Political Economists. Vauban, Quesnay, etc.
The science of 'Political Arithmetic,' as it was first called in England, had a somewhat earlier birth in France than in England itself. It is remarkable that the complete establishment of the royal authority under Louis XIV. preceded but by a very few years the examination of the economic condition of the kingdom by unsparing examiners. The two chief of these, both of whom fell into disgrace for their doings, were the great engineer Vauban, and the great theologian Fénelon. The latter was attracted to the subject chiefly by compassion for the sufferings of the people, and expressed his opinion in a manner more rhetorical than scientific. Vauban's course was naturally different. In the later years of his life he set himself to the collection of statistical facts as to the economic condition of France, and the result was the two books called Oisivetés de M. de Vauban and La Dîme Royale, 1707. The former of these contained the facts, the latter the deduction from them, which was, to put it briefly, that the existing system of privilege, exemption, and irregular taxation was a loss to the Crown, and a torment to the people. Vauban received the reward of his labours, attention to which would probably have prevented the French Revolution, in the shape of the royal displeasure, and nothing came immediately of his investigations. In the next century, however, a regular sect of political economists arose. They had, indeed, been preceded by an eccentric man of letters, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who occupied his life in propounding Utopian schemes of universal peace and general prosperity. But the first and greatest of the economists properly so called was Quesnay. The extreme misery of the common people attracted his attention, and set him upon calculating the causes and remedies of periodical failings. He was himself a frequent contributor to the Encyclopædia. Many others of the philosophe set occupied themselves with these and similar subjects, notably the Abbés Morellet and Galiani. The former was a man of a certain vigour (Voltaire called him 'L'Abbé Mord-Les'), the latter has been noticed already. His Dialogue sur le Commerce des Blés acquired for him a great reputation.
Turgot.
Very many writers, among them the father of the great Mirabeau (in his curious and able, though unequal and ill-proportioned Ami des Hommes), attacked economical subjects at this time. But Turgot, though not remarkable for the form of his writings, was the most original and influential writer of the liberal school in this department. He was a Norman by birth, and of a good legal family. He was born in 1727, and, being destined for the Church, was educated at the Sorbonne. Turgot, however, shared to the full the philosophe ideas of the time as to theological orthodoxy, and did not share the usual philosophe ideas as to concealment of his principles for comfort's sake. He refused to take orders, turning his attention to the law and the Civil Service instead of the Church. His family had considerable influence, and at the age of twenty-four he was appointed intendant of Limoges, a post which gave him practical control of the government of a large, though barren and neglected, province. His achievements in the way of administrative reform here were remarkable, and, had they been generally imitated, might have brought about a very different state of things in France. After the death of Louis XV., he was recommended by Maurepas to a far more important office, the controllership of finance. Here, too, he did great things; but his attack on the privileged orders was ill-seconded, and, after holding his post for about two years, he had to resign, partly, it is true, owing to a certain unaccommodating rigidity of demeanour, which was one of his least amiable characteristics. He died in 1781. Turgot's literary work is not extensive, and it is not distinguished by its style. It consists of certain discourses at the Sorbonne, of memoirs on various political occasions, of some letters on usury, of articles in the Encyclopædia, of which the most noteworthy is one on endowments, etc. All are remarkable as containing the germs of what may be accepted as the modern liberal doctrines on the various points of which they treat, while the second Sorbonne discourse is entitled to the credit of first clearly announcing the principle of the philosophy of history, the doctrine, that is to say, that human progress follows regular laws of development, certain sets of causes invariably tending to bring about certain sets of results.
Condorcet.
With the name of Turgot that of Condorcet is inseparably connected, and though far less important in the history of thought, it is perhaps more prominent in the history of literature, for the pupil and biographer (in both of which relations Condorcet stood to Turgot) was, though a far less original and vigorous thinker, a better writer than his master and subject. Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, styled Marquis de Condorcet, was born in 1743, near St. Quentin, and early distinguished himself both in mathematics and in the belles lettres. He became Secretary of the Academy in 1777, and he afterwards wrote the Life of Turgot, whose method of dealing with economic questions (a more practical and less abstract one than that of the earlier economists) he had already followed. He took a considerable part in the French Revolution, serving both in the Legislative Assembly and in the Convention. In the latter he became identified with the Girondist party, and shared their troubles. His best known work, the Esquisse des Progrès de l'Esprit Humain, was written while he was a fugitive and in concealment. He was at last discovered and arrested, but the day after he was found dead in his prison at Bourg la Reine, having apparently poisoned himself (March, 1794). Condorcet's works are voluminous, and partake strongly of the philosophe character. He is not remarkable for originality of thought, and may indeed be said to be for the most part a mere exponent of the current ideas of the second stage of the philosophe movement. But his style has great merits, being clear, forcible, and correct, suffering only from the somewhat stereotyped forms, and from the absence of flexibility and colour which distinguish the later eighteenth century in France.
Volney.
One more remarkable name deserves to be mentioned in this place as the last of the Philosophes proper, that is to say, of those writers who carried out the general principles of the Encyclopædist movement with less reference to specialist departments of literature than to a certain general spirit and tendency. This was Constantin François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney, by which latter name he is generally known. Volney was born in 1757, at Caron, in Anjou, and was educated at Angers, and afterwards at Paris. He studied both medicine and law, but having a sufficient fortune, practised neither. In 1783 he set out on his travels and journeyed to the East, visiting Egypt and Syria; an account of which journey he published four years later. When he returned to France he was from the beginning a moderate partisan of the Revolution, and, like most such persons, he was arrested during the Terror, though he escaped with no worse fate than imprisonment. Immediately after Thermidor, Volney published his most celebrated work, Les Ruines, a treatise on the rise and fall of empires from a general and philosophical point of view. Shortly after this he visited the United States, whence he returned in 1798. He had known Napoleon in early days, and on the establishment of the Consulate he was appointed a senator; nor was his resignation accepted, though it was tendered when Bonaparte assumed the crown. His countship was Napoleonic, but he was always an opponent of the emperor's policy. Accordingly, after the Restoration, he was nominated by Louis XVIII. as a member of the new House of Peers. He died in 1820. Besides the books already noticed he published some studies in ancient history and many miscellaneous works, including a project of a universal language. Volney was, as has been said, the last of the philosophes, exhibiting, long after a new order of thought had set in, their acute but negative and one-sided criticism, their sterile contempt of Christianity and religion generally, their somewhat theoretic acceptance of generalisations on philosophy and history, and of large plans for dealing with politics and ethics. As a traveller his observation is accurate and his expression vivid; as a philosophical historian his acuteness is perhaps not sufficiently accompanied by real breadth of view.
La Mettrie
Helvétius