Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, often referred to as Turgot (10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781), was a French economist and statesman.

Education

Born in Paris, he was the youngest son of Michel-Etienne Turgot, "Provost of the merchants" of Paris, and Madeleine Francoise Martineau de Brétignolles, and came of an old Norman family. He 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. The first sign we have of his interest in economics is a letter (1749) on paper money, written to his fellow student the abbé de Cicé, refuting the abbé 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.

In 1750 he decided not to take holy orders, giving as his reason, according to Dupont de Nemours, "that he could not bear to wear a mask all his life."

Early appointments

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"), afterwards Mme Helvétius and his lifelong friend, he is supposed at one time to have wished to marry—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.

In 1755 and 1756 he accompanied in his tours of inspection in the provinces Gournay, the intendant of commerce, whose 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 , and between 1757 and 1760 an article on Valeurs des monnaies, probably for the Dictionnaire du commerce of the abbé Morellet. In 1759 appeared his Eloge de Gournay.

Intendant of Limoges, 1761-74

In August 1761 Turgot was appointed intendant of the genéralité of Limoges, which included some of the poorest and most over-taxed parts of France; here he remained for thirteen years. He was already deeply imbued with the theories of Quesnay and Gournay, and set to work to apply them as far as possible in his province. His first plan was to continue the work, already initiated by his predecessor Tourny, of making a fresh survey of the land (cadastre), in order to arrive at a more just assessment of the taille; he also obtained a large reduction in the contribution of the province. He published his Avis sur l'assiette et la repartition de la taille (1762–1770), and as president of the Société d'agriculture de Limoges offered prizes for essays on the principles of taxation. Quesnay and Mirabeau had advocated a proportional tax (impôt de quotité), but Turgot proposed a distributive tax (impôt de repartition). Another reform was the substitution for the corvée of a tax in money levied on the whole province, the construction of roads being handed over to contractors, by which means Turgot was able to leave his province with a good system of highways, while distributing more justly the expense of their construction.

In 1769 he wrote his Mémoire sur les prêts à intérêt, on the occasion of a scandalous financial crisis at Angoulême, the particular interest of which is that in it the question of lending money at interest was for the first time treated scientifically, and not merely from the ecclesiastical point of view. Turgot's opinion was that a compromise had to be reached between both methods. Among other works written during Turgot's intendancy were the Mémoire sur les mines et carrières, and the Mémoire sur la marque des fers, in which he protested against state regulation and interference and advocated free competition. At the same time he did much to encourage agriculture and local industries, among others establishing the manufacture of porcelain at Limoges. During the famine of 1770–1771 he enforced on landowners "the obligation of relieving the poor" and especially the métayers dependent upon them, and organized in every province ateliers and bureaux de charité for providing work for the able-bodied and relief for the infirm, while at the same time he condemned indiscriminate charity. It may be noted that Turgot always made the curés the agents of his charities and reforms when possible. It was in 1770 that he wrote his famous Lettres sur la liberté du commerce des grains, addressed to the controller-general, the abbé Terray. Three of these letters have disappeared, having been sent to Louis XVI by Turgot at a later date and never recovered, but those remaining demonstrate that free trade in grain is to the interest of landowner, farmer and consumer alike, and in too forcible terms demand the removal of all restrictions.