CHAPTER VIII - Economic and Political Reaction after Turgot's Death

Clli\PTER VIII. "ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL H.EA~::TI()N AFTER TtiI~GOT'S DEATH.",,·_·FIl"AL TRIUMPH IN 1789. --FRESH REACTIOXS UNDER THE EMPIRE, THE Rl';STORATION, THE REPUBLIC OF FgBRUARY AND THE REPUBLIC OF 1871, IN THt': NA~fE, FIRST, OF THE ORGANISATION OF LABOUR, AND, S"t.~CONnLY, IN THl\T OF FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION.---RADICAL SOCIALIST SCHOOL. ·-EC():N()~IIC CATHOLIC SCHOOL. T URGOT could not have succeeded except for the authority of the king, and the concessions which :1 minister more tractable than he was might, for the sake of cQndliatk:lll,have tm'tde to the court and the par~ liament, would have produced no useful effect for the ultimate success of his enterprise. The ancien rt~g;mf., after the slo\V transformations it. had undergone, consist(~d in the eighteenth century of a despotism tempered b}t the privileges which cc.~rtain corporations enjoyed, such as the nobility, the clergy, the magistracy, the army, the trades' guilds, etc. The destructionof these privilt~ges, and the substitution of a general guartlntee gh'en to the "'holt" n~.ti()n instead of N 2 188 Tttrgot.

the special guaruntees secured by these privileges to a certain number of individuals, such was the object aimed at by Turgot. U The cause of the evil," says he to the king in his memoir on municipalities, "comes from the (act that your people have no constitution. You might govern, as God does, by general laws." A revolution alone-that is to say, the destruction of the existing system-could bring about that progress, and such a revolution could be accomplished without violence only if the two powers, the two active powers of the system, or one of them, the king and the privileged classes, had consented to undertake it. Turgot could not depend upon the privileged classes, which were, at that time, very far from anticipating a night of August 4th, and which, believing themselves very strong, had no wish to lay down their arms. His only chance, therefore, was to persuade the king to assume the lead of the mO'iement, and obtain from him that he would occupy that position with firmness. But if Louis XVI has sometimes felt what he could dare in that range of ideas, he has never been strong enough to pass from sentiment to action.

Could Turgot have overcome the king's hesitations if he had spared the influential persons of the court and the parliament, and if he had not successively quarrelled with everybody? To state the question thus is to show the contradiction it implies. liis object was to change a system resting precisely upon those very per sons whom ~omesay he should have conciliated.

Necker as a .StateS1Ilall. 198 To conciliate them would have been, in some sense, doing them homage and respecting their authorit)?, as jf it h:ld been a rcgulnr one, whereas his purpose, on the contrary, was to destroy them so far a~ they "'erc organs of the government, and prevent them from exer· cising, as corporate bodies, any influence whatever on the administration of the realm. People soon perceived, after Turgot's downfall, the reason which, instinctively or not, directed the resistance of the privileged classes to his reforms. The reaction did not confine itself to the cancelling of the decrees which had just been registered by the bed of justice; it aimed at the same time at a general political result, namely the strengthening of the s)"stem, and deducing from it the most extreme consequences. After having served the reaction, Necker was carried away by it, as Calonne was to be subsequently. The constitution of the State, patiently restored by the parliament and the nobility,assumed a form more and more tangible. The French monarchy degenerated into an oligarchy of privileged individuals, masters of the crown, and powerful enough to prevent the king, if even he had wished to do so, from performing his part of protecting his people :lgainst the encroachments of the aristocracy.

Nothing is more distressing and, at the same time, more extraordinary than the reaction which took place after Necker'sfirst ministry. The spiritof privilege had never shown itself more exacting than in 1781. Com .. moners (ro/lIritrs) till that epoch might appear on the Ttergot. lists of otlicers, and a good number of them under Louis XIV, Louis XV, and even during the first }'ears of the reign of Louis XVI, held a conspicuous place in the staff of the French army. The order of 1781 on the-army commission is more strjng(.~nt than all the previous ones. 'Vhoever for the future wished to obtain one either in the infantry or the cavalry had to prove that he possessed fOUf degrees of nohilit},. "Instead of yielding gently to the action of time," wrote Sieyes in his famous pamphlet of 1788, "the aris tocracy stiffens itself against it. They will lose mLUght of their privileges; nay, more, they increase them. Quite recently they have, without any further ado, granted for ever to the nobility the offices of presidents and councillors." Joly de Fleury, Necker's successor, carried to ItS extreme limits the narrowness of the reac tionary spirit. In a note appended to his translation of Marcus Aurelius he is astonished that the most useful of laws should still remain to be done. cc ~len should have been commanded, under the sc\'erest penalties, to keep within just limits their natural curiosity, and forbidden to speak and write on topics which are beyond their intelligence. J1 Those who heard Turgot, who were his friends and coadjutors, who shared his disgrace for having served him during his ministry, could read in 1784 and 1788, three and five years only after his death, a decree of the Paris parliament prohibiting the mowing of corn with a scythe (this concerns agriculture), whilst (this is for industry) the Character 0/ Lalo1tlle. 191 length of the pocket~handkerchie{s manufactured in the kingdom was to be pre(~i$eIy equal to their breadth. Reac ..

tion in the army, in industry, in the mugist~~l.ey, reudion even in the appliC'.3tionof feudal rights of the landlords; the government was hurrying towards the prt.~dpice with the most terrible rapidity. And )'et the reaction could not provide for everything, it could not increase the privileges and fiU the treasury.; ruin the Third Estate in oppressing it, and yet take from it wherewith to (oster the development of all abuses; throw open to favourites the pension~fund, and, at the same time. bring down the expenditure below the income. Amiable and clever as he was, Calonne could not draw the kingdom from the abyss where it was sinkmg. That well··informed man, agreeable, full of res~urces and of questionable morality, finally made up his mind to take up Necker~s financial reforms and Turgot's econori'lic ones. His plan was that, undoubtedly, of the two ministers who had tried to restore order in the disorder of the old system; for us this is a title of recommendation, and we should feel most grateful to him. "'Vhy !" said the king, whilst listening to him. Ie it is some downright Necker that you bring me." Louis XVI might have added that it was also some Turgot.

Calonne's territorial sub,,'ention, which a(feded aU landlords and all estates without exception or privilege, was nothing else but the land..tax which Turgot was meditating at the time of his disgrace, and which was to be the object of his next reform. It was also a plan of T1l"got. l\'1atesherbes, if it is true that ~'13.1esherbes is the author of the memoir preserved in the State Paper Office, where, speaking of the necessity of compelling all the privileged persons to contribute to the taxes, it is said: ce This truth, so evident, has been felt by an administrators. It would have been felt by the whole nation, if the nation had been allowed to know it, and to discuss its own interests. t) Calonne exhibited the naked truth to the nation, and, by summoning the notables, he prepared" the appeal to the whole nation for the purpose of discussing its own int(~rests." But if Ca10nne possessed the ideas of Turgot and the skill of ~Iaurcpas, if he combined at the same time the virtues which save and the vices which please, if he was a courtier without being any the less an econo mist, a philosopher, a statesman, why did he not succeed where Turgot had failed? And if it can be said of him that he was the faithful portrait of the Turgot, which this great minister is found fault with for not having been; if he had what was deficient in his predecessor according to the opinion of those who blame in Turgot his inflexible temper and his too contemptuous arrogance, why has he not deserved to receive from posterity all the praises be stowed upon Turgot pills those which have been denied him? The reason is easily found: it is that the Revo lution could not be avoided by compromises with the privileged classes, whether these compromises came from Calonne or from Turgot. History is there to prove this.

Turgot would have lost by being a Calonne, and Calonne has gained nothing by having aimed at being a Turgot.

Rejor11ultiQ1lof the JlIra1tdcs. 193 In the night of August 4th the National Assembly voted the reformation of thejurolldts. Turgot's apothc()sis was beginning. His trusty friend, Dupont de Nemours, heca.rnc the lnspirer Qf the financcycommittec, and drew up the address to the French n:ttion on direct taxes. It is certainly Turgot's views which are the basis of the finarH.::ialsystem of the Revolution, such as Dupont de Nemours has gi"'cn the programme of it, and such as it results from the deliberations of the National Assembly; the tax should be real, consequently it should bear only upon perceptible riches, and leave no opening for any arbitrary act in the rCCOVt~ry of it. Artk·Jc 7 of the law of 1791 enforces 'Turg{.)t's own decree on the jUYfl1ults, and reproduces a,lmost all its wording. "Beginning with the 1St of April next, every citizen shall be at libcrty to excrcise an}' profession, art, or industry he pleases, after hin'ing t~\kcn out a patent, and conditionally on his compl}·jng with 0111 the rules which mn)' be established.

J1 Finally, artide I of the decree of June 14~17, 1791, definitively condt.~mns the old system of industry. U Tl)(~ destruction of an kinds of guilds of citizcns cXt~rdsing the same tmd(;~ and profes sion being one of the fundamental laws of the French constitution, it is forbiddt.~n to re··establish them in fact, under any pretence :md form ,\·hat<~ver.H ()nt.~ could pcr~ ccivc already,howe\'cr, the genn ofthe disagreement which was soon to break out between th(~ rt~formcrs; some, devoted to liberty, granted it to their adversaries, just as they secured. it to themselves; the ()thers inclined to 194 defend the rights of the State so far as to oppress in dividuals: the liberals and the Jacobins. "\Ve were about to see," says Louis Blanc, "other re\'olutionists, give a new definition of liberty, such as the revolu tionists of '89 understood it. lVe shall hear them say: 'Liberty consists not in the right, but in the poz(lergranted to man of exercising and developing his faculties under the empire of justice and the safeguard of the law.''' In his journal, rAmi dlt l>euple, !\larat stood up for the trades' guilds. " Nothing better, ofcoursc," he wrote on the 16th of ~farch, J 791, "than to free the citizens from the bonds which stand in the way of the development of talents, and keep the wretched in a state of poverty.

But I am not sure whether this fulllibertYt this exemption of all apprenticcship, of all novitiate, to exercise this or that trade, this or that profession, is good from the political point of view. . • . The first effect of these foolish decrees is to impoverish the Ste"\te by destroying manufactures and commerce; the second is to ruin the consumer by everlasting expenditure. . • . In every State which has not glory for its principle of action, if you take the desire of a man to establish his reputation from that of making his fortune, there is nn end of good faith. Every profession, every traffic must soon degenerate into cheating. As the only question then is to dispose of oneJs works and one's articles of commerce, it is enough to make them look attractive, and to sell them at a low price, without caring for solid and well-finished labour • • • . . And as they have then neither merit nor solidity, 11tr..iJol discussed ~y Lonis ii/aile. 195 they must necessarilydegenerate into rubbish, and de~ termine the consumer in easy circumstances to provide himselfabroad."

Louis Blanc places himself at ~nother standpoint.; he sees in Turgotts w(>rk, taken up by the constitutllts of 1789, the triumph o( individualism over fraternity: "'Ve must speak plainly (Ilis/()ry of the French. Retll}!lIfi()ft): Turgot proclaimed in splendid langua~e the right o( labour. This will be in the future one of his titles of honour. But do not m~lke a mistake: Turgot never went so far as to acknowledge the right to labour. lIe consented that the poor should be (ree to develop their faculties, but he did not admit that society should be obliged to supply them with the means of so doing. lIe meant that the obstacles should be suppressed which ~uise {rom the action of the authority, but he did not compel the State to act as the guardian of the poor, the weak, the ignorant .... 'Vhat was the use of repenting to the pro/claire: 'You have the right to work,' \,,.hen he could answer: 'llow do you wish me to avail myself of that right?t The school of so..callcd fraternity found fault with Turgot for having thought, first, that to destroy the obstacles, and, next, to grant liberty, was the whole duty of government, and, next, that isolation was the only guarantee against monopoly.~1 One circumstance, however, prevented the Revolu tionists from returning to corporations,and led them to retain Turgot's work in opposition to Murat and to man} others; it was this: they saw clearly that corporations 196 Turgot.

contained in themselves a principle of exclusion nnd of oppression, and that by corporative association they could establish a kind of family, and it was an exclusive family which did not admit amongst its members all those who needed work.. Napoleon was not to have any of those scruples; accordingly, under the Consulate there was an offensive reaction, still more strongly characterised, towards cor~ porations. A great number of memoirs were presented to the council of state in favour of the re-establishment of trades' guilds. Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'AngeIy con stituted himself the patron of the jurandes. Under the Restoration, the chmnpions of the revival of corporations plucked up courage. In 1817, a barrister, named Levacher-Duplessis, who pretended to act on behalf of "thirty-four commercial and industrial pro fessions," presented to the king a request on the necessity of re~estahlishing merchants' guilds and the communities of arts and trades. This request stated anew the arguments of the 1776 parliament, and spoke of Turgot according to the fashion of the advocate general Seguier, and ill a style otherwise rather strange.

Turgot U was born with an inflexible and absolute character; his opinions, which had assumed the hue of that character, had degenerated into a sectarian spirit." The corporations destroyed by him had been recon· stituted after his disgrace; their abuses, it was said, had disappeared, and they had rendered the greatest services to trade and to industry. It is those corporations, wisely 11t1'got auti the Restoratioll. 197 regulated. that Lcvacher and the Paris merchants wanted to see re-·established. "Obstacles must be put in the way of that mCr\,antilc mania which fills the career or industry with a ('rowd of adventurers who dishonour it.H The Paris Chamber of Commerce, to which this request was submittedt examined it, and, adhering to the opinion it had often expressed, maintained its first deliheration,,, ii time and reflexion having, in that respect, strengthened the opinion of the chamber/' In 182 I there was a fresh petition, a fresh deliberation of the Chamber of Commerce, a fresh affirmation of the unchangeable convktions of its members.

"The chamber, deliberating on this communication .... and considering, besides, that the immense progress of French industry since the time when it became free from the monopoly of masterships (maUnsu) is a sufficient (~lutjon against the danger of the innovation which some wouldintrodu<.:einto the pre~ent legislation .... protests, as its predeCeSS()TS have done, and with the same unanimity, against the petitions addressed to both Chambers (Houses of Parliament)." In February, 1848, the corporations rose into f:wour. Those who proclaimed the right to work, and whose doctrines were summarised in the formulre of the organisa tion of labour, seemed for a moment to have the power in their own hands; but they frightened the nation, and their ideas perishedduring the days of June. Thus Turgot's doctrines had passed, unimpaired, through the most dangerous epochs f()r libeml views of 198 11/.'J:~Ot.

political economy: the Convention) the Empire) the Restoration, the Revolution of February. Napoleon would have made a police-agency of the (~orporations, reconstituted and placed under his iron hand; he had a proje! de/til' drawn up acc.ording to that idea, but was obliged to give it up. The Restoration had inspired courage into those who deplored the downfall of the old French institutions, and }'et it did nothing to return to the old organisation of industry. AU attempts had successively failed before the general indifference, before the suspicions engendered by the pretensions of the spirit of monopoly which satisfied one interest whilst it threatened all the others; tinally, there was the dread of . a popular and re\'olutionary tyranny. If modern France has escaped from the reaction against the enfranchisement of work. it is owing to the memorable struggle which Turgot carried on in 1776.

The blow struck by him had been a deadly one for the corporations. The re-establishment of them after his disgrace had been incomplete, inasmuch as the old communities were not restored, and fresh associations, merely, were either sanctiotled or proscribed. The esprit it corps had been broken in them; it failed to revive under Necker. during the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. If equality between the citizens) the admissibility to aU offices., the abolition of all distinctions must be con sidered as the necessary consequence of the French Revolution in the conditions of its outburst; and if these l"lte S)'slcIJI. of Protection Ex/c1ltled. 199 dermx-:ratic conquests make up, in some sort, what h;.ts been (~lHed the modern rtgimt, it is perhaps not the same case with a system of interference in labour, in industry) and in commerce, ''''hieh would proceed by genertlllaws, without attaching to exdusivt~ corponl.tions a protection which otherwise ..night have seemed to reinstate a privilege of the Qlldtfl r~g'imt'. By extending .and ~.\pplying that prot€~cti()n to open corporations, it might perhaps have been pQssible to make it i'l(:(:.eptablc to those innumer~hle ag(mts of the Revolution whose onl}' passion h..1S alw..\ys been equality, and for whom liberty meant in most cases the right of refusing it to thei.r ".:uiversa Ties.

\Ve may believe that it \Vas n()t by virtue of a principle, but by a sentiment ex{~]usive]y their o\vn, springing (rom thdr education, and which tlH.'~Y could perfe(~t1y well not transmit to their suceessors, that the st:ltesmcn of the Revolutionary em hr~ve preserved our country from the reactions attempted against the liberty of labour established by Turgot in 1776. Tht;;y were really under the personal influence ofTurgQt, who had died tnore than ten )-ears befQre. Turgot it was who made them act, and who was as the invisible dIrector of their economic conscience.