CHAPTER IV - Intendance of Limoges

CliAPTER IV. INTENDANCE Of' LIMOGES.-SURVEY OF THE DISTRICT.-LOANS ON INTEREST AND USURY. -LETTERS ON FREEDOM IN THE COMMERCE OF CEREALS. A FTER the death of Gournay, Turgot retained {or two more years the office of acting maUre dts requ2tes" but, thinking of becoming an intendant, and with the view of preparing for the post, he asked 1\-1. de la l\lichodiere's leave to accompany him on his inspections. France was divided into forty provinces and thirty five genera/iter. The provinces were military divisions under the command of a governor; the ginera/iteswere adminis trative circumscriptions directed by an ,flletldalz/. Their extent was not uniform, and their limits were not the same. There were almost always several governors for one inttndanl, and several Inlttldants for one governor, but their functions were independent of each other. The intendantswere financial agents, such as the directors of our taxes; but they decided on certain litigious cases concerned with taxes, as our c()nsel1s de prljecture,' and their attributions included, besides. as in the case of T1trgot at L it/toges.

our prefects, the police, public charities, the militia. Their power was the more considerable, because they were in constant relations with the Council of State, and that, preserving their title of maUre tiel re'1,II/el, they took their sitting with the other ",al/res ties requItes during the frequent stays they made in Paris. Turgot was appointed on the 8th of August, 1761, to the in/endana of Limoges. cc It is to LimOA'es that I am sent," he wrote to Voltaire, August 24th, 1761. U I should have far preferred Grenoble, which would have placed me within easy reach of the chapel of Confucius, thus enabling me to receive instruction from the hIgh. priest.tJ The Limoges i,,/endantecomprised five Iltdions: Brive, Tulle, Limoges, Bourganeuf, and Angouleme. The country was poor, and overwhelmed with taxation. ce I think I am right in asserting," says Turgot, IC that the taxation of the Limoges glnlralitl amounts to between 48 and So per cent. of the total produce, and the king gets out of the soil nearly as much as the landowners.)) For the space of thirteen·years Turgot devoted himself.

with an energy which\Vas never abated for a single instant, to the interests of his glnerall/e; but he could not please everybody. In 1774, when he left it to become a cabinet-minister, some persons affirmed that he had made himself adored. whilst others declared that he \Vas detested. Both parties were right, no doubt. The Limousinnobilitywere accustomedto make use of the ill/entlana for the purpose of obtaining favours, getting the land-tax and the poll-tax of their prQ/lgls rc duced, 68 Turgot. and reducin~ to the lowest possible amount their own capitation-duties. The)' never forgave Turgot for breaking with traditions which were so favourable to them. They readily called him, as they had done in the;: {'.ases of Goumay, a man aprojets e/ asysfe1Jle. cc Yes, :Madam, he is systematic," exclaimed the Abbe Baudeau, talking to a lady whom he does not name, but of whom he says that she was a witty court lJegueu!e, and one of the mothers of the Jesuitic Church; "yes, ~'ladam, he is systematic •... Do you think, then, that to govern a king dom like France, unconnected ideas and routine are needful ?" He had accordingly made many enemies throughout the small gentry of the district. But if the J..imousin nobility felt hostile towards him, it was not the same with the peasantry. liis departure was publicly announced from the pulpit by all the clITh of the province, who everywhere celebrated mass for his sake.

The labourers interrupted their work in order to be present, and repeated: "The king has done right in taking M. Turgot, but it is very sad for us not to have him any longer." 'Ve cannot write the history of his administration, nor give a complete analysis of what he called his Limousin works: that would be too extensive an undertaking, and it would lead us, besides, into details which are uninter esting just now; but, to make our readers understand Turgot's genius, we must bring out the loftiness of views with which he never ceased to treat the administrative questions on which he had to decide. There was not a TUy"l{ot S OcclIjJaticnls. 69 single ~.ase, however trifling in itself, which did not afford him the opportunity of affirming principles. The circu lars to his 3gents, his letters to the minister, his advices to the council, are so many treatises on economic theories and laws. Such are his AVIs Sill" fassittle el 10 rtpartilj(J1l tie ta tal1le (1762N1770), his Mt11loire sur les prl/s ainllrel e/ sur lusure (1769), his Let/res surta tioerl;' 1111 (()!!l!lurtt des grains (1770); and the most astonishing fact is, that all he writes seems extemporised. lIe does not require long studies to trace up effects to their (~,uses ; his first education, the habits of his mind, the uprightN ness of his judgment immediately show him the main substa.nce o( things, and he penetrates into it without either hesitation or confusion. \Ve do not mean to impl» that he was satisfied with a first glance, that he neglected details, and was not hardNworking; on the contrary, he toiled immensely, and the numerous attack() of gopt (rom which he suffered never turned him aside from what he had to do. His only rest was when he indu 1ged in his intimate letters-and he had many corre spondents. To Caillard he talked of poetry, communicat ing to him his translations from IIomcc or I)ope, and sending him, with the view of being despatched anony mously to ,Ferney, the metrical Hnes which Voltaire mistook for prose. lie argued on the pronunciatipn of the ancients, and could not pardon David Hume for believingthat the old Romans pronounced Latin after the English (ashion, sa)'ing e (or a, i (or i, and J'(}lI for 11.

\Vith Condorcet he exchanged views on philosophy, on 7° Ttergot. ethics, on science. His mmd \vas never more Cree than when it was most occupied. However, the mterest of the people subject to his admimstration was the unceasing object of his anxiety. One of hIs chief occupations during the early years OJ his intent/ante had been the revision of the taxation-lists. The land-tax \vas assessed in Limousm then accordmg to a tariff devised twenty years before by lvl. de Toumy. The late z"nfendant had wished to correct the abuses ansmg from arbitrary assessment, and with that view he had conceived the plan of recastmg all the old valuations of the produce of the estates, and also the settling of a basis of normal imposition founded upon a kind of survey. But the land-surveymg had been finished only in one part of the province, two-thirds of it, and the valuations had been stopped in most cases after a mere inspection oC the localities, a glance, so to say, or a bird's eye View, and by masses of culture.

Such glarmg inequalities had resulted Crom this arrangement, that the populations had found no relief, either in the giving up of the arbitrary taxation, or 10 the carrying out of so IOcomplete a survey. Turgot deemed it necessary to do the whole thing over again, and to undertake a general revision. It was a real survey he had in vie\v; he wanted to draw up in some measure a description of the province, estate by estate, a geometrical one, given in a plan, and which might be preserved and kept correct as changes took place in the consistency and nature of all the estates. But the establishment of a survey with measurements l.. f'ltat should the La1zd-tax be ? 7I and yaluations has always been and must always be a very longt ,"ery difficult, and very expensive work. "If I had known then," Turgot writes in 1762 to the comptroller~general, cc as distinctly as I know to--day, the o,>erwhelming amount of work necessary not only to per fect the operations for the future, but to draw the present system out of its confusion, I should perhaps never had had the courage to undertake it."

He did not, at any rate, save his trouble; he took the utmost care to enlighten the commissioners, the land· lords, and the peasants on all the questions raised by the revision. In order to edu<:'.atethe public, he C'.3,used the Limoges Agricultural Society to propose a prize on the theory of taxation; and, with the viewof opposing adminis trative prejudices, he constantly put forward in his letters and his advices to the council and to the comptroller· general, apropos of the smallest details, the most general questions, and the very discussion of the prin ciple of taxation. For Turgot the land·tax should be a fixed and real one. It should be fixed; « it is most important to djs~ tribute the tax which estates are to bear according to a fixed e,·aluation." It should be real, (C and be assessed only according to the inheritance which each taxpayer enjoys, and the income he derives from it." The taxa~ tion of persons s~ocks by itself,t) says he, cc because a person is nothing else but a heap of wants. . . ."

In his Plan de meflloire sur Its illlpositio1ls,Turgot examines the point of quo/iti(each one paying a portion of his revenue) with reference to the system of ,.tpar72 T1lrgot. titton, by virtue of which each person pays a portion of the sum required by the government. You may ask each one for a part of his income: that is the system of quo/itt. You may be satisfied with asking the nation, each province, each community a fixed sum to be divided afterwards amongst the landowners: that is the system of repartition. He finds great advantages in the system of quo/ilt. The State collecting a proportionate part of the revenue would be, according to him, the real owner of that part of the revenue. In sales and purchases an arrangement might be made on the same footing. The purchasers would end by no longer buying the share of the State. After some time nobody would pay any taxes. Th~ public revenue would increase in the same proportion as the riches of the nation, since it would form part of them. "The wealth o~ the king would be the measure of the wealth of the people, and the administration, always struck by the reaction of its faults, would derive instruction from an experience of every moment, from the mere calculation of the yield of the ' taxes."

In spite of so many advantages, the thing nevertheless seems to him impossible, because in the quo/itt system the government stands alone against all, everyone being interested in concealing the amount of his propertyJ and no one being interested in stating the truth. He further adds a consideration which has lost nothing of its forceJ becausethe generalmethod of working the land has much less changed in France since the last hundred The Lalld-la~:. 73 nnd twenty years than many people fancy. The consi.. deration is this: if in the countries where cultivation is managed on a large scale the price of the farming gives us the basis of the land-tax, it is not the same in mc/o)'agt countries where there arc no leases, and where, accordingly, that kind of control disappears; he adds that the whole of the land is not (armed out.; quite the reverse: "hardly one-third o( the kingdom is cultivated b)' fanners."

As (or trusting to the honesty of the persons who make their statements, it is not a practical manner of recovering the taxes; then he ends, by the following cO:1clusion,which is not a ver)" cheerful one, but which witnesses to a very deep knowledge of the human heart: "Fraud," says he, "would be very common, alii, tlure/ort, 'ItlQuld nul be dishonest." He accordingly recommends the plan of a fixed assessment. For him the land-tax should be a fixed charge, de~ termined by means of a fixed sUr\'ey, this resulting from a measurement of land and :.l classification of the various estates according to their quality. This system, which he makes so much of, is simplythe one which the National Assembly established in France. It still subsists at the present day. The advantages and drawbacks inherent to it are still those pointed out by Turgot, and the same questions are still discussed as at the epoch when it was endeavoured to perfect the fixed assessment ('t~a,ti'filJ'/) in the provinces where fixed assessment (,epartition) was in use, and to introduce it in those where the contrary system (viz., non-fixed assessment) prevailed.

74 TUY..t:ot. In '769 there took place at Angouleme one of those commercial crises which we rather erroneously designate to~ay as monetary crises; the cause of it was the im possibility in which certain speculators found themselves of supporting the excessive circulation of paper issued as accommodation-bills. Hence stoppages of pay ment, failures, and even bankruptcies; engagements fallingdue could not be renewed, discount had beeome impossible, commercial operations were suspended, no money was available for any business, and the soundest merchants had absolutely lost all credit. The tradesmen who sold stuffs for the consumption o( the town having applied, according to custom, to Lyons for their orders, answer had been sent to them that no transaction would be carried on with ~lessicurs d'Angouleme except on ready-money terms. Since those days crises of the same kind have often taken place. The over..circulation of paper always leads to an increase in the value of money; speculators are then obliged to liquidate, and both the guilty and the careless lenders who trusted them are included in the same ruin.

But the J 769 crisis at Angouleme had a special character which was destined to aggravate considerably its conse quences. The men who had circulated the accommodation·bills formed a band of scoundrels who had agreed to benefit by their very bankruptcy in charging the discounters with usury, and denouncingthem on that ground to the -senlclzal of Angouleme. "The disturbance of all com· The A11gou1R111C Criszs. 75 mercialoperations,"says Turgot) U alarmspreadamongst the merchants of a town, and the way in which their (or· tune is affected,constitutea. great evil. A greater evil stilI is the triumph of a set of rogues who, after taking advantage of the credulity of private individualsto obtain money on the security of fraudulent bills, have had the cunning guiltier still of seeking in badly understood laws the means not only of warding off the pursuits of their creditors) hut of exercising against these creditors the mo!rt cruel vengeance: ruining them) defaming them, and enriching themselves with the spoils." Turgot accordingly proposed to bring before the council the charges of usury submitted to the sClllelmlof Angoulemc, nnd to appoint for the purpose of judging these charges a commissi()nwhich should at the s..'lme time be required to draw up a declaration and to fix the jurisprudence on the subject of commercinl loans made on interest.

In agreement with these conclusions the council sum v moned the c.ase before it; the pursuits directed against the lenders were quashed, and it ,,-as expressly forbidden to institute any such in future; but no declaration took place; the law asked by Turgot was not made, and the legislation respectmg the rate of interest remained obscure as it was before, nnd abandoned to the arbitrary decision of the judges. In support of his demand for bringing the above ('.nse before the council, Turgot, always accustomedto treat from the most general point of view, on the occasion of specialcases,the businesssubmitted to him, handed over F2 Tttrgol. to the Council of State a memoir which is the most complete and most perfect work ever written on the subject of lending money on interest, and of usury, work which immediately placed the author amongst our best writers. The subject is divided into three parts :·····-First,the necessity of loans on interest for the requirements of trade and industry is demonstrated; the rate of interest variesJ in the first place, according to the abundance or scarcity of capitals; in the second, according to the cer tainty of the repayment or the risk attending it. Secondly, Turgot refutes the arguments of scholastic divines, lawyersJ and theologians. Thirdly, he inquires into the historical causes, which, by rendering usury odious, have spread about in the world an opinion unfavourable to .capitalists who lend their money, Lastly, in a conclusion very soundly argued, he asks that loans on interest should be deemed lawful; the rate of interest to be fuUy discussed hetween the lenders and the borrowers; the usurers who trade on the passions and inexperience of the young to be punished only by laws similar to those which are applied to cases of abuse of confidence and other forms of deceit.

According to him, there is no commercial locality where the greater part of enterprises do not result from borrowed money; and there is no capitalist who would consent to deprive himself of money which he could turn to use, if he did not find in it a corresponding advantage. If lent money did not bear any interest, it would not be Loa'lts a1zd Usu'YJ'. 77 lent. f and if the law forbade loans on interest, either it would be violated, or commerce WQuld come to a stand D still. But if loans on interest are necessary, and if a trade in money takes place, money must be looked upon as a kind of merchandise, the price of which depends upon an agreement between the contracting parties, and is submitted, like all other goods, to the law of supply and demand. \Vhat fault can there be found with the borrower who, making his lender run a risk, consents to pay over to him a high rate of interest; or with the lender who protects himself against risks by an increase in his price? No Jaw, whether civil or religious, obliges one person to procure to another gratuitous help; why then should a civil or a religious law prohibit anyone from procuring money at a price which the borrower consents to pay for his own advantage? The lawfulness of inter est is an immediate consequence of property, of the right which the proprietor exercises over what belongs to him.

The proprietor of a thing can either sell it or let it; the price of the sale or of the letting is ahvays fair when the will of both parties has been free, and when there ha.'i been no fraud on either side. These principles are universally acknowledged when anything else but money is concerned; why should they not be applied to money as well as to everything else? And if you say that it is want which obliges the borrower to accept the lender's terms, could it not he answeredthat it is wantalso which drives a man to the baker's? Has the baker less right to receive the price of the loaf which he sells, and can the Tttrgot. purchaser take the baker's loaf without having paid its value? Scholastic divines, in order to attack loans on interest, have started from an argument which some persons nscrihe to Aristotle; ~l.nd, under the plea that mone}' does not produce money, they have concluded that it is not lawful to get l110ney out of money by means of loans. The alleged sterility of money is nothing else but a glaring error resulting from a wretched misunder N standing. Those who maintain and spread it, forget that money is the necessary instrument of aU agricultural, industrial, and commercial enterprises; they forget that although some personf\ consider it as harren, it is amongst all the people of the world the equivalent not only of all the goods, of all the effects which might perhaps be regarded as barren, but of all landed estates which, nevertheless, yield a very real income.

The argument of the jurists, and of Pothier, ,unangst others, is different. H Equity," says he, "requires that in a contract which is not gratuitous, the values given on both sides should be equal; that each party should not give more than what it has received) nor receive more than what it has given. Now all that the lender requires in the loan, in addition to the principal loan itself, is a thing which he receives beyond what he has given, since, by receiving the principal loan exclusively, he recei"'esthe exact equivalentof what he has given." Pothier's argument is the one which Thomas Aquinas made use of. The jQllgilJle articles (articles which can l..,OQlIS and VSll-ry. 79 be weighed, measured, counted, and replaced in kind) whkh constitute the object of a loan have no USt~ distinguishable from the article itself; jf you sell that use at the price of interest required, you sel) a thing which does not exist. Turgot looks upon that argument a~ a tissue of errors 3nd of misunderstandings which can bt~ easily unravelled. In every convention having for its basis two n~dprocal conditions, there can be injustice only if there has been violence, fraud, bad faith, abuse of <:,onfidencc. Between two values exchanged, between two objects given and received, there can neyer be any~ thing like metaphysic.aJ equality or inequality. The equality of value depends upon the opinion of the contracting parties as to the degree of usefulness of the things exchanged for the satisfaction of their wants or their desires. But, after discussing the inequality, people add, as if this was an instanl~e of inequality, that in returning more than the capital to the person who has lent him money, the borrower gives more than he received, and they can this a (;ase of injustice. This reasoning supposes that the muney received tQeday and the money to be repaid a year hence are two things perfectly equal. Is there not, on the contrary, between these two things a palpable inequality and difference, and the well·known pro,·erb, U A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," does it not naively express that inequalityand that difference?

Finally, the last argument against the validity of loo.n5 on interest is taken from the Bible. \Ve read in 51.

80 Ttlrgot. Luke's gospel: U Mutuum date, nihil inde sperantes" (Lend, hopmg for nothing again); people of common sense would see in that passage merely a precept of charity, and it would be impossible to interpret the text otherwise if we replace it in the sentence from which it has been taken: cc Verum tamen, diligite inimicos vestros, benefacite, et mil/Ullin dale nih,1 ;"de sperantes, et erit merces vestra multa et eritis filii AltissimJ,quia ipse benignus est super ingratos et malos." (But love your enemies,and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your re,,·ard shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful, and to the evil.) For Turgot, any man who reads this text without any prejudice, must s~e in it a precept of charity. The true meaning of the passage is none other than if it had been said: As men, as Christians, you are all brethren. all friends. Deal with each other as brethren, as friends; help each other in your needs; let your purses be open to each other; and do not sell the assistance which you owe to one another.

The real origin of the opinion which condemns loans on interest and usury is to be found in the outcry of nations to whom usurers have always been hateful. It is pleasant to get money, it is hard to have to return it. In societies just starting, people do not borro\Vmuch for commercial purposes, they do so only for the necessities of hfe; money can be returned only jf fortunate circumstances occur, and the lender runs the risk that such circumstances may not take place.

Loans a1ld [!sury. 81 Accordingly, in these conditions the rate of interest (4'1nnot but be very high. At Rome it was excessh·e. The severity of the laws against debtors-,,~Jaws made by the rich··--rouscd the indignation oC the people against their creditors. In all the republics of antiquity the :lboHtion of debts has always been the wish of the multitude, and the watcheword of the ambitious men who wanted to curry the popular favour. 'Vhen Christianity appeared, it offered itself to· the people as the religion which stood up to protect the poor; preachers naturally ~dopted an opinion which had become the cherished one of the poor, and they confounded loans on interest with the severity of the prosecutions directed against insolvent debtors. Hence the tendency manifested by the doctors of the Church to consider loans on interest as unlawful. The causes, however, which had formerly made loans on interest hateful have ceased to act with the same force. Trade has multiplied ad itifittiltllllt and it em~ ploys immense capitals. Loans made by the poor to provide (or their living are anly an infinitesimal fraction of the whole amount o( such transactions. The persons to whom most loans are made arc the rich, industrious men, those, generally,who hope to derive profits from the money they borrow.

The name of usurers is now given exclusively to lenders of smallsums of money at an exorbitant interest for a week (prtltttrs ala pt/ilt slma;,u), to a few pawnbrokers who advance money on pledges to inferior bourgeoisand to dis tressed workmen; finally, to the contemptible wretches Turgot. whose business it is to supply at enormous interest to dissi~ pated young men of good family wherewith to carry on their licentious behaviour and their extravagant expenses. The prtlt.urs a la jJf/iit sf-maine enahle, after all, petty tradesmen to earn their livelihood; pawnbrokers lend money on pledges which the borrower has no need of, and the poor man thinks himself lucky to Hnd a momentary relief, without any other danger but that of losing his pledge. The common people feel grateful rather than indignant towards these smaJl usurers whQ assist them in time of need, although they sell that assistance very dear.

The only money ..lenders reany injurious to society arc those) therefore, who make a business by advancing money to young spendthrifts. But their real crime consists not in being usurers, but in facilitating and encouraging the extravagances of young men. They should be punished 011 that ground, and not Cor the rate of interest paid over to them. \Vhen we read in the ori~inal, from beginning to end, the memoir of which we have just given the summar)', we are struck by the power of the arguments employed, and we are forced to acknowledge that in writing it Turgot has really exhausted the subject. The di~cussi()n started by Turgot one hundred and twenty years ago, in the king's council, has very often been revived since; it is not yet finished, and it is perhaps not nearly being so. The champions of freedom in the matter of loans on interest have made many excellent speeches; but what Free C"irculatioll of Corll. 83 ever rna)' have been their merit, their eloquence, the readiness of their dt"veloprncnts, they have merely reproduced Turgot's arguments in the language of the day. There is only one arsenal in which perfect weapons can be found wherewith to fight the SUl~cessors of the $«::holastk divines and of Pothier. That arsenal is the memoir on money·,loans delivered to the king~s council in 1769, with the view of supporting the sum~ mary made t<) that council of the prosecutions on a charge of usury first brought before the s!:llkhill of Angoulcme.

Next to the dearth of capitals~ the history of which we have related. the gbzeralite of Limoges had to sutTer from another dearth, namely that of cereals, a much more formidable one than that of money, a redoutablc scourge at all times, hut still more so in countries where means of communication are mrt.~, as they were in France at that time, and when popular prejadices, encouraged by the most influential representatives of the administration and the magistracy, render the trade in corn extremely dangerous. The royal deduration of J 763 and the edict of J 764 had sanctioned "the fret.~ circulation of corn" within the kingdom; but that freedom was constantly threatened by the local parliaments and the munidp~l officers. Thus the Bordeaux parliament, by a decree dated January 17th, 1770, had ordered the landlords and farmers of Limousin and ()f Perigord to c1rry every week to the markets a quantity of corn sufficient for the supply of the said markets, prohibIting them, at the same lttrgot.

time, from selling corn either wholesale or in retail else A where than in these markets. The tcluvins (aldermen) of thc small town of Turenne had not respected the law any better. They had forN bidden the exportation of cereals from the mills of the town, ordering the landlords to leave Ie their corn on the spot, receiving in return the value in ready money at the market price".; finally, the Angouteme !leu/eltan! de polict had been bold enough to issue a decree ordering ~U persons having corn in their houses, either ware· housed or otherwise, to keep only what was strictly necessary (or their consumption and that of their families, directing them at the same time to forward the overplus to the market under a penalty of one thousand livres fine. This was adding to the local dearth, which was ver)· serious by reason of the failure of the harvest, a more general one resulting (rom the impossibilityofsupplement ..

ing by commcrcial means the deficit existing in the generality. \Varned of the danger, Turgot adopted the most energetic measures. He insisted before the council to obtain from them the quashing of the 130rdeaux decree. He ordered the Turenne municipality to cease their opposition to the export of cereals. He obtained a decree of the council prohibiting the lieutenant of police of Angouleme from carrying out his order. At the same time he caused to be distributed a large number of copies of the royal declaration of 1763, and of the edict of 1764 on the free circulation of corn, together with Le Trosne's work, entitled la Libert; till l011l11Urcc des grains) Free Circulation 0/ Corn. 85 lou/()ursIIli/t, ja11l1.1is llu;sjIJlt.;(or he used to sa)', "Orders even should be sown in prepared ground." Nor was he satisfied with these somewhat passive measures; he organised relieving offices, compelled' the landlords to supply their dependents with food, and opened docks for the construction of roads and highways.

The political difficulties, however, which the high price of corn could not fail to raise, not only at Limoges, but in many provinces, had seriously shaken the confidence of the Abbe Terray (supposing it was sincere: and this is doubtful) in the efficaciousness of the free circulation of corn which the ((Jlllnllellr gineral Bertin had allowed by the edict of 1764; the Abbe Terrny resolved accord ingly upon reC'.aHingthe edict. Before carrying out his plan, and although quite resolved upon doing so for all sorts of reasons, some of which were far (rom honourable, he communicated it to the inttlzdants,asking them their opinions. It is on this occasion that Turgot wrote his celebrated letters on the free circulation..of corn. He extemporised them during his journey of inspection, whilst he was making the deparltmenl (to uc;e the language of the day), or the dividinl{the charge of the land-tax between the e!(C lions, the slIlJdt/egations,and the (01Jt11lUlleS. It was winter, and cold in the mountain districts; the resting-places were few and badly appointed. It was whilst tr~l\··eHing under very painful conditions, especially for a man subject to gout and rheumatism, that he wrote them ~lIr"(lll( (alatllo.

Nothing is more astonishing than the ease with which 86 Turgot. our hz/tlziall/ could finish, unfavourabJy circumstanced as he was, a work which has become classical, and in which all the questions, stated with perfect dearness. are solved, on the side of freedom, by common-sense, with irrefutable logic. These famous letters, seven in number, are dated, the first from Limoges, October 30th, the second from Tune, November 8th, the third {rom Egleton, November loth, the fourth from Egleton, November 11th, and (rom Bort, November 13th, the fifth from Saint.Angel, November 15th, the sixth from Angoul~me, November 27th, the seventh, and last, {rom Limoges, December 7th, 1770. Three letters have, un fortunately, been lost; they were given to Louis XVI by Turgot him$elf in the original at the time of the guerre dts jarbzes, and they have not been recovered j the first drafts have disappeared, and nothing has remained of them but summaries and fragments j the others are complete.

The Abbe Terray, (on/ro/curgeneral, meeting Turgot at Compiegne, had expressed to him, a few months before, his doubts on the advantages of freedom in the circula~ tion of corn. H Three classes of persons," he said, (( are interested in the selection of a s}'stem on the police of cereals: the landowners, the cultivators, and the con sumers. I agree that the system of freedom is extremely favourable to the landowners. \Vith respect to cultivators, the advantage they find in it is merely transient, because at the end of the lease the landowners know full well how to appropriate it by raising the rent. Finally, the Frte (~£rtltltlt£OIl of Corll. 87 t~()n~umers evidentl)' suffer the grc:ltest prejudice from the lib(~rty which raises the prices to an extent thoroughly out of proportion with their ml~ans of subsistence, and increasing all their expenses." Hence the Abbe Tcrray's condusioll that whereas freedom was advantageous only to the smallest proportion of the citizens. and a matter of indifference to the cultivators, it affected in the most serious manner the infinitely greater number of his majesty's subjects.

This series of arguments Turgot undertook t.o refute in his letters. In the first place he regards it as an error to bdieve that freedom of commerce can result in raising the average price of corn.; the reverse is the truth. He has no difficulty in proving that if the cultivators and lo.ndownerscan freely dispose of their crops only if they are compelled to sell cheap, whilst they lose on the quan tity without being able to compensate for the s(,~'lrdty of production by the mising o( the prices, they are naturally led to prefer other cultures to that which exposes them to so many persecutions. A system of interference in commercial transactions must infallibly lend to diminish the in1portance of the crops, which necessarily produces a rise in the average price of corn. Under the rt~'me of police regulations the prices are more variable; under the regitntof freedom they are less so. "Regulations and prohibitions," says Turgot, cc do not produce one more grainof corn. but the)'preventthe corn, over·abun· dant in one localit}', (rom being carried to places where it is most scarce."

88 Ttel''got. Turgot examines then what he calls the three branches of the Abbe Terray's opinions. lIe states, in the first place, that he agrees with him so far that the landlords are interested in freedom, but not at an for the motive, as the CQlztnUeur general believes, that freedom leads to a rise in the prices, since it is the contrary which is true. One of the consequences of the wdnt of freedom is that in good years cultivators dare not warehouse the overplus of their crops for fear of being prosecuted as hoarders in a season of scarcity. So it happens that when plenty occurs the corn is wasted; it is thrown away to the cattle; hence a diminution in the production, and consequently a decrease in the net pro duce and in the annual value of the land. In one of the three letters which have not been re covered, because they were lost with the papers of Louis XVI, Turgot had made a comparative and detailed state ment of the expense entailed by production, and of the average value of the selie, (twelve bushels in English value) of corn, in France, in the good, fair, and bad years, and he had calculated that where freedom of commerce does not exist, the impossibility of compensating one by another the "expenses and the prices in times of plenty and in times of scarcity represented a diminution of 50,000,000 livres for landowners merely, to say nothing of the losses endured by workmen and consumers.

In his sixth letter Turgot passes on to what he calls the second branch of the Abbe Terray's argument, that is to say, the cultivators' point of view. The (ont,Jltll1' The Uilftta}'cr lJ ,,'»'stelJ1. 89 gbltra/ looked upon the interest of the cultivator as being untou'ched, because in the case where the farmers would have found an advantage, their landlords would have reaped that advantage at the expiration or the leases. But the Abbe Terray forgot that cultivation on a large scale, that of farmers, occupied then, as it does now, only part of the territory of Franc:e. Four~sevenths of the country were worked by mt!oytrs, whose cultivation, resources, and income were very middling. These cul tivators held no leases; they received half the produce. Under such circumstances the interest of the cultivator could not differ from that of the landowner, and freedom of commerce, which,according to the Abbe Terray's idea, ought to help the one, must be Jike\visebeneficial to the other. Turgot hoped that the improvement in their situation would allow the wretched 11ItlQyersof his da)' to shake off their misery gradually, to get together by degrees a small stock of cattle, and to become farmers, that is to say, to pay to their landlords it fixed rent.

This transformation would have had, according to him, the consequence of placing on the same level the cultivation of the provinces the most behindhand with that of the richest parts of Normandy, Picardy, and IIe de France. '(And supposing," sal's he, "that the system of freedom had no advantage except that of putting on the same footing the culture of these provinces and that of the districtsnow cultivatedon a largescale: supposing the cultivation and the income of these ,vere not likewise to be very much increased, could you be blind to the 90 Tlt1'g'Ot. advantage which such a revolution alone would introduce into the State. the immense increase in the revenue and in articles of subsistence. could you not see what cultiva·· tion in general gains by a system of freedom ?" Turgot devoted his last letter to the discussing of the interests of consumers, which, according to Terray, were injured by the suppression of the restrictions imposed under the regimt of the old police; he reproduced and developed in that letter all the arguments he had already put forth to prove that freedom, by increasing the total mass of production. must tend to diminish the prices of the general market for the benefit of the consumers.

\Ve need not go a second time over these arguments, but· his discussion of the monopoly of trade in corn exercised by the State is curious. \Vhat Terray wanted to favour by suppressing the edict of 1764 was really the optrations des bits du 1"0;. to use the parlance of the times, and. when bringing light to bear upon the question of monopoly. Turgot touched the vital point. lie could not conceive a company exercising the most terrible monopoly-monopoly on purchase against the labourer. monopoly on sale against the consumer. Supposing even that all its members were angels, the company could not possibly succeed in equalising the prices; it would be incapable of providing for the subsistence of aU, and people would always say that it only consisted of rogues. Ie If a series of losses/' says he, cc is occasioned by a series of bad crops, and more certainly still by maladministration, by the faults, negligences, and swindTerray's r11J1tSt'. o.f Power. 91 ling of every kind inseparable from the management of an undertaking too extensive and directed by too many persons, what will become of the supply it has pledged itself to make? The directors will be hung, but that will not give bread to the poor."

The Abbe Terray, however, would listen to nothing; he contented himself with sounding the praise of the letters he had received, and offering them as patterns to the other b,lelldtl1lls,. and h~ cancelled, by the edict of December 23, 1770, the principal dispositions of the edict of 1764. All persons wishing to trade in Corn had to enter in the police-register their names, sur~ names, qualities, places of abode, warehouses, and deeds relating to their business, and they were obliged under the severest penalties toseH nothing except at the market-town. U In twenty villages," says Voltaire, H the lords, clergy men, labourers, and artisans were compelled either to go themselves or to send at a great expense to that capital (the market-town); anyone selling at home, to his neighbour, a seHer of corn was condemned to a fine of 500 Bvres, and the corn, the waggon, and the horses were seized for the benefit of those who came to exercise that plunder accompanied by a troop of soldiers (at··u utle pando/ieye). Every lord giving in his village corn or oats to one of his vassals exposed himself to be punished as a criminal."

In order that so gross an abuse of power should come to an end, Turgot must be raised to the position of a cabinet minister. G 2 CHAPTER V. TURGOT A CABINET MINISTER.-}.REE TRADE IN COR~.-THE GUERRE DES t<"ARINES. REINSTATEMENT OF THE PARLIAMENTS. O N ascending the throne, Louis XVI had sum moned the old Comte de l\laurepas in order to make of him his prime minister. By this measure he had put an end to the triumvirate of d'Aiguillon, Maupeou, and Terray, but he had dismissed d'Aiguillon alone, and retained the two others temporarily. However, if Terray still retained his title as (ontrtJlettrgbteral, we may say that his successor was already found; that was Turgot. The Abbe de Very and the Duchess d'Enville had decided that choice. Very was an old fellow-pupil of Turg',)t, and had never ceased being "ith him on terms of the closest intimacy. Later on, at Bourges, where he had spent a few years as grand 'l.litaire.he had made the acquaintance of the Count and Countess de l\.faurepas,exiled from the court by Louis XV, and he had often spoken to them of his (riend. The countess admired Turgot's character, and had been won over by his ideas. Accordingly, when her husband had been made prime minister, she Turgot Cabinet Ali11z"ster. 93 strongly urged upon him to offer a scat in the c-..abinet to a man whose genius and honest)' had inspired her with profound esteem.