CHAPTER III - Quesnay and Gournay

CHAPTER III. QUES~AY AND GOURNAY.-TIIE PHYSIOCR.ATES. -TURGOT'S ECONOMIC nOCTRINE.-ESSAI SUR LA FORMATON ET LA DISTRIBUTIION DES RICHESSES.-ELOGE OF GOURNAY. T URGOT did not separate the economic laws from the other ethical ones, and he prosecuted simul· taneously the study of them with equal enthusiasm. According to him, men formed a natural society, and they could reach the degree of prosperity of which they are susceptible only in conditions of which they ('.annot free themselves. These conditions constitute laws which are not similar to positive laws, and which do not, like these, find their sanction in penalties either of a peeu· niary or of a bodily nature, but yet which it is impossible to violate without serious injury. If mankind tries to withdraw itself from the action of these laws, if it disobeys them, it throws an obstacle in the way of its own progress; nor does it realise the amount of comfort and of riches whichit might have procured to the indi.

viduals which co'mposeit, by respecting them. Such is the general idea which Turgot had of the relations existingbetweennatural1awand political economy. D2 44 T1ergot. Quesnay was at that time in the full blaze of his glory he had published his maxims, and his Tableauecono11llfue. His disciples constituted a kind of peculiar society, and treated the master as a sort of god. They assumed the name of Economistes,nnd formed a real sect. Now Turgot did not like the sectarian spirit. In one of his letters on the liberty of the commerce of cereals, we find this passage: "I am well aware that those who have for some time been speaking or writing against liberty in the commerce of cereals, pretend to consider that opinion as exclush"elybelonging to cert3in '....riters who have assumed the name of .E'cono1llisfes,and who may have prejudiced a portion of the public by a sectarian air which they ha\'e rather clumsily put on, and by a tone of enthusin.')m which always displeases those who do not share it."

Although professing for Quesnay the sincerest admira~ tion, Turgot preferred Gournay's intimacy to that of the author of the Tableau{cono1Jlique. Goumay, his second master, and the one, perhaps, whom he liked best, had, it is true, adopted Quesnay's ideas; but he laboured in what we might designate as another field of that domain which the}· had created together, and with which they had enriched the world. Dupont de Nemours takes much trouble to show the identity of views between these two remarkable men, and he has invented the name of "physiocratie" for the science upon which they were both engaged at the same time. For him Gournay was quite as much of a plzys;o trate as Quesnay.

QttCS1zay a1zd GOllYlzay. 45 Quesnay's leading idea was to raise agriculture to the greatest possible state of prosperity. lIe considered that all the other occupations in the world depended upon the cultivation of the ground, and jf he claimed freedom for industry and commerce, it was in order that freedom of commerce, b)' facilitating the working out and the trade of agricultural produce, should secure to agriculture the means of reaching a high development. U Poor peasants,n he said, H make a poor kingdom, and a poor kingdom makes a poor king." 'Vhilst acknowledgingthat agricultural interest should be the chief care of statesmen, Goarnay was especially anxious to throw light upon the economic questions arising from industry and commerce. He had remarked that competition was the most powerfulstimulus to work, and that everyone knows better than the government what is most favourable to his own interest. He had adopted as his maxim the expression: "Laiss(z jain, laissezpasser."

Goumay's own ideas, developed and applied by Turgot, have, become modern political economy, the political economy of Adam Smith and of Jean..Baptiste Say. Turgot's economic doctrines are condensed in two writingsof his. The one is an essay on Gournay, which he sent, in 1752, to ~Iarmontel, for the purpose of helping him to compose the (loge of their mutual friend. The second, entitled Essa;'sur ta forma/itm d la dislrz: buti{J!ldes richcsses,is a sketch of political economy given Tlergot. by Turgot to two young Chinamen, who, havingcome to France to prosecute their studies, were on the point of returning to the extreme East. The la5t~named essay forms a short work subdhided into one hundred paragraphs. The firstseven are meant to prove that the cultivation of the land is the only source of riches. This is Quesnay's own doctrine. All things which are of lise to men are produced by the soil.

All the preparations which industrymakesthem undergo, all the changesof placewhich commerce necessitates,are operations which add no new productions to those which have sprung from culth'ated land. Agricultural labour is the only one by which you may increase the wealth of a nation. The land immediately refunds to the culti· vator the "alue of his work, but what it giveshim is worth more than the painshe has taken. It is a physicalresult of the fertilityof the soil, which always exceeds the sum of labour by which this fertility has been obtained. The superfluousamount thus granted by nature as a pure gift to the cultivators,beyond the reward of their trouble, allows them to purchase the labourof the other members of society; and these, by selling their labour, mostly earn what is necessary to them for their food and for their daily life. The proprietor-cultivator, whose superflu ous income provides the others with work, is thus, accordingto Turgot, the only producer of wealth, wealth which, by its circulation,animates all the worksof society.

Society is thus divided into two classes, both equally laborious: the former gets out of the soil a wealth T1I1:t:Ot'sIi PorlJ1a/ioltdes richesses." 47 which is ever reproducing itself; whilst the latter, busy preparing the materi~ls thus produced, receives merd)' its means of subsistence in return for its labour. The fonner may be designated as the pr()dudng class, the latter may be named the sti}tndiary class. Mter this preamble, Turgot enumerates in the next paragraphs the various manners of giving value to the soil, and he endeavours to demonstrate by fresh argu ments what he has already stated in the first part of his essays, viz., that the soil alone can yield a net produce that is, something in addition to the expense of culture and to the interest derived from the capitals invested The other para{,rraphs,as far as the fifty-first, are devoted to the question of capitals, to those ofspecie, of commerce, and of the circulation of money. Before gold and silver had become the representative token of every kind of wealth, the exchanges, according to Turgot, took place in kind. Bushels of corn were then exchanged against pints of wine. The competition between those who had more or less need of this Of that article determined a current value for each one of them relatively to all the others. Every article may have thus become the equiva, lent of all the others, and may have served as a common measure merely to compare the value of all the other articles of merchandise with each other. The same quantity of com, worth eighteen pints of wine, was equally worth a sheep, or a piece of preparedleather,or a cer tain quantity of iron, and all these things had thus the same commercial value. But all pints of wine do not Tttrgot.

possess the same value; and if eighteen pints of Anjou wine arc worth one sheep, eighteen pints of Cape wine are worth a far greater number. In order, therefore, to avoid the mistakes arising from the fact that the same expression applied to objects of variable qualities, people found themselvescompelledto select as measureof the value of other merchandise, a merchandise always iden tical to itself, and which might be, besides, easily trans ported from place to place, and not liable to undergo any alteration. Gold and silver united aU these qualities in a superior degree, and, by the nature of things, they became the universal coinage. The last fifty paragraphs of Turgot's work treat of the formation of ec1.pitals,and of the various uses that can he made of them, whether by purchasing land, or by employing them in an agricultural scheme, an industrial enterprise, or a commercial operation, or, fimlIly, by iending them on interest to those persons who are in need of money_ 'Vhilst examining these five manners of investing capitals, Turgot makes us obsen-e, and he proves what he states, that ad"Yances(capitaux pr/:alables)are always necessary to those who want to make an enterprise, whatever may be its nature. Agricultural enterprises need these advances as much as all others. lienee the con sequence that cultivation, like industry, has its managers and its workmen. The managers supply the capital, and the workmen the manual labour. The mere work· men, tillers of the brround, like the mere industrial TlIY..f0t's .. For111ati'olt des richesst!s. 49 artisans, have no other property but their muscles, no other profit but their salary. If there is no capitalist, that is to say, if there are no capitals, there (".an bc nQ extensh'c culture, for it is only through extensive cultiva· tion that the soil can yield aU it is capable of },jelding.

Cultivation of the soil, and industries of every kind, depend accordingly on an accumulated mass of capitals, or of movable wealth,which return every year into the hands of those persons to whom they belong, in order to be made available and advanced during the following l'car, thus securing a continuance for the same in dustries. Returning, towards the end, to Q.ucsna}"s favourite theory, Turgot concludes that the produce of capitals should be exempted (rom all contribution to the public expense, because it is a produce taken from that of the soil. The income of the proprietors can alone be fCu garded as free, he(~use it constitutes an available w(~alth) and available wealth cxclusively may be applied to the expenses of the State. Such is Turgot's celebrated work. It contains, on the questions of capitals, specie, and competition, the most valuable and the newest truths for the epoch in which they were produced. Turgot could not but be, and was necessarily and continually, present to the mind of Adam Smith, when the author of the Theory of ,'rural .senli~ ments wrote, nine 'years later, his 1l1'taltle of J.Vatiolls.

But, jf the treatise we are noticing is full of truths, we are obliged, on the other hand,to acknowledge that it is 5° Ttergot. likewise fun of errors. It is steeped in Quesnay's thoughts on net produce, incessantly affirming that the soil must be considered as the only source of wealth. \Vhilst regretting the errors which have led Turgot astray, one cannot help doing homage to him as to the other p}~ystocrafes. \Ve must honour them, even on ac count of their errors; for, if they have committed them, it is only because they made a wrong application of laws which are everlastingly true-laws which Quesnay has had the honour of discovering. The wrong application Turgot made of them has given to these laws such celebrity that all thinkers have known them and accepted them as true. The pnyslocrates affirmed, to begin with, that the formation of wealth was subject to a natural law, and that in order to enable that law to produce all its effectc;, and mankind to get rich, men united in society, and constituting nations, should enjoy, in the first place, the liberty of producing, then the liberty of purchasing, seU ing, and conveying to various localities the produce of cultivation, industry, and commerce; finally, the liberty of accumulating capitals, making them circulate, lending them, employing them for the development of general wealth. That is the first and the highest of the truths for which we are indebted to them.

Another truth which they have taught the world is, that taxes are subject to a natural law of incidence. The State can oblige a class of citizens to pay taxes, but it cannot prevent those who have supplied the specie to The U Ph)'siocrates.U get it refunded to them by others, if the natural la\v of political economy allows or prescribes it. The pll)'SI()(TOIlS have triumphantly established that the t~n:payers arc in most roses nothing else but inter mediate parties, whose duty it is to pay the ta..xes on beha.lf of those who have finally to do so, thus making out of their own money to the real debtors of the State advances which arc recoverable in a longer or shorter delay, with more or less difficulty. From this obscn'ation they have concluded that men who only p()ssess their natural strength, and who support thcmselves merely by their bodily toil, should not be subjected to the kind of taxes which, by virtue of their nature, have a kind of reflex action.; fOf, if obliged to pay under these conditions, the poor would find themselves compelled to advance money to persons richer than themselves. lIenee this set~ond truth, not less evident than the first, that taxes should, as much as possible, be raised from the fortune and income of those \,,"ho, after a11, a re obliged to bear them.

But how many errors are mixed with these great truths which Quesnay discovered, and Turgot brought so clearly to light? Is it possible to believc, with Turgot and Quesnay, that the soil is the only souTceofwealth--<>C rtntzstcnt '1.£ltalth (ric/lcsses rUlaissantes), to employ the very expression which Turgot makes use of? \Ve know at present that all capitals indistinctly,whatever form they affect, whatevermay be the employment for whkh they arc destined and the use made of them, provided Turgot. the employment and the use are productive, have, just as the soil, the facuIty of producing incessantly new riches of which they are the origin. Adam SOlita and Jean~Baptiste Say have given of this fact proofs which bring the discussion to a close. The theory of taxation which recognises no other lawful resource to the budget of public expenditure but what rna)' be raised from the net produce of the nation, is it not also contrary to the truth? As if the State could provide (or its yearly expenses by means of fresh riches created every year.

If such. an opinion was true, a stationary people, that is to say, a nation the wealth of which would stop increasing, and living merely on a "ork supported by old accumulations of capitals, could have no right to claim from its members the means of defraying the public. expenses. And yet it is impossible to deny that, to whatever amount of wealth it has attained, or to whatever degree of poverty it has become reduced, a country is always obliged to provide, as a community, for certain branches of the public service, and to transform, come what may, some of its private expenditure into public supplies. The truth is that the taxes should be for everybody an increase of effort or a diminution of enjoyment, and that the yearly savings of the countl)·, if they help towards the expenditure, should not constitute the principal part, much less the onl}' one of the budget resources. A second mistake superadds itself to the Leller of David !{llllZt. 53 first. Not only does Turgot believe that the treasury ("...,\nnot be fcd except from the net produce of the nation, he further believes that in a nation there is no other net produce but that of landowners; whence he concludes that ('.4,pita1i~ts, manufacturers, and tradesmen should be exonerated from all taxation, their share in the public contributions being pnid by the landowners, they in turn getting refunded by selling dearer to them the articles which constitute the object of their trade or their industry. In a letter dated J 766, and preserved in the I~'\ntheui1 archives, David Hume, writing to Turgot, refutes with much earnestness that erroneous doctrine after stating it with the greatest clearness. Hume had devoted the first part of his letter to telling most fully to his friend the incidents of his quarrel with Jcan·Jacques Rousseau.

UBut I am heartilytired of this subject, as you very well conjecture.; and I shall here take my leave of it~ I hope for evet. Tho' >'ou must be tired too of my letter, I am tempted to say a word to the political question, which has been often agitated between us, viz., the method of laying on taxes, whether it is better to impose them on landed possessions, or on consumptions. You will own that, as the public revenue is employed for the defence of the whoJe community, it is more equitable to levy it from the whole; b.~t you say that this is impracticable. It will fall on the land at last, and it is betterto lay it on there directly. You suppose, then, that the labourers ahva}"s raise the price of their labour in proportion to 54 the ta.xes. But this is contrary to experience. La.bour is dearer in NeufchateJ and other parts of Switzerland, where there are no taxes, than in the neighbouring pro vinces of France, where there are a great many. There are almost no taxes on the English colonies: yet labour is three times dearer there than in any country of Europe.

There arc great taxes on consumptions in Holland, but the republic possesses no land on which they can fall. "The price of labour will always depend on the quantity of labour and the quantity of demand; not on the taxes. The tradesmen, who work in cloth that is exported, cannot raise the price of their labour; because in that case the cloth would become too dear to be sold in foreign markets; neither can the tradesmen, who work in cloth for home consumption, raise their prices, since there cannot be two prices for the same species of labour. This extends to all commodities of which there is any part exported, that is, to almost every commodity. Even were there some commodities of which no part is ex ported, the price of labour employed in them could not rise: for this high price would tempt so many hands into that species of industry as must immediately brin~ down the prices. It appears to me that, where a tax is laid on consumption, the immediate consequence is, that either the tradesmen consume less or work more.

No man is so industrious but he may add some hours more in the week to his labour: and scarce anyone is so poor but he can retrench somethingof his expense. 'Vhat happens where the corn rises in its price? Do Leiter of Dat.!id !fU1J1C. 55 not the poor both Jive worse and labour more? A tax has the same effect. I beg you al~o to consider, that, besides the proprietors of land and the labouring poor, there is, in every civilised community, a very large and a very opulent bod)', who employ their stocks in com merce, and who enjoy a great revenue from their giving labour to the poorer sort. I am persuaded, that in F'rance and England, the revenue of this kind is much greater than that which arises from land. For besides merchants, properly speaking, I comprehend in this class all shopkeepers and master tradesmen of evcf)' species. Now it is very just that these should pay for the support of the community, which can only be where taxes are laid on consumptions. There seems to me no pretence for saying that this order of men are necessi~ tatcd to throw their taxes on the proprietors of land, since their profits and income ('..an surely bear retrench ment. After so long a letter, you will surely excuse my concluding without any ceremony or compliment. Be only assured that no man puis a higher and juster value on your friendship than I do.

CC DAVID HUME." That is a very sound lesson on political economy given to Turgot twelve months before he published his Essa; sur la formatioll et la distributiondes richess(s,and nine years before Adam Smith's 1Yealtll of l'latit'1ls. Turgotreplied,and his answert which has been preserved by Hill Burton,. bears date March 25, 1767. He acknowledges that the law of supply and demand deter~ Ttergot. mines the price of labour. U You rightly observe," says he, U that the amount of salaries is determined not by that of the taxes, but only by the relation between supply and demand. That principle has never been called in ques tlon; it is the only principlewhich immediatelyfixes the price of all articles having a commercial value." And in order to explain the apparent contradiction with Quesnay's doctrine, he distinguishes two prices, "the current price fixed by the relation between supply and demand, and the fundamental one, which for an article of merchandise is what the workman has to pay (or that article." It is in this distinction that Turgot might have found an answer to his detractors when they accused him, as they do still, of condemning the workman to perpetual misery by subjecting him to the iron law of salary.

Turgot, like Quesnay, divided mankind into two classes: the producingand the stipendiary,the producbrg and the barren. The workman does not help towards forming a new produce, he can take no share in it, and his salary secures to him merely the strict necessaries of his life-his subsistence. U In every kind of labour,)' says Turgot in his Essai sur la jormalloRella distribution des ric!lesses,II it must happen, and it does happen, that the workman's salary is limited to what is necessaryto secure him his subsistence.)) Louis Blanc protests against this theory. Ie Turgot was unfortunate enough to adopt the principle which has in our own times been identified with the cowardly and Tttrgot's H FOYl1Zalioll des richesses." 57 cruel formula: (hat'll1'IN)I'" S(JI~ (/zQ(lIn dlt.z S()l~ and the principleonce admitted, supposing the consequencesarc fatal, what is to be done? :fhat fIIust hajJln. Of course it must hapi>en that the workman is reduced to what is strictly necessary, when the starting point is taken in individual right; but would it be the same in a regime of brotherly association ?"

Turgot placed the genn of his defence in his letter of March 25, 176,. The ironlaw, he would haveanswered, determines the fundamental value of labour, the law of supply and demand fixes the current price. H Although the fundamentalprice," says he, U is not the immediate prin~ cipleofthe currentvalue,there is,.nevertheless,a minimum, belowwhich it cannot descend; for if a merchant loseson his goods, he ceases to sell or to produce; if a workman cannot live on his labour, he becomes a mendicant, or leaves his nath'e country. That is not all: a workman must find a certain profit, to provide against accidents, to bring up his family •••The workman,as you say, does his best to work more al'1d to consume less, but that is only transitory. There certainly is no man who works as much as he could; but it is not natural, on the other hand, that men should work as much as. they could, for the same reason that a rope cannot be stretched to its full possibility of being so. In every machine there is a degree of relaxation necessary, without which it might run the risk of being broken at any moment . • • This species of superfluous amount from which we can, strictly speaking,retrench, is another necessary element in the E 58 Turg-ot.

ordinary maintenance of workmen and of their fami lies." Turgot looked upon the English as very little qualified to understand Quesnay. "Our economist philosophers," he wrote to IIume, July 23, 1766, "followers of Quesnay, will maintain vigorously their master's system. It is a system from which English writers are at present very far; nor can we hope to see them adopt it for a long time to come, so difficult is it to conciliate its principles with the ambition of monopolising the commerce of the universe." lIe was not converted by his friend's correspondence; his plan was settled (son sit~e etait jail); pnysioeratehe was, pltyszoe,-atehe remained. David Hume could not but mourn over this, for, if he was fond of Turgot, he was not fond of the economists. \Vitness this humorous letter which he wrote to the Abb6 ~[orelIet, :May 15th, 1769 : "I see that, in your prospectus, you take care not to disoblige your economists, by any declaration of your sentiments; in which I commend your prudence. But I hope that in your work you will thunder them, and crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and ashes! they are, indeed, the set of men the most chimerical and the most arrogant that now exist, since the annihilation of the Sorbonne. I ask your pardon for saying so, as I know you belong to that venerable body.

I wonder what could engage our friend 1\1. Turgot to herd among them; I mean, among the economists; though I believe he was also a Sorbonnist.)) Tttrgot alzd QueSllay. 59 Turgot always remained faithful to Quesnay's doctrine; he always affirmed it with the deepest conviction. \Ve may even say th3t he made it his own personal doctrine by the vigour with which· he explained it. \Ve must not (orget, however, ~hat he did not belong to the strict sect <Ia fefite (glt'se), that no one acknowledged him as the sworn, offici~\l interpreter of the ~r:lster; against this assertion he would have protested quite as much as the others, nay, more; and he felt a strong repugnance to ascribe to Quesnay's maxims that dogmatic value which initiated people have always attached to the ideas of found ers of sects. Out~ide the limits of the school of economists, properly so called, he numbered friends and even masters.

lie professed for Gournay a respect equal to that which he had for Quesnay. lIe lived with him on terms of more familiar intimacy. If we would understand his doctrine we must not therefore be satisfied with seeking its meaning in the Essa; sur fa jonna/ion tt ta diUn'blltiondes ricMsses,. we must also trace its development in his con"·ersations with Gournny. 'Ve do not mean to say that in the course o{ the studies which he prosecuted in conjunction with Gournay, Turgot modified, on the subject of the sh:ue held by the land in the production of riches, the fundamental ideas \vhich he had derivedfrom Quesnay; nor did he, in his conversations with Gournay, acknowledge the errors into which he might previously have fallen. E 2 60 Tttrgot. The Essa; surla forma/foil e/ la dis/noli/iondes ridusus is posterior to Goumay's death; but the theory of the freedom of work, commerce, and industry, that theory which made up, strictly speaking, the whole of Gournay's system of political economy, has received from Turgot such lustre through the applications he drew from it, and the wonderful proofs he gave of the .happy results which might be produced by it, that people have for· gotten the errors of the net produce, and of the excessive preponderance of the soil over capitals of a movable nature The inquiry as to the net produce which should supply the substance of taxation and the /hlorie fonciere which sees in the soil the only source of wealth, ha\'e simplybecome hypotheses explaining the great law of the natural incidence of taxation, and bringing into light the admirable maxim which says that there is no rich State where the peopleare poor, whencethis other consequence, no less incont(.'Stable in its truth, that a State cannot become rich when it ruins the taxpayers. If we look upon certain economic prolegomena as hypotheses, we may say that Quesnay's theories have proved as useful to the progress of economic sciences as other theories, now abandoned, on the emission of light and the nature of electricity have proved to the progress of physical science. Turgot made use of them like the most eminent nlen of his time; but it is independently of these hypotheses, and by affirmingthe freedom of labour and of trade, it is by establishing the doctrine of the freedom GOltYI1a)'. 61 of labour on an indestructible basis, that he has been the forerunner of Adam Smith, perhaps his master, and that he deserves to be regarded as the real chief of the modern school of economists.

Gournay, whose real name was Vincent, was born at Saint-1.faloin 1712. \Vhen sel-enteen years of age his parents sent him to Cadiz to learn trade; he succeeded in the undertaking. In 1744 his business brought him back to France, and led to his becoming acquainted with ~raurepas, who found out his merit. Two years later his partner, Jametz de Villebarre, left him his (ortune, includ ing the Goumay estate, of which he then assumed the name. He had minutely studied both England and Holland, which he had visited, and he read with much eagerness the books which treated of the science of com merce. The treatises of Josias Child and John de 'VIlt's memoirs were the works (rom which he derived the first elements o( his economic knowledge. In 1748 he retired from business, and came to reside in Paris. ~1. de 1.faurepas induced him to look out for a post of 'n/em/ant du (01/lNllru. and made him obtain one in 17SI.

It is then that he became connected with the econmists. Dupont de Nemours. who lays great stress on the unity of the economic school, asserts that Gournay and Quesnayarrrived at the same results by different roads, that they met then, congratulated one another on that circumstance, and applauded each other when they saw with what exactness their principles, various, but equally true, led to absolutely similar consequences. He admits 62 Turgot. at the same time that the two aspects under which they considered "the principles of public administration" had formed two schools: the one is Quesnay's, the chief members of which were the l\larquis de l\1irabeau, Abeille, F'ourqueux, Bertin, Dupont de Nemours, the Abbe Roubaud, Le Trosne. ~lercierde 1a Riviere and the Abbe Baudeau formed, as Dupont de Nemours remarks, a distinct branch in t~at school. They thought that it would be easier to persuade a prince than a nation, and that freedom of commerce. and of labour, together with the true principles of public taxation, should be more quickly established by the authority of sovereigns than by the progress of reason. Although all economists did not share that way of thinking, many followed in the same direction, and we have seen that Turgot could be, not unreasonably, found fault with for not having assigned sufficient importance to the part played by political free dom in a nation.

The second school is that of Gournay; it included Ivlalesherbes, the Abbe l'florellet, Trudain~ de ~10ntigny, Cardinal de Boisgelin, the Abbe de Cice, and, in general, Turgot's private friends, together with Turgot himself. It is whilst Gournay was intendantiu comlllercethat he had with Turgot the most intimate relations. Condorcet alludes to the conferences Turgot held with him. " From these," says he, cc Turgot derived the greatest profit; he learnt from M. de Gournay to know minutely all the advantages of free trade, all the drawbacks of prohibi tions." Between 1753 and 1756 Goumay made in the GOIl1'IZQJ'. provinces a series of official journeys, with the view of ascertaining personallythe state of manufactures and of commerce. lIe visited in succession Burgundy, Lyon nais, Dauphine,Provence,Upperand Lower Languedoc; then, later on, )Ia.ine, Anjou,and Brittany, taking Turgot as his companion.

On his return from the 1756 journey he fell ill, languished (or a few years, and died, June 27, I 759. Atarmontel conceived the idea of writing his Ho.ge,· he mentioned it to Turgot, asking him for some notes. Shortly after, Goumay's friend sent to !\tlarmontel an essay containing a very faithful and dear statement of his doctrines. This es~'\y has been published by Dupont de Nemours under the title of Elugede GotJrnay. It completes the EIsai sur lajorl1lalifJll des rlcht/su, and makes up with it the doctrinal part of Turgot's work. Gourna)' did not think that·it wa..~ within the province of the government to fix the price of articles of con sumption, to proscribe one kind of industr)' for the purpose of encouraging another. He said that for a century aU well·informed persons in IIolland and in England looked upon the abuses which still prevailed in France as remains of barbarism, .as proofs of the weaknessand the ignoranceof those who had governed France till then, withouthaving found out the import ance of liberty, or, if they had found it out, without having known how to protect it against the spirit of monopoly.

Ttt1:~ot. The general liberty of selling and of buying seemed to him the only means of securing, on the one hand, to sellers a trade~price sufficiently high to encourage production ; .and, on the other, to the consumers the best articles possible, considering the purchasing prices. There were, he acknowledged, rogues amongst the merchants and dupes amongst purchasers, hut he maio* tained that it was for private individuals to look after themselves, and that it was absurd to provideall children with padded caps (omt,relets), under tbe plea that children are liable to fall, and to hurt themselves when they do fall. Turgot sums up in the three following propositions Gournay's doctrine, which he has nlade his 0'''71 : First: "Restore to every branch of industry that precious freedom ,,,,bicb they had lost through the pre judice of ages of ignorance, the ease with which govern~ ments condescended to private interests, and the desire of reaching a misunderstood perfection."

Secondly: "Facilitate labour to all the members of the State, so as to excite the greatest amount of competi tion in sales; the necessary result of this will be the greatest perfection in manufactures, and the most advan· tageous price for the purchaser." Thirdly: cc Give to the purchaser the greatest possible number of competitors, by throwing open to the trader all the outlets of his article of consumption: this is the only way of securing to labour its reward, and of perpetu· ating production, of which that reward is the sole object."

Such was Goumay's system, adopted and explained by Turgot-system, ns it has been called, resting upon the maxim that lC every man knows his own interests much better than another, to whom these interests are a matter of complete indifference." Those who attacked Gournay's opinions represented him as an enthusiast and nQlll11lt' a 5)'S/eme. "The name of lumtmc (1 sys(t.mc/,says Turgot, "has become a kind of weapon on the lips of all persons either prejudiced or interested in retaining certain abuses; and it is levelled against all those who propose changes in any order of ideas whatever."