him from its devotees; he died in 1793 in prison at Sens, the seat of his second archbishopric, after cruel insults from his revolutionary jailers, — the only doubt being whether he died as a result of their cruelty or by his own hand.¹²

On the announcement of Turgot’s decision, he was, to all appearance, speedily left behind by his old associates; but, in this new field, his moral and intellectual force rapidly won him promotion. Modest and quiet though he was, he must have had from the first a consciousness of his great abilities. This was never shown offensively, indeed, it may be justly said that it was never shown at all; but one thing he could not but show, and this was his deep sense of responsibility for the use of his powers in every station to which they lifted him. Never at any time was he the prostitute attorney who from that day to this has burdened the world, never a venal defender of criminals, never a partner of marauders, never a hireling supporter of men and measures hostile to the welfare of his country or of mankind. Foremost in his heart and mind was devotion to the public good. Well did Malesherbes say that this devotion was in him “not merely a passion, but a rage.”

Higher and higher positions were opened to him. In accepting them, there is ample evidence that his leading motives were constantly patriotic; but one such acceptance cost him dear. The Parliament of Paris, which had played so large and so noxious a part in French history, had become intolerable. Like the twelve other French parliaments its real functions were judicial; yet in spite of this, it had long usurped legislative and, at times, something very like executive functions. With occasionally a good thing to its credit, it had long been a curse to the country. When the sovereign was strong it had usually groveled; when he was weak it had usually rebelled. It had finally endeavored to block a series of absolutely necessary reforms, had been banished from Paris, and a new court had been established in its place. Into this court Turgot had been called, and had accepted the position; but thereby he aroused the bitter hatred of various old members and parasites of the Parliament, and among these was no less a personage than Choiseul, — perhaps the most powerful intriguer since Cardinal Mazarin.

Engrossing as was his professional work, Turgot still devoted himself to the study of all questions whose solution was important for France, — whether within or without his official duties. We find him constantly engaged in thorough research and profound thought, not only on political and administrative problems, but on great questions in science, in philosophy, and in literature.

Of all he wrote at that early period, by far the most interesting to the general scholar were his discourses and his drafts of elaborate treatises upon universal history and political geography. These show an amazing breadth of knowledge, and a no less wonderful grasp of the significance of events, especially in their bearing on human progress. They impress themselves deeply on the reader, not only by their matter, but by their style. Out of the innumerable pungent expressions of weighty truths in them, one may be cited as containing food for reflection in America of the twentieth century, — “Greed is the ambition of barbarians.”

He did not lose himself in these broader views of human destiny; he constantly studied the practical problems rising in his own country, — most of all, those which pertained to public administration; and in this latter field also he became more and more widely known throughout France, and, indeed, through Europe. The French Encyclopédie, so powerful in bringing in a new epoch, gives striking evidence of the vastness of his fields of thought and of his thoroughness in cultivating them. He wrote several of its most valuable articles, and while their subjects lay in widely differing provinces, all were recognized as authoritative, and each took high rank as combining the best results of wide observation, wise reflection, close criticism, illuminating thought, and thorough sympathy with the best currents of opinion flowing through his time.

But the most directly important in the series of writings thus begun were those upon Toleration.

About the year 1753 the ecclesiastical power in France was making every effort to restore the old persecution policy of Louis XIV. That policy had culminated in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, involving enormous cruelty to the best part of the middle classes, the exile of the most thoughtful manufacturers and their adherents, with a transfer of various great industries to rival nations. Thus began an evil epoch in France, which is, indeed, not yet fully finished. The injury thereby done has been not only material, but, even to a greater degree, political and moral. When one considers the history of Germany, England, and the United States, it seems certain that had that vast body of Huguenots who were driven by the bigotry of Louis XIV into those countries been allowed to remain in their own, the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution and all the ruin and misery which that and the various despotisms following it inflicted upon France would have been impossible.¹³

After that monstrous intolerance there had, indeed, come a milder policy, but in Turgot’s time there had set in a reaction against this, and a large body of courtiers were, by clerical influence and ecclesiastical pressure, brought over to the idea of restoring the old system of persecution, and were doing their best to bring Louis XV into it. Against all this Turgot wrote his Letters on Toleration, and his Conciliateur. As a motto for the latter he took the noble words of Fénelon: “No human power can destroy the liberty of the affections. When kings interfere in matters of religion they do not protect it, — they enslave it.” He then showed cogently the reasons why toleration was true statesmanship: that in matters of belief neither right nor expediency sanctions state interference, and that toleration should be carried to the farthest point possible.

Especially characteristic are the first words of his first letter. They embody the doctrines which in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have taken or are taking possession of all the really great powers of the world. These words are as follows: “You demand ‘what is the protection which the state ought to give to the dominant religion ? ’ I answer, speaking exactly to the point, ‘No religion has the right to demand any other protection than liberty, and it loses its rights to this liberty when its doctrines or worship are contrary to the interest of the state.’” ¹⁴

He then goes on to argue that the only cases in which the State has a right to take cognizance of dogmas are those where clear, direct results upon the public safety are concerned. Hence, he argues the right to exclude polygamy. But he constantly takes pains to show that a government should be slow in concluding that the practical results of any dogma are injurious. While constantly respectful to the religion in which he had been nurtured, he urges the establishment of a system of education which shall make moral men and good citizens, leaving to the Church the teaching of religion.

Of course, all this led to resistance. In spite of his efforts to make every possible concession to the clergy consistent with the welfare of his country, their leaders now began to treat him as an enemy. Despite his deeply religious nature, which always kept him from the aggressive excesses of Voltaire and the French philosophers generally, he was none the less marked as an object of ecclesiastical hatred; and from that day to this he has been maligned by the representatives of those he thus angered. Even in recent years, a venomous biography of him in pamphlet form has been spread throughout France. The men who accomplished this piece of work thought, doubtless, that they were doing a service to the Church. Possibly they were; for this libel upon Turgot, revered as he finally is by every thinking French patriot, is undoubtedly one of the causes which have in our own time produced the most effective of all French revolts against clerical sway, — the abolition of the teaching congregations and the divorce of the French Church from the State.

In all these writings Turgot was at his best, — clear, strong, and effective. His plea for toleration became at once a main agency in ending all plans and intrigues to entangle Louis XV in the persecuting policy of Louis XIV. In this, as in his other arguments, there was a remarkable depth and breadth of thought, with quiet force in expression. Here and there they take an epigrammatic form, but never at the cost of truth. There are pithy statements, cogent phrases, illuminating summaries, but all permeated by an earnestness which forces conviction, — as no utterances of a venal advocate could ever do. Their ability and honesty carried them far. Through Frederick the Great they made a triumphant entrance into Germany; through Franklin and Jefferson they entered America; through Cavour they took possession of Italy; and through Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes they have won France.

Mention should be made here of Turgot’s ideas on education. His presentation of this subject, like that of his views on many other subjects, had begun in private letters to honored friends; his earlier thoughts upon it being given in his correspondence with a gifted writer, Mademoiselle Graffigny. The roots of many of them are to be found in Locke, but their best development is his own. Very striking is his treatment of the Rousseau ideas which became such an affliction to the world a few years later. With his usual clearness of vision, Turgot forewarned France against that hotbed of folly, the “State of Nature” theory, in which were to sprout the sentimentalism and ferocity of the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre as its most gaudy flower.

During this period, also, Turgot was deepening and extending his study of political economy. Up to his time hardly a germ had appeared of the modern science of economics, and little if any practical recognition of those truths in political economy which are considered in this century as fundamental. These problems had now become crucial. The fate of the monarchy was hanging upon them. Colbert, the greatest of the ministers of Louis XIV, and the most devoted to French interests, had, indeed, carried on what was called the “mercantile system,” but that was simply the building up of favored industries, — a makeshift system which considered all competing nations as enemies to be bullied, cajoled, or crushed.

Colbert, as Comptroller-General, had stood at the head of French industry as a great manufacturer stands at the head of his mill; grasping, conceding, using cunning or force as the case might seem to need. His was a system carried out by innumerable edicts, decrees, regulations, often conflicting, always leading to much trouble within France, planting the seeds of terrible war between France and her neighbors. This system it was which had most to do with bringing on the exhausting war with the Netherlands, which finally entangled and embarrassed every leading European power, and brought France to the verge of bankruptcy.¹⁵

Bad as this system was, its evils were mitigated as long as a really great man like Colbert stood at its centre; but after him its results speedily showed themselves to all men; and finally, under the Regency and Louis XV, his successors, without either his genius or his honesty, brought France to wretchedness. Of these, the Abbé Terray was an example. Terray’s only effort had been to squeeze out of the nation the largest sums possible for the king and court, without regard to the public interest. Some industries were protected into debility, others were taxed out of existence. Loans were raised without regard to the danger of bankruptcy; more and more, under him, was developed utter carelessness regarding national financial honor.

One of the consequences of this system is especially instructive. Certainly no system is so costly as one which tampers in the slightest degree with national credit. So it proved in this case. State loans could be obtained only at rates of interest which would make up to the lender not only the proper usance, but the risks rising from the caprices of ministers, the trickery of courtiers, and the general want of financial probity.

Even while this system held full sway, various thinkers had stirred new thought on economic doctrines as applied to national administration. Early among these was Locke, but the first man who began effectively to lay a basis for the modern science of political economy in France was Quesnay. He had contributed articles to the Encyclopédie, especially upon agriculture and the regulation of the grain trade; and these articles attracted attention and formed a school of thinkers. Gradually there was brought together a body of patriotic and thoughtful men who cared little for the prizes held out by court favor, but much for the substantial prosperity of their country; these were known as the “Economists,” or, more widely and permanently, as the “Physiocrats.”

In the thinking of these men lay some fallacies. A natural reaction from the mercantile policy of Colbert led them to lay stress almost entirely upon the agricultural interest. They believed the soil the only source of real wealth, agriculture the only productive labor, and all other forms of labor essentially different from agriculture, as not adding to real values.

Mistaken as their theory was, and injurious as it at times became in the legislation of the years following, its defects were far more than atoned for by the real contributions which they made to economic science. In their whole history we see a striking evidence of the truth that exact statements of fact do far more good than mistaken theories can do harm. Indeed, their mistaken doctrine was vastly outweighed for good by another on which they laid especial stress; this was that the main trust of nations should be, as far as possible, in individual initiative, — in the general good sense and ability of men to look better after their own interests than any government or any functionary can do.

This idea, that governments should govern as little as possible, was a force sure to produce good effects in that chaos of general and local powers, general and provincial tariffs, monopolies, special privileges, interferences of functionaries, and governmental meddling of every sort. The economists first planted in the modern world the idea of commercial and industrial iiberty as both right and expedient; more than any other thinkers they enforced the statement that “every man should be allowed to buy or sell when he pleases, where he pleases, as he pleases, and as much or as little as he pleases.” They first gave to the world that formula which has since exercised such power in the political economy of France and of the world: “Laissez faire, laissez passer.”

With Colbert, carefully planned regulation from the centre of government had been everything; with Quesnay and his followers toward the end of Louis XV’s reign, liberty for manufactures and trade was everything; with men of the former school, that government was best which governed most; with men of this new school, that government was best which governed least.

The Economists naturally won Turgot’s sympathy. In that seething mass of courtiers, ecclesiastics, sham statesmen, tax contractors, venal lawyers and mistresses, — all pushing for place and pelf without regard to the future of their country, it was inevitable that he should turn to the only body of true men and strong thinkers who really had at heart the interests of France. One of these, Gournay, had an especially happy influence upon him. Gournay had been made Intendant of Commerce, and his duties obliged him to travel through various provinces of France in order to study commercial interests, and the condition of the people. During two years Turgot accompanied him on these journeys and devoted himself to the practical questions constantly arising, thus becoming familiar with the needs of all classes and the best ways of meeting them. Although Gournay died a few years later, his influence over Turgot remained. Well has one of Turgot’s recent biographers said: “ Almost every social and every economic improvement in Europe and America for the last hundred years or more has had its germ in the teachings of men who belonged to that early school of French Economists.¹⁶

And here let me commend the example of Turgot and Gournay to American students who may be ambitious to take part in public life. To such I would say: having developed your powers by the best means accessible, bring yourselves early into touch with men as they are, with facts as they are, with problems to be actually solved, and with the practical solutions of them. As early in your career as possible get yourselves placed on town boards, county boards, grand and petit juries. De Tocqueville was right when he pointed out jury duty as a great political education in this republic. Study men and things in town meetings, in county sessions, in public institutions created to deal with evil and develop good. But while thus keeping in relations with everyday practice, do something by reading and reflection to keep yourselves abreast of the higher thinking on political and social questions. Mingle with your practical observations study and reading in history, political economy, and social science, under the best guides you can find. In these days our leading universities, seeking to send out into public service men who shall unite practical knowledge with the higher thinking, seem our best agencies for sane progress and our best barriers against insane whimsies. James Bryce, the most competent foreign observer of American affairs since De Tocqueville, has cogently supported this view.

But while Turgot sympathized with the Physiocrats, even in some of their errors, he never surrendered to them or to any sect, religious, philosophical, or economic, his full liberty of thought. One of the most striking passages in all his writings is his discussion of the sect spirit, and it can be read with quite as much profit in the twentieth century as in the eighteenth. He says: “It is the sect spirit which arouses ‘ against useful truths ’ enemies and persecutions. When an isolated person modestly proposes what he believes to be the truth, he is listened to if he is right, and forgotten if he is wrong. But when even learned men have once formed themselves into a body, and say ‘we,’ and think they can impose laws upon public opinion, then public opinion revolts against them, and with justice, for it ought to receive laws from truth alone, and not from any authority. Every such society sees its badge worn by the stupid, the crack-brained, and the ignorant, proud in joining themselves to it to give themselves airs.” ¹⁷

In 1761 came one of the main turning points in Turgot’s career. His merits had so generally aroused attention that the ministry now determined to avail themselves of them, and he was made Intendant of Limoges.

The “ intendancies,” or “generalities,” were among the most effective organizations developed by the absolute monarchy in France in its effort to make head against the manifold and monstrous confusions which finally brought on the Revolution.

To all appearance, the old provinces — dating from the Middle Ages, and earlier — were the important divisions of France, and the men placed over them as governors were the most showy figures in local administration; but, in fact, these governors were, as a rule, courtiers sent to the various provincial capitals, sometimes as a reward, sometimes as a riddance. The really important divisions had become the “generalities” or “intendancies,” which had been carved out of the old provinces. To take charge of these it was thought best to have men who knew something and could do something. Turgot, though hampered badly by the central authority at Paris and Versailles, thus became, in a sense, viceroy of an important part of central France. Though the work set before him in this capacity might well seem thankless, he gladly embraced it. With his ability and knowledge he might have shone in the salons of the capital as a man of science or letters, — but there was a chance here to render a service to his country by showing what could be done in carrying out better ideas of administration, and this determined his choice.

The district to which he now gave thirteen of the best years of his life was one of the poorest and most neglected in France. Authentic pictures of it during the period before Turgot’s intendancy are distressing: the worst abuses of absolutism and feudalism had enjoyed full and free course, — with poverty, ignorance, and famine as their constant results. The Marquis de Mirabeau declared that the food of the peasantry, as a rule, was buckwheat, chestnuts, and radishes; that there was no wheat bread, no butcher’s meat; that at best the farmer killed one pig a year; that the dwellings of the peasantry were built of raw clay roofed with thatch, — without windows, with the beaten ground as a floor, — and that their clothes were rags. Taine tells us that there were no ploughs of iron, that in many cases the plough of Virgil’s time was still in use.¹⁸ Boudet declares: “Everything in these God-forsaken countries reflected the image of ignorance and barbarism, in the middle of the eighteenth century.” One expression in a letter from Turgot to a rural functionary throws light upon the intellectual condition of the people: he says, “I have seen with pain that in some parishes the curate alone has signed, because no one else could write.” And Turgot follows this with exhortations to spread the rudiments of an ordinary education.¹⁹

His first care in this new position was to secure thorough and trustworthy information. To this end he set at work every agent under his control or influence, and sought not only accurate knowledge of conditions, but the widest possible acquaintance with men. Especially striking were his friendly letters to the parish priests; though differing from them in religious theories, he besought their aid in behalf of a better system among the people at large. Nothing could exceed his kindly sympathy with them and the shrewdness and tact of his questions; and to the credit of the French rural priesthood it must be said that they were won by Turgot’s evident devotion to their poverty-stricken parishioners, and that they effectively aided him in his efforts to know the exact condition of every part of the intendancy and to secure acquaintance with vast numbers of men, even among the humblest, who had ability or real character.

He infused his spirit also into his official agents. Addressing the officers of police of Limoges, he said, “The way to succeed is to reply with suavity and in detail to the popular complaints you every day hear, —to speak more in the language of reason than in that of authority.”

Turgot’s first grapple was with the taille, or land tax. No tax could have been more unjustly laid: the nobility and clergy virtually escaped it, and it therefore fell with crushing force upon the middle and lower classes.

He was powerless to abolish it, but, in every way possible, he mitigated it. It had become absurd, both in its character and administration. Local men of influence used every sort of intrigue to escape it; inequalities and injustice made it especially obnoxious to the poorer and weaker classes. Turgot wrought steadily to mitigate the exactions of the central government, and though his representations were never wholly yielded to, they at least lightened the burden. He also sought to secure real information as to the exact ability of every community, and, indeed, of every unit in each community throughout his intendancy, to bear taxation; but efforts to abolish the taille he was obliged to reserve for a later period. Not only were these great taxes imposed with injustice; they were collected with inhumanity. The duty of collecting this and other taxes known as “direct ” was forced upon unpaid peasants and other men of small means in a way which often brought them to ruin. Fundamental in the practice of the time was the personal responsibility of collectors for the whole tax of their districts, and the added responsibility of selected taxpayers for the total amount required: all being responsible for the taxation of each, and each for the taxation of all. For this state of things Turgot substituted within his jurisdiction a system of collectors carefully selected and suitably paid, and in various other ways greatly mitigated the hardships of the older practice.²⁰

Still another of his efforts, which proved to be far more successful, and which set an example to France and, indeed, to the world, was his dealing with the royal corvée for public works. It had been devised first under feudalism; it had then been carried still further by the central monarchical government as an easy means of financial oppression. Against feudal corvées, Turgot could do little or nothing, but his main attack was upon the royal corvée. This consisted mainly of two parts: first, the making and repairing of the public roads, and, secondly, the transportation of military stores, by the forced labor of the peasantry. The immediate result of this system as regards the public works had been that they were wretched, — the roads almost impassable in bad weather,—and their cost enormous. This outcome of that old French system we can understand by looking at a similar method in various parts of our own country. Probably in few other parts of the civilized world have roads been so bad as in the state of New York, and the main cause of this is a survival of this same old system by which the rural population were required to construct the highways, and allowed to make them as badly as the most narrow-minded of them pleased.

But this was the least of evils under the French system. Bad as was the condition of the public roads, it was better than the condition of the peasants themselves: they were liable to be withdrawn from their work at any moment in order to repair the roads for the passage of this magnate or that body of soldiers. To make matters worse, there came the transportation of military stores and munitions, — an even more disheartening burden: no matter how occupied their farm animals might be, army material of every sort must be transported at a moment’s warning, nominally at about one fourth of what would have been a fair compensation, — really, in most cases, without compensation at all. The loss of effective labor and the disabling of their beasts of burden became fearfully oppressive: cases are authentically mentioned where the farmers of large districts were left after such corvées virtually without draught animals.

Against this whole system Turgot won a victory. For the corvées he substituted a moderate tax, and instead of building roads after the old shiftless plan, he had them made in accordance with the specifications of good engineers, under carefully drawn contracts; with the result that throughout his intendancy a network of highways was developed better than any others then known in France, and at a cost far below the sums which had previously been wasted upon them.

Closely connected with these measures was the breaking down of barriers to internal commerce. One can hardly believe in these days the perfectly trustworthy accounts of the French internal “protective” system in those. Typical is the fact that on the Loire between Orleans and Nantes, a distance of about two hundred miles, there were twentyeight custom-houses; and that between Gray and Arles, on the rivers Saone and Rhone, a distance of about three hundred miles, the custom-houses numbered over thirty, causing long delays, and taking from twenty-five to thirty per cent in value of all the products transported.

Pathetic and farcical is the story of M. Blanchet’s wine, — a true story. M. Blanchet bought a quantity of wine in the extreme south of France, intending to bring it to Paris. At the chief village of each little district duties were levied upon it, not only for the municipality, but for various individuals. At Nevers five separate and distinct tariffs were levied, — one for the Duc de Nevers, one for the mayor and town council, one each for two privileged nobles, and one for the bishop. At Poids de Fer four different tariffs were imposed, at Cosne two, and so on, at place after place, single, double, triple, or even more numerous duties by towns, lords spiritual, lords temporal, monasteries, nunneries, and the like, along the whole distance.²¹

To break dowm such barriers as these, Turgot exerted himself to the utmost; and, in logical connection with these efforts, he obtained in 1763 a declaration from the king permitting free trade in grain, followed during the next year by another edict to the same purpose. In thus declaring against an internal protective system, especially as regards agriculture, he braved a deep-seated public opinion. Every province insisted that, when Heaven had given it a good crop, it should have the main enjoyment of that crop, and that, whether crops were good or bad, the only safety from famine was in the existing system of “protection.”

To educate public opinion, Turgot wrote, in 1764, his Letters on Free Trade in Grain. They were mainly prepared during various official journeys, and dashed off at country inns, wherever he found himself. It was a hard struggle. Of all things done by him during the Limoges period these letters and the effort to put their ideas into practice brought upon him the most bitter opposition. From the Abbé Terray down to the people who suffered most by the old order of things, all attacked him. There came mobs and forcible suppression of them. But Turgot, braving the bitter opposition both of theorists and of mobs, insisted that the consecrated system of interfering with the free circulation of grain throughout the kingdom was one of the greatest causes of popular suffering; and while this argument of his had but a temporary effect at that period, it afterward did more than anything else to prepare the French mind for the final breaking up of that whole system of internal protection, — with the result that famines disappeared forever.

In close relation to this was his direct grapple with famine, in 1771 and 1772. Famines in various parts of continental Europe were frequent throughout the Middle Ages and, indeed, down to the French Revolution; and they were produced by the same causes which underlie the frequent and terrible famines in Russia to-day: ignorance, superstition, want of public spirit, want of that knowledge in agriculture and political economy necessary to maintain a suitable supply, want of discernment between harassing regulations which increase the evil and the liberty which prevents it.

The measures which Turgot took in his house-to-house and hand-to-hand struggle against peasant starvation are given in detail by various biographers, and they present a wonderful combination of sound theory with common-sense practice. These measures proved to be more successful than those of any other intendant in France; and it is worthy of note that, in the midst of all the severe labors which this effort imposed upon him, he was steadily on his guard to prevent the people from becoming beggars. The ingenuity of his devices to avoid this evil makes them worthy of study even in our day. Nor should his private efforts to aid the starving be forgotten: in these he not only exhausted his own immediate resources, but incurred personal debts to the amount of twenty thousand livres.

Of especial value also were his exertions to improve the wretched agriculture of the country. In various ways he stimulated agricultural studies; he introduced new food plants and grasses, and, with these, the potato. Here came curious opposition, not only in France, but in other countries. It was claimed that potatoes ought not to be eaten, because they produced leprosy, and also because no mention of them was made in Scripture. By a world of pains, and especially by inducing the upper classes to adopt potatoes as a part of their diet, he at last wore away these prejudices; but to aid in overcoming them finally, no less a personage than the king himself was induced to order the new vegetable served at his own table.

An evil with which he then grappled — in some respects the most serious of all — was the prevailing militia system. It greatly injured not only the industry, but the personal character, of the people. Its whole administration by the nobility who commanded in the various regiments was barbarously cruel, and among all the evils which beset the peasantry of France, this service was the most detested. Exemptions from it were, indeed, many, but they were entirely in favor of the upper classes. So dreaded did the drawing of militiamen become that young men, in great numbers, deserted the villages, and large country districts were at times thus crippled for want of laborers. Those who had been so fortunate as not to be chosen then joined in the chase of those who had drawn unlucky numbers, and innumerable petty civil wars were thus promoted.

Turgot dealt with this subject after his usual fashion: he studied it carefully, appealed to the peasantry judiciously, secured volunteers by bounties, and made the whole system not only less obnoxious, but appreciated as never before by those whose temperaments best fitted them for army life. Closely connected with the other evils of the militia system was the custom of billeting troops upon the inhabitants, — resulting in endless conflicts and immoralities. Turgot constructed barracks, kept the troops in them, and thus relieved his people materially and morally.²²

Hardly less fruitful were his efforts to stimulate and extend manufactures. To him, in large measure, is due the creation of that vast porcelain industry at Limoges, which, in our own time, largely in the hands of Americans, has produced works of ceramic art hardly equaled in beauty or value by those of any nation outside of France.

But his efforts had a wider scope. While struggling thus to save and improve the people of his intendancy, he was constantly writing reports, most carefully thought out, to clear the vision and improve the methods of the ministry at Paris, and these have remained of great value ever since. Noteworthy is the fact that when Napoleon took in hand the administration of France his main studies, in preference to all else that he had received from the old French monarchy, were the reports and discussions of Turgot.²³

So great was Turgot’s success in making his government an oasis in the desert of French rural misery that it finally became a matter of interest, not only in France, but throughout Europe. This led his friends to urge upon him other and more lucrative positions, among these the intendancy of Lyons. But all such attempts he discouraged. He felt that it was more important to show France what could be done by carrying out a better system in some one province, no matter how poor; and all personal considerations yielded to this feeling.

While thus abolishing throughout his intendancy some of the worst oppressions of the absolute monarchy, he was steadily mitigating feudal evils. Worthy of special note is it that down to this period, hardly twenty years before the Revolution, the nobility not only persisted in all the monstrous exactions which had been developed during the Middle Ages, but took advantage of famine to sell agricultural produce to their peasants at starvation prices, to break the agreements which they had made with them, and to evade contributing to save them from starvation. Against this Turgot exerted himself to the utmost, straining his authority even beyond its legal limits, until he had forced the great landed proprietors to treat their peasantry with more humanity. To do this, of course, endangered his position. The nobility naturally had friends at court, and through these they made the corridors and salons of Versailles resound with their complaints against his interference.

It would seem that in all this heavy work he would have found full scope for his ability. Not so. During this period he found full time to write essays and treatises, which have exerted a happy influence upon France and upon Europe from that day to this.

As the first and greatest of these should be mentioned his treatise, “On the Formation and Distribution of Wealth.” It was written in 1766 and published about three years later. Though he accepted the fundamental fallacy of his fellow economists in making agriculture the sole source of real production, this work was fruitful in good. Even his errors, resulting, as they did, from honest thinking, led men to the discovery of new truths.

Perhaps its greatest result was the stimulus it gave to Adam Smith, who shortly after it was written visited France, made acquaintance with leading Physiocrats, including Turgot, and about ten years later, in 1776, published that work which Buckle declares “probably the most important book ever written,” the Wealth of Nations.²⁴

Regarding the relations of Turgot to Adam Smith growths of partisanship have sprung up, many of them, on either side, more rank than just. Of this there is not the slightest need. While we may recognize the fact that Buckle, in his panegyric of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, forgot Grotius’s De Jure Belli ac Pacis, and while one of the latest and most competent editors of the Wealth of Nations acknowledges that its author “was greatly indebted to the Economists,” and that “in the first book, important passages will be found which are almost transcripts from Turgot’s divisions and arguments,” we must agree that Smith’s place is secure among the foremost benefactors of the modern world, and that Turgot, though his arguments were presented in a different form and manner, stands closely beside him.²⁵ But while a place in the highest rank must be assigned to Adam Smith, and while it must be conceded that he cleared political economy of Physiocratic error regarding the relation of agriculture to the production of wealth, it is only just to keep in mind that, ten years before Adam Smith’s book appeared, Turgot, as one of the most fair and competent of American economists has shown, made the first analysis of distribution into wages, profits, and rent, discussed the distribution of labor, the nature and employment of capital and the doctrine of wages, gave the main arguments for free trade and free labor, laid down some of the fundamental principles of taxation, and asserted very many other doctrines precious to the modern world, — and that he did this with a force and lucidity to which Smith never attained.

In forming an opinion of the characteristics and claims of these two great men, it may well be taken into account that while Smith’s work was the result of inductions from facts observed during his whole life and passed upon during twenty years of steady labor on these and similar subjects, the work with which Turgot preceded him was struck out in the thick of all his vast labors as Intendant of Limoges and as adviser to the central government of France on a multitude of theoretical and practical questions, and that it was written, not as an elaborate treatise, but simply as a letter to two gifted Chinese students who, having studied for a period in France, were returning to their native land. Each of the two works has vast merits, but as an exhibition of amazing original power, that of Turgot unquestionably stands first.²⁶

Still another treatise in this same field of Turgot’s activity was his Loans at Interest, published in 1769. An attempt made within his district to defraud sundry bankers by accusing them of charging too high a rate of interest caused him to take up the whole subject of usance. For ages, France, like the rest of Europe, had suffered from the theological theory opposed to the taking of interest for money. From sundry texts of Scripture, from Aristotle, from such fathers of the Eastern Church as St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, from such fathers of the Western Church as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome, from St. Thomas Aquinas, the foremost of mediæval thinkers, from Bossuet, the most eminent of all French theologians, from Pope Leo the Great and a long series of Popes and Councils, and from a series almost as long of eminent Protestant divines, had come a theory against the taking of interest for money, and this had been enforced by multitudes of sovereigns in all parts of Christendom.

The results had been wretched. The whole policy of the Church having favored the expending of capital, there was far less theological opposition to waste and extravagance than to that investment of capital at interest without which no great progress of industry is possible.

Turgot’s method of dealing with this question took high rank at once, and despite the authoritative treatises of Bentham and of Jean Baptiste Say, which appeared more than twenty years afterward, his may be counted as, on the whole, the most original and cogent work in the whole series of arguments which have obliged every branch of the Christian Church to change its teachings, and all civilized governments to change their practice, regarding the taking of interest for money.²⁷

The last of Turgot’s important writings during the Limoges period was his letter to Terray on protection to the French iron industry. In the course of this, not foreseeing the use of mineral coal in the manufacture of iron, he fell into a curious error. His theory was that only nations in an early stage of development, with great forests at their disposal for conversion into charcoal, can make iron. Strange as this idea seems to those who have observed the growth of the great iron industry in the leading modern nations, it must be confessed that his conclusion was better than some of his premises. His arguments favoring more freedom to the admission of iron may be read to good purpose even now, and one sentence, regarding protective duties between nations, may well be carefully pondered. It is as follows: “The truth is that in aiming to injure others we injure ourselves.”

As time went on, Turgot’s work at Limoges became more and more known and admired. Arthur Young, whose personal observations give us the best delineations of French agriculture before the Revolution, visiting the Limousin shortly after Turgot left it, dwelt upon the results of his administration as the best ever known in France up to that time; and Young’s picture of the transformation of the whole region under Turgot’s control produced a marked effect on public opinion, not only in France, but throughout Great Britain and in Continental Europe.

During the last years of Louis XV, recognition had come to Turgot as never before. To men of public spirit, and especially to the philosophers who had long dreamed of realizing their ideals of a better government and a more prosperous people, he had become an idol. Even many who had mobbed him for his interference with agricultural protection in the provinces now became his strong supporters. Though he was intensely hated by a vast body of reactionaries, self-seekers, and graspers of place and pelf, the great majority of thinking Frenchmen loved him all the more for the enemies he had made.

He had wrought and fought thirteen years in the intendancy when, in 1774, occurred the death of Louis XV. The accession of Louis XVI was hailed as the approach of a new and better epoch, and of all men who were thought capable of aiding to bring it in, Turgot was named most widely.

(To be continued.)