Turgot and the six edicts

Front matter

TURGOT AND THE SIX EDICTS in

CM (O 00

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Preface

The bibliography appended to this work is intended to be a complete compilation of all the works of any consequence which relate directly to Turgot. There are some important omissions even in the comprehensive and classified bibliography compiled by Dr. Lipperts and published in the Hand-und LeJirbiich der Staatswissenschaften^ 1. Abteilung: Volkswirtschaftslehre, 2 Band., i Teil., 1902. The bibliographies appended to the relevant chapters in the Histoire Generale, while reasonably complete with regard to French writers, also omit some of the important works in German and English.

The list of references quoted in this monograph is a short one, for it has been my aim to make the fewest references consistent with the criticisms made and positions taken.

In issuing this monograph, my chief regret is my inability to impart to the wide circle of English readers the pleasure experienced in translating and interpreting the Six Edicts of Turgot which have not hitherto been translated into English. My study of history and teaching of the subject were partial and imperfect for lack of earlier knowledge of these documents which have so great significance in the events that led up to the French Revolution. Not having learned the French language at this earlier period, any comprehensive knowledge of Turgot's works was naturally out of the question. Believing heartily that history is the true Hilf szvisseiischaft to clearer knowledge and interpretation of ourselves and our times, I hope before long to contribute to historic insight and economic knowledge by translating all the important writings of this master mind in economics and in statesmanship. A wider critical and comparative estimate of his doctrines and his work than is possible here will then be in order.

East Orange, N. J., June, 1903. Robert P. Shepherd.

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CHAPTER I Conditions Giving Rise to the Six Edicts I. Turgot and the revolution

(a) Turgot's social philosophy. His life an interpretation of his

doctrines 51

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8 CONTENTS [232

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(b) Criticism of Dr. Oncken 53

(c) Turgot foresaw the French Revolution as an economic phe-

nomenon 57

II. Projects of reform

(a) Economic reforms proposed to avert disaster 59

(b) Reforms designed to rehabiUtate the Monarchy and to abolish

the economic privileges of the Nobility and Clergy 60

III. General character of the edicts

(a) The edicts an effective application of doctrines developed in

the Eloge de Gournay 62

(b) Doctrines tried in provincial government for thirteen years 64

(c) Edicts embody the principles of simple and uniform administra-

tion, freedom of trade in grain, freedom of labor, and freedom of industries 65

IV. Objectives of the edicts

(a) Economic amelioration by emancipation of subsistence from

arbitrary and forced regulation of prices, and by opening

an access to labor to acquire the necessities of life 66

(b) Social uplift through creation of public mind, quickening of

public conscience, and education to political solidarity 67

(c) Moral regeneration in private life and in public service 68

Chapter II

Analysis of the Minor Edicts I. Police of trade in grain

(a) Origin and nature of restrictions 71

(b) Summary of results of hostile laws 72

(c) Analysis of the edict., 75

(d) Character of Turgot's arguments on the subject of corn laws 76

(e) Specific reforms 7^

W. Offices connected with port and markets abolished

(a) Origin of offices 79

(b) Privileges and abuses 79

(c) Synopsis of the edict 80

III. Bourse of Poissy suppressed

(a) Fiscal history of the Exchange 81

(b) Abuses and violations of economic laws 8 1

(c) Result of the tax on subsistence 82

(d) Synopsis of the edicts 83

IV. Tax on suet modified and method of collection changed

(a) Government regulation inspired by necessity of the commodity. 83

Contents

PA as

(b) Effect on trade and public welfare 84

(c) Synopsis of the edict 84

CHAPTER III Analysis of the Edict Suppressing the Corvee

I. General statement of the nature and effect of the institution ; exposition

of the edict in the Memoir to the King 85

II. Criticism by the Keeper of the Seals, and controversial defence by Turgot ; nature of state; relation of government to subjects, nature

of taxation, and vices of economic privileges expounded 90

III. Synopsis of the edict 112

CHAPTER IV Analysis of the Edict Abolishing the Guilds

(a) Agitation against the system among the Encyclopedistes and F/iilosophes 1 15

(b) Characteristics of the guild system II7

(c) Turgot and the droii de travail ; his indictment of the guilds 122

(d) Analysis of the edict 126

(e) Subsequent history of the guilds 129

CHAPTER V TuRGOT's Political and Economic Doctrines as Contained in the

Six Edicts

I. Political principles

(a) Theory of the State 133

(b) Nature, function and limits of government 134

(c) Theory of administration 135

II. Economic doctrines

(a) Nature, shifting and incidence of taxation 136

(b) Direct and indirect taxes 137

(c) Problem of administration of taxes 138

(d) Government expenditures 139

(e) Freedom of labor and industry; relation to later and modern

socialism 139

(f ) Free trade in necessities of life ; a negative appeal from exist-

ing conditions, and a positive appeal to unimpeded economic forces , 141

(g) Political and social effects of economic privileges 142 ao CONTENTS [234

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Part III Translation Of The Six Edicts

I. Edict on the Corv6e 147

II. Declaration on the Grain Trade 162

III. Edict on the Port and Markets 1 76

IV. Edict on the Guilds 182

V. Edict on the Exchange of Poissy 201

VI. Letters Patent on the Taxes on Suet 207

Bibliography 210

List of Errata 214

PAET I

BIOGllAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL

Chapter I Biographical Notice

"Anne- Robert- Jacques Turcot, Baron de I'Aulne, Minister of State, Honorary Member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles- Lettres, and the youngest of three sons of Michel- Etienne Turgot, prevo^ of m,erchants under Louis XV., was born in Paris, May lO, 1727. His family, which came into Normandy at the time of the Crusades, is regarded as a branch of the family of the same name in Scotland. And the origin of the latter is obscured in the night of time, if his biographers are to be believed, for they assign its ancestry to Togut, a Danish prince who lived 1000 years before the Christian era, and they also include in the number of its members St. Turgot, abbe of the monastery of Dunelm, one of the most distinguished men of his age, and Prime Minister to the Scottish King, Malcolm HI."^

Timid, shrinking and bashful in his childhood, he was regarded by his mother as an idiotic creature, until later development caused her to revise her judgment. According to the custom of the day, Turgot's father destined him for the church, and in preparation for such calling he was sent for elementary instruction to the College of Louis le Grand, later to the Academy of Plessis, and for his professional studies to the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Leaving this institution with the degree of Bachelor of Theology, he was admitted to the Sorbonne for residence and study preliminary to securing his license for holy orders. He had already determined not to pursue the calling of an ecclesiastic, and while at the Sorbonne the composition of an

' Daire, (Euvres de Turgot, vol. i, p. 6.

essay on The Existence of God showed him to be at such variance with orthodox standards that he voluntarily withdrew from communion and ceased attending mass. He was religious after the order of Socrates, too religious to conform to practices which mocked his reason. These considerations, together with the wider knowledge of ecclesiastical conditions, caused him to turn to the magistracy with the determination to find therein the means of his greatest usefulness to his fellows and his nation.

The death of his father summoned him from the Sorbonne to self-support and self-reliance. He sought and obtained a subordinate position in the Court of parlement, shortly found a better place in it, and on the exile of the body and the institution of the Maupeou parlement, he was invited to a seat therein. Having no sympathy with the contentious spirit of the banished magistrates, he promptly accepted the place, sought and obtained appointment as a Master of Requests, and discharged the duties of that judicial position for about seven years. He had sought that place for two reasons : it gave him the best possible opportunity to become familiar with current legal principles and practice, and from that body of Magistrates the Intendants were customarily chosen for the different provinces. It was to this end that Turgot had worked ; his mind was filled with theories of administration and reform, and he was naturally eager to put his theories into actual practice; he had pronounced the judgment in an address at the Sorbonne that " well-timed reform alone averts revolution," and his quick human sympathy, his warm patriotism, his deep conviction of the final sovereignty of " Justice, Order, Progress," and his confidence in himself, urged him to forego his inclinations to scholarship and research for the more irksome toil of practical administration.

In 1 76 1 he was made Intendant of the province of Limousin, known later and popularly as the G^n^ralit^ of Limoges. This province lay next south from the Generalite of Paris, part

239] BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 15

of its territory, in fact, lying in the latter Generalite and subject to the parlement of Paris. No province of France was better fitted than this one for the experiment Turgot had in mind ; within it, on a small scale, were found all the difficulties common to the national administration, and many of the difficulties were found in Limousin in their most exaggerated form. Its inhabitants had suffered all that could be suffered from the evils of the times, both natural and administrative. If Turgot could demonstrate here the reasonableness and practicability of his ideas of reform, the example might, at least, spread from this central location to all parts of the kingdom. And Turgot's ambition led him no farther than this, but it fixed him here. When the administration heeded the appeals of Turgot's mother and offered him a like ministry in an easier place, he politely declined it. In Limousin would he work out, as best he might, his ideals for all the nation, and the allurements of personal ease and comfort were impotent beside the allurement of demonstrating, at whatever cost to himself, the possibility of his fatherland redeemed and restored to humane principles of government, rationally administered and perpetuated.

For thirteen years Turgot held this place. As Intendant he was answerable directly to the Royal Council and immediately to the Minister of Finance, to whom he reported and whose orders he executed. As the virtual governor of the province, he enjoyed wide opportunity for individual initiative and direction, the chief requirement of the Minister of Finance being that he provide his apportionment of the tax budget; ways and means were of minor importance to the crown. Indefatigable in his activities, the only recreation and relaxation he permitted himself was the companionship of his friends among the econoinistcs and pJiilosopJies on the occasion of his annual visits to the capital. These kept him in touch with the currents of thoughts then rife, and afforded him the opportunity of sharing with his friends his triumphs of administration and verified theories of economic reform.

l6 TURCOT AND THE SIX EDICTS [240

On the death of the king and the accession of Louis XVI, Turgot was called to the Council of State as Minister of Marine ; after but a month in this service, the king summoned him to the most important work, at that time particularly, in all France, the work of reforming the finances of the kingdom from the chaos into which they had fallen under the administration of M. r abbe de Terray, and Turgot became Controller- General of Finance. Before he consented to accept the position, Turgot requested and was granted a private audience with the king, and not all French history, if any other, records a more important and momentous interview than this.

On the one hand was the monarch, inheritor of the absolute authority won for the crown by his predecessors, a youth who desired, above all things else, to be as a father to all his people, and who was willing to exercise his authority to the utmost to this end ; on the other was the scholarly philosopher, trained and tried by more than twenty years of public service, a man of infinite resources, who had put his theories of needed reform to the test of actual practice and successful issue, an embodiment of philanthropic ability; this authority and this ability were by this interview joined by solemn compact into a beneficent power having but one object — the regeneration of the nation. The interview was a protracted one ; the man laid before his sovereign, with skilfully worded delineation, the awful condition of the internal affairs of the kingdom, mapped out the plans which alone might avert disaster and revolution, pledged himself to know no person or condition in holding faithfully to the plans agreed upon, and in return was given the most solemn pledge of personal friendship and official support by the youthful king, who trusted himself implicitly to the wisdom of his minister. The letter of Turgot to the king, written immediately after their conference, is one of the most important and unique documents in governmental history.

France passed in judgment before that compact. All orders and all classes looked upon the power it constituted and con-

24l] HISTORICAL SUMMARY 1 7

demned it ; historians say that the recall of the parlement from its long exile was the first fatal mistake of Louis XVI. It was no mistake, it was inevitable. Not otherwise could parlement be measured. It, with all the forces of France, must look upon Benevolence in rule, and approve or condemn it, and so pass judgment on itself.

Twenty months sufficed for judgment. The Six Edicts were the most conspicuous and general instrument of judgment. When all France had judged itself, the king too, last of all, might turn aside from the instrument of reform and put in the time whatever way he would till the decapitation. No power in the universe could avert the Revolution.

Turgot was retired from public life on May 12, 1776. In his youth he had said, " Our family die of gout at about fifty." He had experienced the pangs already of this hereditary enemy. On March 18, 178 1, he died.

This, in brief sketch, is the outline of one of the most successful lives in human annals. In early years, the life course was deliberately chosen, against paternal solicitude and much seductive persuasion by his friends ; it was prosecuted despite the blandishments of literati and savants, and his own deepseated inclination to the pursuits of scholarship ; it was persisted in for others' sake, though demanding tremendous labor and sacrifice from the man himself ; it was honestly cherished, hand-in-hand with a boy king, in the face of an angry and scornful nation, and carried to fulfilment. If such a life be not a success, and most of his biographers agree that it was a failure, then, surely, some definitions need to be revised. Even though his work was undone before his eyes, and bitter tears wrung from other eyes than his alone, that was not his failure; it is a failure of which France has bitterly repented. He truly came, as Carlyle says of him, into the Council of the King with a whole peaceful French revolution in his head. He offered it to France, he urged it with all the arts of reason and humanity, he counted not himself, pain-racked and ostracised, too great a price to pay for the salvation of his land. He was true to himself and to the mission he conceived to be entrusted to him till he was thrust out to solitude and death. What more successful thing than this can any mortal do ?

Chapter II The Place Of Turcot In The History Of Economics

Outside academic circles, Turgot is not widely known. Embodying as he did many of the best characteristics of racial manhood and trustworthiness, he transcends national boundaries and would fill, with wholesome results, a far larger place in the public mind than has been accorded to him in the past.

To the economist, interest in Turgot centers in him as a factor in the economic interpretation of history, and in his contributions to the literature and facts of economic science. So much of his work had to do with permanent principles rather than with changeful social forms that the interpretation of his doctrines becomes most timely and helpful to the practical economist of the present ; his economic theories are of like interest to the economic philosopher ; while his relation to his contemporaries and to subsequent history and literature is of fundamental value both to the historian of economics and to the student of economic history.

Hitherto the interpretation of Turgot's economic doctrines has been based largely on his Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, the first known attempt to separate for study these related economic phenomena. The controversy over Turgot and Adam Smith was waged chiefly over Smith's knowledge and use of the Reflexions ; it alone was counted worthy of translation in Lord Overstone's list of rare and valuable economic treatises, and in Ashley's edition of economic classics ; Daire places it first in his arrangement of Turgot's works, and it is unquestionably the best known and most discussed of all Turgot's writings; it shares with his 243] 19 ilog-e de Gournay the reputation of his best contributions to the literature of economics.

It is quite probable that no one would be more surprised than the author at the conspicuous place accorded to this bit of writing. In a letter to Dr. Tucker, written in September, 1770, Turgot says: "That bit was written for the instruction of two Chinese who are in our country and to make them comprehend more clearly some questions which I addressed to them concerning the economic condition and constitution of their empire." ' As an economic primer for foreigners whose minds were of necessity almost a blank concerning the topics of most absorbing interest in their strange surroundings, the Reflexions would serve an admirable purpose. And there is every reason to see why Turgot, who was almost continuously absent from Paris and busy with his work as Intendent in Limousin, would attempt to make these foreign youths acquainted with the doctrines of the Physiocrats, by whom they were surrounded in Paris, and to withold from the instruction, in large measure, the points of radical difference between himself and the Physiocrats, and which could not well be elaborated within reasonable space, and especially for those whose minds were largely a blank on the economic topics so rife in Paris.

The primary purpose of the Reflexions was to equip the Chinese to impart information intelligibly, rather than to impart economic information to them. In a letter to Caillard, written in May, 1774, Turgot explains to his friend that in the proposed translation of the Reflexions into German, they ought properly to be introduced by a preface in which it should be stated that " the pamphlet was not intended for the public but to serve as a preamble to questions concerning the economic constitution of China, and addressed to two Chinese whom it was desired to put in condition to reply to the questions ; and that that letter having been confided by the author to M. Du

^ Daire, (Euvres de Turgotf vol. ii, p. 802.

Pont, editor of the Ephemerides du Citoyen^ he inserted it in his journal."' In his letters to Du Pont, in 1770, published by Schelle^ and translated by Ashley ,3 Turgot roundly scores Du Pont for presuming to edit the Reflexions before publishing them separately, and for making them read according to Du Pont's ideas of what they ought to say rather than what was actually said; he repudiates some of the phrases and ideas added to the Reflexions by Du Pont, and insists that in the face of all their imperfections it is incumbent on a writer to be himself and not another.

Now if historical criticism in literature means anything, these facts ought to be given place in the interpretation of the Reflexions; they serve, partly at least, to account for the disparity in composition between the Reflexions and Turgot's writings for maturer minds, and especially for the lack of the clarity characteristic of all his public documents. Turgot is by no means the only writer to obscure his meaning when attempting to be unusually simple and elementary. In another letter to Caillard, dated March 16, lyjo,^ Turgot asks that his manuscript of Richesses be sent to him, for, said he, " There is on page 96 of the December issue of the Ephemerides a phrase which I find to be obscure and unintelligible. I suspect that two or three lines are omitted, and I am unable to supply them." It would be a most valuable textual find if this manuscript could be produced.

Early in his career he turned his attention to economic investigation, and his essay written to a fellow-student as an outgrowth of a conversation, on paper money, is of more than passing interest. At some time, probably during the period of his labors as a magistrate, he wrote a carefully reasoned essay on Value and Money. This essay, of which but a frag-

'Schelle, Du Pont de Nemours et P Acole Physiocratique, pp. 26, 128.

* Ashley, Economic Classics, Turgot, p. viii.

ment is preserved, demonstrates both his logical methods of reasoning and his conclusions at that time concerning that fundamental phase of economics. The Six Edicts, including the preambles and the defense of them against the criticisms of Keeper of the Seals, M. Hue Miromenil, are his last contributions of importance to the literature of the science. In the twenty-seven years intervening between his first attempts at economic discussion and his last, he found time to compose many comprehensive treatises on different subjects, but those on economic topics are by far the most important and of most permanent interest.

In the interpretation of his doctrines and theories, it is especially interesting to note how admirably they illustrate the cycle in which human events and conditions are wont to move. With all the changes in economic relations, new systems and new industrial principles, it is not without surprise that one finds many of Turgot's arguments timely and pertinent to present conditions. One paragraph in the report of the Anthracite Arbitration Commission,^ reads almost like a quotation from Turgot's argument on the suppression of the jurandes, and it is not altogether without significance that conditions which demanded the iteration of principles then demand reiteration of the same laws now.

Another fact must be borne in mind in the interpretation of Turgot's economic doctrines, and • that fact is of such a nature that it renders that interpretation vastly more difficult than would be the case if Turgot had been a mere publicist, elab-

Anthracite Arbitration Commission Report. The paragraph reads : " The right and liberty to pursue a lawful calling and to lead a peaceable life, free from all molestation or attack, concern the comfort and happiness of all men, and the denial of them means the destruction of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the benefits which the social organization confers. This all seems too plain for argument. . . . Our language is the language of a free people, and fails to furnish any form of speech by which the right of a citizen to work when he pleases, for whom he pleases, and on what terms he pleases, can be successfully denied." March, 1903.

orating his doctrines with scholarly exactness, and leaving a printed record of his thought. He did this, but he did more. In a very unique and real sense, his whole life was devoted to the elucidation of economic principles. In his mind, clearly enough, political and social evils, and many religious ones too, were directly traceable to false economic doctrines embodied in the laws or administrative execution of them. To him, reason was the fundamental fact of economic interpretation and application. His appeal by voice and pen, and public effort was to reason. He thought he discerned in economic privileges the insulation on either side of which the potentials were accumulating so rapidly and powerfully that, if contact were not soon established and the interplay of forces directed along safe lines, an explosion must come which might involve the obliteration of the insulation and much besides. Precisely for the purpose of penetrating this dead wall of economic privileges, the Six Edicts were promulgated. The wellstudied purposes and well-tried principles of which they were the concrete embodiments will be discussed later; it is sufficient for the present to note that Turgot gave his life with full abandon to the elaboration of these principles, and that the interpretation of his doctrines requires much more than mere literary criticism, for his writings were but the sparks struck out from the fire burning within the man, and his deeds are of equal importance with his executive documents.

Turgot's place in the history of economics has been variously construed in later times, from Leon Say's verdict ^ that " 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," to Oncken's opposite opinion ^ wherein he assigns Turgot a distinctively subordinate place. The final judgment is yet to be made.

* L6on Say, Turgot^ p. 13.

' Oncken, Geschichte der Nationaldkonomie in Hand- und Lehrbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2 Band, I. Teil, pp. 449, 459, 463.

Some misconceptions may be banished by a more general knowledge of all of Turgot's economic activities ; some may be made to appear wholly untenable by assembling known facts of his relations with other economists, while others may never be resolved. Of the first class is his relation to the physiocrats.

This relationship is somewhat complicated because of the disagreement between Turgot and his biographers and the English and German economists. It is unquestioned that Turgot held warmly to some of the doctrines of the Physiocrats ; the readiness and lucidity with which he set forth these doctrines in the Eloge of Gournay shows not only familiarity but sympathy with them. With scarcely an exception, the writers who have occasion to refer to Turgot class him with the Physiocrats, and the more exact ones place him in the Gournay school rather than in that of Quesnay. Leon Say flatly declares that Turgot remained a Physiocrat until the end of his days.' Higgs, on the other hand, while including Turgot among the Physiocrats whom he discusses, acknowledges that Turgot always refused to identify himself with that school. The whole question must be decided according to whatever basis of division and classification one chooses for himself. Over against all that may be said by others of Turgot, his own words ought to be placed as partly, if not chiefly determinative. Du Pont states that he very frequently said : " It is the sect spirit that makes enemies to useful truths. If an independent man states modestly what he believes to be the truth, if Reason be with him, we listen to him ; if we find him in the wrong, we forget him. But as soon as savants surrender themselves, in pride, to constitute a body and to say ' we,' and believe themselves able to give laws to public opinion, thoughtful public opinion revolts against them, wishing to receive laws from truth only and not from authority." '

* L6on Say, Turgot^ p. 62.

' Dupont, CEuvres de Turgot^ pp. 47 ff.

Turgot left no comprehensive reasoned statement of his economic theories. The Eloge makes it clear that he held with Gournay to the principles of free labor, free industry, and free trade in grain ; his essay on Valeurs et Monnaies, a fragment only of which is preserved to us, if indeed it ever was a finished production, shows his agreement with Galiani in tracing value to a psychological basis, finding it a phenomenon peculiar to man and not in nature outside man himself. He frankly acknowledges himself in hearty agreement with Trudaine both as to the nature and incidence of taxation ; he tries to establish a distribution of value according to reason, justice and equity, but scarcely mentions the Tableau CEconomique which the followers of Quesnay regarded with almost superstitious reverence. He held, in common with all the Physiocrats, that land alone yielded a net product over and above the labor and capital expended upon it, but Turgot held these positions not as a physiocrat, nor did he accept them because they were cardinal tenets of a school ; on the contrary, with a striking individualism, what he held he first passed with rigorous independence through his own mind, and accepted his own reason and conscience as final. And these are not the characteristics of a partisan. While he was admired by all his friends among the philosophes and economistest he, in turn, venerated Quesnay, honored Mirabeau, tolerated and criticized Galiani, and sincerely loved Gournay and Trudaine. It was natural for them to claim him as one of their school, and equally natural for him to hold aloof from all societies in proportion as they were capable of binding or determining his intellectual or moral positions. This course could have no other effect than to weaken his hold upon that great class of minds which yield allegiance more readily to institutions than to ideas.' He would think for himself, and

* Soulavie, Mimoires Historiques et Politiques du Eigne de Louis XVL^ t. ii, p. 277.

persuade others to his thought if he could. And such men are not easily classified and identified with sects and schools.