Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne[a] (/tʊərˈɡoʊ/ toor-GOH; French: [tyʁgo]; 10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781), commonly known as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Sometimes considered a physiocrat,[2] he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism.[3] He is thought to have been the first political economist to have postulated something like the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.[4]
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Education[edit]
Born in Paris, Turgot was the youngest son of Michel-Étienne Turgot, "provost of the merchants" of Paris, and Madeleine Francoise Martineau de Brétignolles, and came from an old Norman family.[5] As one of four children, he had a younger sister and two older brothers, one of whom, Étienne-François Turgot (1721–1789), was a naturalist, and served as administrator of Malta and governor of French Guiana. Anne Robert Jacques was educated for the Church, and at the Sorbonne, to which he was admitted in 1749 (being then styled abbé de Brucourt). He delivered two remarkable Latin dissertations, On the Benefits which the Christian Religion has conferred on Mankind, and On the Historical Progress of the Human Mind.[6] In 1750 he decided not to take holy orders, giving as his reason that "he could not bear to wear a mask all his life."[7]
The first sign of Turgot's interest in economics is a letter (1749) on paper money, written to his fellow-student the abbé de Cicé, refuting the abbé Jean Terrasson's defence of John Law's system. He was fond of verse-making, and tried to introduce into French verse the rules of Latin prosody, his translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid into classical hexameter verses being greeted by Voltaire as "the only prose translation in which he had found any enthusiasm."[6]
Idea of progress[edit]
The first complete statement of the Idea of Progress is that of Turgot, in his "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" (1750). For Turgot progress covers not simply the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culture – manner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, and society.[8]
Early appointments[edit]
In 1752, he became substitut, and later conseiller in the parlement of Paris, and in 1753 maître des requêtes. In 1754 he was a member of the chambre royale which sat during an exile of the parlement. In Paris he frequented the salons, especially those of Mme de Graffigny – whose niece, Mlle de Ligniville ("Minette"), later Mme Helvétius, he is supposed at one time to have wished to marry; they remained lifelong friends – Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse and the Duchesse d'Enville. It was during this period that he met the leaders of the "physiocratic" school, Quesnay and Vincent de Gournay, and with them Dupont de Nemours, the abbé Morellet and other economists.[6]
In 1743 and 1756, he accompanied Gournay, the intendant of commerce, during Gournay's tours of inspection in the provinces. (Gournay's bye-word on the government's proper involvement in the economy – "laisser faire, laisser passer" – would pass into the vocabulary of economics.) In 1760, while travelling in the east of France and Switzerland, he visited Voltaire, who became one of his chief friends and supporters. All this time he was studying various branches of science, and languages both ancient and modern. In 1753 he translated the Questions sur le commerce from the English of Josias Tucker, and in 1754 he wrote his Lettre sur la tolérance civile, and a pamphlet, Le Conciliateur, in support of religious tolerance. Between 1755 and 1756 he composed various articles for the Encyclopédie,[9] and between 1757 and 1760 an article on Valeurs des monnaies, probably for the Dictionnaire du commerce of the abbé Morellet.[6] In 1759 appeared his work Eloge de Gournay.[10]
Fall[edit]
The immediate cause of Turgot's fall is uncertain. Some speak of a plot, of forged letters containing attacks on the queen shown to the king as Turgot's, of a series of notes on Turgot's budget prepared, it is said, by Necker, and shown to the king to prove his incapacity. Others attribute it to the queen, and there is no doubt that she hated Turgot for supporting Vergennes in demanding the recall of the comte de Guînes, the ambassador in London, whose cause she had ardently espoused at the prompting of the Choiseul clique. Others attribute it to an intrigue of Maurepas. On the resignation of Malesherbes (April 1776), whom Turgot wished to replace by the abbé Very, Maurepas proposed to the king as his successor a nonentity named Amelot.
Turgot, on hearing of this, wrote an indignant letter to the king, in which he reproached him for refusing to see him, pointed out in strong terms the dangers of a weak ministry and a weak king, and complained bitterly of Maurepas's irresolution and subjection to court intrigues; this letter the king, though asked to treat it as confidential, is said to have shown to Maurepas, whose dislike for Turgot it still further embittered. With all these enemies, Turgot's fall was certain, but he wished to stay in office long enough to finish his project for the reform of the royal household before resigning. To his dismay, he was not allowed to do that. On 12 May 1776 he was ordered to send in his resignation. He at once retired to La Roche-Guyon, the château of the Duchesse d'Enville, returning shortly to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life in scientific and literary studies, being made vice-president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1777.[6]
