WEBVTT NOTE 9. The Liberal Reaction Against Mercantilism in Seventeenth Century France 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.360 CHAPTER IX. THE LIBERAL REACTION AGAINST MERCANTILISM IN 17TH CENTURY FRANCE 2 00:00:08.360 --> 00:00:13.400 1. THE CROQUANCE REBELLION 3 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:19.400 The kings and their minions did not impose an accelerating burden of absolutism without 4 00:00:19.400 --> 00:00:26.920 provoking grave, deep and continuing opposition. Indeed, there were repeated rebellions by 5 00:00:26.920 --> 00:00:33.520 by groups of peasants and nobles in France from the 1630s to the 1670s. 6 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:40.440 Generally, the focus of discontent and uprising was rising taxes, as well as the losses of 7 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:42.780 rights and privileges. 8 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:49.160 There were also similar rebellions in Spain in mid-century and in autocratic Russia throughout 9 00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:52.440 the 17th century. 10 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:57.400 Here, for example, the remonstrances of the peasants in the first great French rebellion 11 00:00:57.400 --> 00:01:06.120 of the 17th century, the Croquants, literally, Cruncher's Revolt, in 1636, in southwestern 12 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:07.820 France. 13 00:01:07.820 --> 00:01:13.380 The Croquants' rebellion was precipitated by a sudden near doubling of direct taxes 14 00:01:13.380 --> 00:01:19.000 upon the peasantry to raise funds for the war against Spain. 15 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:25.400 The Entendant La Force, sent to investigate the disturbances, reported on the peasants' 16 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:28.080 grievances and demands. 17 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:34.080 The peasants focused on the eternal and accelerating increases of taxation. 18 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:39.760 They pointed out that in the reign of Henry IV, more taxes had been collected than in 19 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:46.480 all previous reigns of the monarchy taken together, and that in but two years of the 20 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:52.480 In the reign of Louis XIII, they had paid more than in all the years of Henry IV. 21 00:01:53.480 --> 00:02:03.480 The peasants also protested that the royal tax collectors carried off their cattle, clothes and tools merely to cover the costs of enforcement, 22 00:02:03.480 --> 00:02:07.480 so that the principal of the tax debt could never be reduced. 23 00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:09.480 The result was ruin. 24 00:02:09.480 --> 00:02:20.480 Deprived of their means of labor, the peasants had been forced to leave their fields untilled, and even to leave their ancient lands and beg for bread. 25 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:26.480 In a letter to his superior, La Force feels compelled to endorse their complaints. 26 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:38.480 It is not, Monsignor, that I am not by natural feeling touched with very great compassion when I see the extraordinary poverty in which these people live. 27 00:02:39.480 --> 00:02:44.520 The peasants protested that they were not subversives. They were willing to pay the 28 00:02:44.520 --> 00:02:52.800 old customary taxes, provided the recent increases were repealed. New taxes should only be imposed 29 00:02:52.800 --> 00:03:00.680 in extreme emergencies, and then only by the States General, which hadn't met since 1615 30 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:06.640 and was not to meet again until the eve of the French Revolution. Like diluted subjects 31 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:13.960 At all times and places, the peasants placed the blame for their ills not on the king himself, 32 00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:19.880 but on his evil and tyrannical ministers who had led the sovereign astray. 33 00:03:19.880 --> 00:03:24.960 The peasants insisted that they had had to revolt in order that their cries may reach 34 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:31.000 the ears of the king himself, and no longer just those of his ministers who advise him 35 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:33.220 so badly. 36 00:03:33.220 --> 00:03:39.020 Whether a ruler be king or president, it is convenient for him to preserve his popularity 37 00:03:39.020 --> 00:03:46.980 by deflecting protest and hostility to advisors or prime ministers who surround him. 38 00:03:46.980 --> 00:03:53.160 But despite this unfortunate limitation, the croquants had the insight and the wit to zero 39 00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:58.760 in on the public interest myth propounded by the royal ministers. 40 00:03:58.760 --> 00:04:05.240 The needs of the state, the peasants declared, were only a pretext for enriching a few private 41 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:11.560 persons, the hated tax farmers who had bought the privilege from the crown of collecting 42 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:17.920 taxes which then went into their pockets, and the creatures of the man who rules the 43 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:22.540 state, that is, Richelieu and his entourage. 44 00:04:22.540 --> 00:04:28.100 The peasants called for the abolition of courtiers' pensions as well as the salaries of all the 45 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:31.460 The Newly Created Officials 46 00:04:31.460 --> 00:04:38.180 The following year, 1637, the croquants of the neighboring region of Perigor rose in 47 00:04:38.180 --> 00:04:40.180 rebellion. 48 00:04:40.180 --> 00:04:46.340 Addressing King Louis XIII, the commune of Perigor set forth its reasons for the revolt. 49 00:04:46.340 --> 00:04:52.780 Sire, we have taken an unusual step in the way we have expressed our grievances, but 50 00:04:52.780 --> 00:04:58.020 this is so that we may be listened to by your majesty. 51 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:03.500 Their overriding grievance was against the tax farmers and tax officials, who have set 52 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:10.340 among us a thousand thieves who eat up the flesh of the poor husbandmen to the very bones, 53 00:05:10.340 --> 00:05:16.340 and it is they who have forced them to take up arms, changing their plowshares for swords 54 00:05:16.340 --> 00:05:23.340 in order to ask your majesty for justice, or else to die like men. 55 00:05:23.340 --> 00:05:28.040 And by the rebellion, the Crown organized its faithful servitors. 56 00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:33.640 The Royal Printer, F. Mataille, published a statement by the inhabitants of the town 57 00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:39.300 of Poitiers, denouncing the seditious commune of Paragore. 58 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:45.400 The Poitiers men declared that, We know, as Christians and loyal Frenchmen, that the glory 59 00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:52.520 of kings is to command, while the glory of subjects, whoever they may be, is to obey, 60 00:05:52.520 --> 00:05:59.240 in all humility and willing submission, following God's express commandment. 61 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:04.920 All the people of France know that the King is the life and soul of the state. 62 00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:11.320 The King is directly guided by the Holy Spirit, and further, by the superhuman decisions of 63 00:06:11.320 --> 00:06:17.720 your royal mind and the miracles accomplished in your happy reign, we perceive plainly that 64 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:21.400 God holds your heart in His hand. 65 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:27.940 There is therefore only one explanation for the rebellion, concluded the Poitiers loyalists. 66 00:06:27.940 --> 00:06:32.240 The rebels must be tools of Satan. 67 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:37.800 Not all the Catholics agreed, nor even the Catholic clergy of France. 68 00:06:37.800 --> 00:06:46.240 In 1639 an armed rebellion broke out in Normandy, resting on two demands, an opposition to oppressive 69 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:53.880 of Taxation and a call for Norman autonomy as against the centralized Parisian regime. 70 00:06:53.880 --> 00:07:00.240 It was a multi-class movement of the relatively poor grouped together in an army of suffering 71 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:07.320 and calling themselves the Nupeds, the barefoot ones, after the salt-makers in the southwestern 72 00:07:07.320 --> 00:07:12.640 Norman region of Avranches who walked barefoot on the sand. 73 00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:18.960 The general of the army was a mythical figure named Jean Nupedes. The actual directorate 74 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:25.000 of the army consisted of four priests from the Avranche area, of whom the leader was 75 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:34.200 Father Jean Morel, parish priest of Saint-Gervais. Morel called himself Colonel Sandhills, but 76 00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:41.980 he was a poet-propagandist as well as army commander. In his Manifesto of the High Unconquerable 77 00:07:41.980 --> 00:07:47.820 General Captain Jean Newpedes, General of the Army of Suffering, directed against the 78 00:07:47.820 --> 00:07:56.240 men made rich by their taxes, Father Morel wrote, And I, shall I leave a people languishing 79 00:07:56.240 --> 00:08:03.580 beneath the heel of tyranny, and allow a crowd of outsiders, non-Normans, to oppress this 80 00:08:03.580 --> 00:08:07.700 people daily with their tax farms? 81 00:08:07.700 --> 00:08:14.600 The reference to outsiders shows the continuing strength of particularist or separatist national 82 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:19.200 movements in France, in this case Normandy. 83 00:08:19.200 --> 00:08:25.940 The Norman and Crocosse movements were rising against centralizing Parisian imperialism 84 00:08:25.940 --> 00:08:33.120 imposed only recently on independent or autonomous nations, as much as against the high taxes 85 00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:35.180 themselves. 86 00:08:35.180 --> 00:08:41.420 2. Claude Jolie and the Fronde 87 00:08:41.420 --> 00:08:47.180 The most prominent rebellions in mid-seventeenth century France were those of the nobles and 88 00:08:47.180 --> 00:08:54.820 the judges and known as the Fronde. The leading theoretician of the parliamentary, judges, 89 00:08:54.820 --> 00:09:05.020 Fronde was Claude Jolie, whose Requeil de Maxime Veretable was published in 1653. Jolie's 90 00:09:05.020 --> 00:09:11.780 The latest was a collection of constitutionalist maxims, remnants of a pre-absolutist age, 91 00:09:11.780 --> 00:09:18.760 and included trenchant attacks on two contributions of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin to political 92 00:09:18.760 --> 00:09:22.100 thought and practice in France. 93 00:09:22.100 --> 00:09:28.420 One was the new notion that the king is rightly the master, in effect, the owner, of the persons 94 00:09:28.420 --> 00:09:32.380 and property of all inhabitants of France. 95 00:09:32.380 --> 00:09:38.180 The other was the Machiavellian view that successful public policy requires the systematic 96 00:09:38.180 --> 00:09:41.620 use of immoral means. 97 00:09:41.620 --> 00:09:48.300 The king's power, warned Jolie, is limited and not automatically sanctioned by divine 98 00:09:48.300 --> 00:09:49.940 law. 99 00:09:49.940 --> 00:09:55.260 Frenchmen possess just title to their lives and properties and are not the slaves of a 100 00:09:55.260 --> 00:09:57.620 despot or tyrant. 101 00:09:57.620 --> 00:10:03.820 The king's original divine power is mediated through the French people, Jolie added, and 102 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:10.300 the king cannot rightfully tax the French without the consent of the state's general. 103 00:10:10.300 --> 00:10:16.060 The fact that Jolie was reviled by the king and his party as a rebel and a traitor, he 104 00:10:16.060 --> 00:10:22.900 declared, shows that the old constitution has been overcome by new views holding the 105 00:10:22.900 --> 00:10:42.020 3. A Single Tax 106 00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:47.500 In the late 16th century, Jean Baudin and others had raised the question of removing 107 00:10:47.500 --> 00:10:54.540 Inventing Many or All of the Crippling Network of Taxation and Substituting a Single Universal 108 00:10:54.540 --> 00:10:59.920 Direct Tax Proportionate to Property or Income. 109 00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:05.700 With taxes far higher and more oppressive by the mid-seventeenth century, the call for 110 00:11:05.700 --> 00:11:10.960 a simpler single direct tax was heard once again. 111 00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:17.100 Not only the people, but even the crown would benefit by eliminating a legion of unproductive 112 00:11:17.100 --> 00:11:22.600 of Life and Parasitic Tax Farmers and Other Tax Officials. 113 00:11:22.600 --> 00:11:29.420 One of the earliest of these tax reformers was Isaac Lopin, who published Les Mines Gallicants 114 00:11:29.420 --> 00:11:31.900 in 1638. 115 00:11:31.900 --> 00:11:39.620 The tract went through four editions, including one during the Fronde era in 1648, and directly 116 00:11:39.620 --> 00:11:43.340 influenced later tax reformers. 117 00:11:43.340 --> 00:11:49.860 L'Hopin explained how all members of society, from the poorest to the king, suffered from 118 00:11:49.860 --> 00:11:56.600 the depredations of the tax officials, without accepting even the sacred person of his majesty. 119 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:02.620 There is not a single inhabitant of his kingdom who, from the top of his head to the soles 120 00:12:02.620 --> 00:12:09.160 of his feet, does not carry some vestment or eat some food which is not burdened by 121 00:12:09.160 --> 00:12:12.700 the said subsidies and imposts. 122 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:19.780 L'Hopin urged the abolition of all existing taxes and their replacement by a small fixed 123 00:12:19.780 --> 00:12:24.900 tax per year on the wealthiest 10% of the population. 124 00:12:24.900 --> 00:12:31.860 L'Hopin's pamphlet greatly influenced a one-time assistant to the Secretary of State for Foreign 125 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:35.500 Affairs, the Sur de Bresson. 126 00:12:35.500 --> 00:12:44.780 Bresson addressed a tract to King Louis XIV in 1675 entitled Propositions to the King. 127 00:12:44.780 --> 00:12:50.620 He realistically denounced the tax officials and exactors as having no other goal than 128 00:12:50.620 --> 00:12:52.740 their private interests. 129 00:12:52.740 --> 00:12:58.180 He then pointed out that the King himself was at the mercy of the tax collectors and 130 00:12:58.180 --> 00:13:03.580 repeated the above quotation from L'Hopin word for word. 131 00:13:03.580 --> 00:13:11.580 Dresson divided up the wealthiest 10% or so of the non-privileged into 19 income classes 132 00:13:11.580 --> 00:13:18.860 and suggested a single direct tax upon them, graduated by class. 133 00:13:18.860 --> 00:13:27.660 In the meanwhile, in 1668, Gérard de Cote-a-Moy urged his own single tax plan upon the government. 134 00:13:27.660 --> 00:13:34.540 In his Letter Concerning the Reform of State, Cordemois urged a single head tax payable 135 00:13:34.540 --> 00:13:36.460 by everyone. 136 00:13:36.460 --> 00:13:43.420 He set forth the plan in the form of a dream recounting an ideal state in a distant land, 137 00:13:43.420 --> 00:13:51.340 a land enjoying such a single head tax, or capitation, paid by each person for the charges 138 00:13:51.340 --> 00:13:53.900 and necessities of state. 139 00:13:53.900 --> 00:14:01.220 Furthermore, in an unusual twist, Cordemois declared that such a head tax would be voluntary, 140 00:14:01.220 --> 00:14:06.420 since everyone would know that he was much better off than he had been in the current 141 00:14:06.420 --> 00:14:09.140 existing system. 142 00:14:09.140 --> 00:14:16.780 An immensely popular work, written about the same time, was Paul Hay, Marquis du Chasselais's 143 00:14:16.780 --> 00:14:20.500 Traité de la Politique de la France. 144 00:14:20.500 --> 00:14:27.940 The Traité was written in 1667, with copies circulating throughout France until its publication 145 00:14:27.940 --> 00:14:30.380 two years later. 146 00:14:30.380 --> 00:14:37.060 Attacking the oppressive burden of taxation, Chassolet called for a tax on property extending 147 00:14:37.060 --> 00:14:43.740 to the previously exempt estates of the nobility, and the transformation of the onerous salt 148 00:14:43.740 --> 00:14:49.080 tax into a universal direct tax on income. 149 00:14:49.080 --> 00:14:55.440 He also urged relief of the tax burden on the peasantry by accepting payment in kind 150 00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:59.440 as a legal substitute for specie. 151 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:05.860 A more radical plan, originating in the late 1650s, was conceived by a marshal of France 152 00:15:05.860 --> 00:15:11.920 and governor of the Principality of Sedan, Abraham de Faber. 153 00:15:11.920 --> 00:15:21.100 Faber died in 1662, but in 1679 an unknown author presented the Faber Plan to the Chancellor 154 00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:22.940 of France. 155 00:15:22.940 --> 00:15:29.620 Faber had called for transformation of the salt tax into a graduated direct tax upon 156 00:15:29.620 --> 00:15:33.540 the non-privileged members of society. 157 00:15:33.540 --> 00:15:40.480 This plan was not designed as a single tax, but all new taxes could be abolished and other 158 00:15:40.480 --> 00:15:45.320 Other taxes could be brought down to their original rates. 159 00:15:45.320 --> 00:15:51.280 Reminiscent of Bresson, Faber's plan was to divide the non-privileged Frenchmen into 160 00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:56.960 thirty income classes, the tax graduated by class. 161 00:15:56.960 --> 00:16:02.280 Collection costs for enforcing the tax would be reduced to a minimum, and the king would 162 00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:07.960 be liberated from one hundred thousand blood-sucking tax officials. 163 00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:15.160 In 1684, a second edition of the Faber-based pamphlet added a substantial amount of statistical 164 00:16:15.160 --> 00:16:18.440 backing to the plan. 165 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:26.640 4. Rising Opposition to Collectivism by Merchants and Nobles 166 00:16:26.640 --> 00:16:33.240 The imposition of Colbert's regime of statism, monopoly and prohibitive tariffs, combined 167 00:16:33.240 --> 00:16:41.840 with Louis XIV's High Taxation and Centralization, gave rise by the late 1660s to a growing tide 168 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:46.040 of opposition by merchants and nobility alike. 169 00:16:46.040 --> 00:16:52.320 An important compendium of criticisms was the anonymous treatise, Memoir pour servir 170 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:57.080 à l'histoire, published in 1668. 171 00:16:57.080 --> 00:17:04.520 The memoir comprises the first extended published polemic against Colbert and Colberism. 172 00:17:04.520 --> 00:17:10.920 Politically, the author denounced Colbert for substituting centralizing innovations 173 00:17:10.920 --> 00:17:18.240 for the old constitution, attacking Colbert's policies across the board, especially tariffs 174 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:19.960 and monopolies. 175 00:17:19.960 --> 00:17:25.100 The book pointed out that the French refusal to purchase from the Dutch had induced the 176 00:17:25.100 --> 00:17:28.780 The Dutch to Cease Purchasing from France. 177 00:17:28.780 --> 00:17:36.180 On trade, the memoir made the important point that the Colberian ideal of national self-sufficiency 178 00:17:36.180 --> 00:17:43.300 was contrary to natural law, since Providence had created a great diversity of natural resources 179 00:17:43.300 --> 00:17:50.180 throughout the world, in order that mankind be united by the bonds of mutual interdependence 180 00:17:50.180 --> 00:17:53.600 through international trade. 181 00:17:53.600 --> 00:17:59.720 After an upsurge of denunciations of Colbert in the late 1660s, the Comptroller General 182 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:03.980 reacted by cracking down on all dissent. 183 00:18:03.980 --> 00:18:12.200 In consequence, when Colbert died on 6 September 1683, there was intense joy throughout France 184 00:18:12.200 --> 00:18:14.800 and especially in Paris. 185 00:18:14.800 --> 00:18:21.400 In fact, only protection by the soldiery prevented the populace from demonstrating their attitude 186 00:18:21.400 --> 00:18:26.320 by dragging Colbert's body through the streets of Paris. 187 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:32.520 Many oppressed Frenchmen exulted that a new dawn had arrived, taxes would cease and the 188 00:18:32.520 --> 00:18:36.240 Golden Age would return. 189 00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:42.520 Such was not to be, however, and absolutism and consequent economic distress became even 190 00:18:42.520 --> 00:18:43.820 worse. 191 00:18:43.820 --> 00:18:50.920 But the death of Colbert allowed a raft of dissent to arise once more, a torrent of hatred 192 00:18:50.920 --> 00:18:57.680 poured out against Colbert's son, nephew, and other of his hand-picked successors. 193 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:03.440 The outpouring of opposition encouraged by official inquiries and investigations of the 194 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:07.880 Colberian past was not merely personal, however. 195 00:19:07.880 --> 00:19:13.420 It was also in opposition to the mercantilism stifling the economy. 196 00:19:13.420 --> 00:19:20.180 In May 1684, a nobleman accused Colbert of being responsible for the ruin of finance 197 00:19:20.180 --> 00:19:22.160 Products and Trade. 198 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:28.600 The establishment of subsidized and privileged manufacturers has deprived commerce of liberty 199 00:19:28.600 --> 00:19:33.500 and denied merchants the means to attract money from abroad. 200 00:19:33.500 --> 00:19:39.780 The high protective tariffs, the unknown nobleman pointed out, crippled foreign demand for French 201 00:19:39.780 --> 00:19:45.980 farm products and thereby reduced the French farmers to penury. 202 00:19:45.980 --> 00:19:52.200 This line of attack on coal-bearism was developed in the following year by Gatien de Courtille 203 00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:58.960 de Saint-Ras, Sur du Verger, who published a book on the new interests of the princes 204 00:19:58.960 --> 00:20:01.020 of Europe. 205 00:20:01.020 --> 00:20:06.200 Trying to bolster domestic producers, the French government had only succeeded in wrecking 206 00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:10.000 them by crippling their export markets. 207 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:15.180 This popular work had gone into four editions by 1689. 208 00:20:15.180 --> 00:20:21.020 In the same year, the famous collection of tracts, published in Amsterdam, Les Supiers 209 00:20:21.020 --> 00:20:28.940 de la France Esclaves, the size of an enslaved France, also invade against protective tariffs 210 00:20:28.940 --> 00:20:33.780 as leading to misery and the crushing of commerce. 211 00:20:33.780 --> 00:20:39.120 Particularly eloquent in the Supier collection was the attack on Colberism by the merchant 212 00:20:39.120 --> 00:20:45.920 Michel Levasseur, who wrote, The king, by the frightful and excessive taxes which he 213 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:53.340 levies on all goods, has drawn to himself all the money, and commerce has dried up. 214 00:20:53.340 --> 00:20:58.760 There are no rigours and cruelties which have not been employed upon the merchants by the 215 00:20:58.760 --> 00:21:06.300 farmers of the customs, a thousand trickeries to find grounds for making confiscations. 216 00:21:06.300 --> 00:21:12.500 Because this, certain merchants, through the favor of the court, put commerce into monopoly, 217 00:21:12.500 --> 00:21:17.060 and get privileges given to them to exclude all the others. 218 00:21:17.060 --> 00:21:23.580 And finally, the prohibition of foreign goods, far from turning out well for commerce, is, 219 00:21:23.580 --> 00:21:26.420 on the contrary, what has ruined it. 220 00:21:26.420 --> 00:21:33.540 And all through this, the despotic and sovereign power, which prides itself on every whim, 221 00:21:33.540 --> 00:21:41.300 and reordering everything and reforming all things by an absolute power. 222 00:21:41.300 --> 00:21:47.300 During this depressed period, the directors of Colbert's French East India Company denied 223 00:21:47.300 --> 00:21:55.040 in 1685 that they had caused the hard times by exporting species in order to import goods 224 00:21:55.040 --> 00:22:02.840 from the Indies, arguing for freedom of trade in their response au memoir, when they really 225 00:22:02.840 --> 00:22:10.440 only valued their own freedom to import from their privileged monopoly position, the directors 226 00:22:10.440 --> 00:22:16.280 yet tapped an important vein of free trade thought. 227 00:22:16.280 --> 00:22:21.740 Experience has shown that trade cannot be conducted without a total liberty and with 228 00:22:21.740 --> 00:22:25.820 a mutual correspondence with foreign countries. 229 00:22:25.820 --> 00:22:30.360 The moment we violated trade, the foreigners withdrew. 230 00:22:30.360 --> 00:22:36.240 They attracted French workers and established our manufacturers in their country and have 231 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:39.560 dispensed with ours. 232 00:22:39.560 --> 00:22:45.240 The directors also defended vigorously their practice of exporting species in exchange 233 00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:47.480 for Asian imports. 234 00:22:47.480 --> 00:22:53.780 They escalated their reply by pointing out that in Holland, always a country whose prosperity 235 00:22:53.780 --> 00:23:00.100 Liberty and Trade was admired and envied during the seventeenth century. The ports are always 236 00:23:00.100 --> 00:23:07.740 open for the entry and exit of specie with every possible liberty. Moreover, in Holland 237 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:13.860 the same liberty is accorded for the export of money in the coin of the country. It is 238 00:23:13.860 --> 00:23:19.900 this great freedom which attracts abundance to the point where it is, and renders them, 239 00:23:19.900 --> 00:23:24.340 The Dutch, Masters of All Trade 240 00:23:24.340 --> 00:23:29.420 During the intense merchant agitation for freedom of trade and enterprise during the 241 00:23:29.420 --> 00:23:37.820 1680s, Louis XIV's Entendants at Rouen reported on advice given him by two leading merchants 242 00:23:37.820 --> 00:23:39.580 of the city. 243 00:23:39.580 --> 00:23:47.180 On 5 October 1685, René de Mariac wrote to the Comptroller General that the two merchants 244 00:23:47.180 --> 00:23:55.020 Merchants had declared, the greatest secret is to leave trade entirely free. Men are sufficiently 245 00:23:55.020 --> 00:24:01.940 attracted to it by their own interests. Never have manufacturers been so depressed and trade 246 00:24:01.940 --> 00:24:09.740 also since we have taken it into our heads to increase them by way of authority. 247 00:24:09.740 --> 00:24:15.420 One of these two merchants, Thomas Legendre, was supposed to have been the first, during 248 00:24:15.420 --> 00:24:27.380 The Great Late Eighteenth-Century laissez-faire thinker and statesman, Anne Robert Jacques 249 00:24:27.380 --> 00:24:36.140 Turgot, reports as a family tradition that Legendre had told Colbert, laissez-nous faire, 250 00:24:36.140 --> 00:24:38.140 leave us alone. 251 00:24:38.140 --> 00:24:43.260 Turgot's affluent grandparents were close friends of the immensely wealthy Legendre 252 00:24:43.260 --> 00:24:57.660 Thomas Legendre, 1638-1706, coiner of the phrase laissez-faire as applied to policies 253 00:24:57.660 --> 00:25:03.620 and the economy, was the most eminent of a long line of merchant bankers traced back 254 00:25:03.620 --> 00:25:11.580 to the early 16th century. A multi-millionaire, Legendre owned vast interests in Africa and 255 00:25:11.580 --> 00:25:17.460 of the New World, was the leading importer of alum from the Levant, and was frequently 256 00:25:17.460 --> 00:25:24.460 called upon to arbitrate disputes between merchants at home and abroad. 257 00:25:24.460 --> 00:25:31.460 Despite his wealth, multinational commercial connections and public honors, Thomas Legendre 258 00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:39.100 had what seemed to be only a negative rather than positive influence upon the French government. 259 00:25:39.100 --> 00:25:45.100 Time and again the Crown refused to allow him permission to send vessels abroad or to 260 00:25:45.100 --> 00:25:48.700 load merchandise onto foreign ships. 261 00:25:48.700 --> 00:25:55.300 This treatment only changed in the 1690s when the government, engaged in war with Protestant 262 00:25:55.300 --> 00:26:01.780 England and Holland, made use of Legendre and other ex-Protestants to trade with their 263 00:26:01.780 --> 00:26:06.700 contacts in those countries while the war was going on. 264 00:26:06.700 --> 00:26:12.500 Not only the merchants, but also some entendants were joining the laissez-faire camp during 265 00:26:12.500 --> 00:26:14.740 the 1680s. 266 00:26:14.740 --> 00:26:23.980 On 29 August 1686, the entendant in Flanders, Duguay de Banois, wrote a bitter protest against 267 00:26:23.980 --> 00:26:31.480 a decree of the previous year levying a 20% tariff on imports from the Levant, except 268 00:26:31.480 --> 00:26:36.640 for Goods Carried on French Ships from the Middle East that had entered the ports of 269 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:39.240 Marseille or Rouen. 270 00:26:39.240 --> 00:26:45.440 Duguay pointed out that textile firms in northern France should not have to pay more for their 271 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.240 imported thread by being forced to buy it from inefficient French ships, and all to 272 00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:58.040 subsidize Marseille merchants and shippers who could not compete successfully with the 273 00:26:58.040 --> 00:27:01.320 English and Dutch in the Levant. 274 00:27:01.320 --> 00:27:07.360 Duguay generalized this insight into a laissez-faire position. 275 00:27:07.360 --> 00:27:14.160 Trade can flourish and subsist only when merchants are free to procure the merchandise they need 276 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:20.320 in the places where they are sold at the lowest price, and every time we wish to compel them 277 00:27:20.320 --> 00:27:27.800 to buy in one place at the exclusion of all others, merchandise will become more expensive 278 00:27:27.800 --> 00:27:31.800 and Trade Will Consequently Fall into Ruin. 279 00:27:33.800 --> 00:27:37.800 5. The Merchants and the Council of Commerce 280 00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:45.800 In June 1700, King Louis XIV, seeking advice from the nation's leading merchants, 281 00:27:45.800 --> 00:27:52.800 established a Council of Commerce in which merchants of ten leading towns elected ten deputies 282 00:27:52.800 --> 00:27:56.800 who would serve as a kind of advisory economic parliament. 283 00:27:57.800 --> 00:28:03.120 The King soon came to regret this step, for the merchants' representatives seized the 284 00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:09.480 occasion to unleash a torrent of attack against the mercantilist policies developed by the 285 00:28:09.480 --> 00:28:11.540 Sun King. 286 00:28:11.540 --> 00:28:17.680 In particular, the enraged merchants zeroed in on the grants of monopoly privilege bestowed 287 00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:21.280 by the government on chartered companies. 288 00:28:21.280 --> 00:28:26.800 Pointing out that such monopolies restrict trade and raise prices, a number of merchants 289 00:28:26.800 --> 00:28:33.480 has declared, it is a most certain maxim that nothing but competition and liberty in trade 290 00:28:33.480 --> 00:28:40.500 can render commerce beneficial to the state, and that all monopolies or traffic appropriated 291 00:28:40.500 --> 00:28:47.200 to companies exclusive of others are infinitely burdensome and pernicious. 292 00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:52.300 The most consistent and most radical of the merchants' voices was the deputy from the 293 00:28:52.300 --> 00:28:59.740 The Western Port City of Nantes, Joachim de Cazaux du Hallé, a wealthy shipper and merchant 294 00:28:59.740 --> 00:29:04.040 and former associate of Thomas Legendre. 295 00:29:04.040 --> 00:29:10.140 Arguing vehemently against privileged monopolies that restrict trade, de Cazaux widened his 296 00:29:10.140 --> 00:29:15.500 argument into a general plea for freedom and free competition. 297 00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:21.920 Free competition, de Cazaux pointed out, benefits the public by supplying abundant goods at 298 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:28.800 at Low Prices. Even business losses, he declared perceptively, benefit the public since they 299 00:29:28.800 --> 00:29:36.080 reflect plentiful production at low prices. Furthermore, Liberty causes innovations and 300 00:29:36.080 --> 00:29:43.760 fuels the spirit of enterprise. Liberty is the sole and element of commerce. She excites 301 00:29:43.760 --> 00:29:49.700 the genius and application of merchants who never cease to meditate on new methods to 302 00:29:49.700 --> 00:29:53.660 to make discoveries and found enterprises. 303 00:29:53.660 --> 00:29:59.060 Liberty kindles a perpetual movement which produces abundance everywhere. 304 00:29:59.060 --> 00:30:06.220 The moment we limit the genius of merchants by restrictions, we destroy trade. 305 00:30:06.220 --> 00:30:08.920 6. 306 00:30:08.920 --> 00:30:14.840 Marshall Vauban, Royal Engineer and Single Taxer 307 00:30:14.840 --> 00:30:25.320 The bluff, hearty, patriotic Maréchal Sebastien Leprestre Seigneur de Vauban, 1633 to 1707, 308 00:30:25.320 --> 00:30:31.980 was scarcely a fervent or militant oppositionist to royal or Colberist policies. 309 00:30:31.980 --> 00:30:38.240 The leading military engineer in France, the man who constructed the mighty military fortifications 310 00:30:38.240 --> 00:30:44.540 was guarding the French state, ennobled by Louis XIV for his services, was scarcely an 311 00:30:44.540 --> 00:30:52.540 opponent of the Crown. Although a loyal monarchist and absolutist, Vauban, after revocation of 312 00:30:52.540 --> 00:31:00.400 the Edict of Nantes in 1685, grew deeply troubled at the policies of Louis XIV, especially 313 00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:06.960 the crippling system of taxation as well as the oppression of the Huguenots. Upon the 314 00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:20.960 In his revocation, the naïve Vauban, convinced that the good king was surrounded by evil or purblind advisors, wrote a memoir for the recall of the Huguenots addressed to the king. 315 00:31:20.960 --> 00:31:29.960 Vauban pointed out that the revocation had disrupted trade and commerce and was causing opposition to the monarchy itself. 316 00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:36.960 The heedlessness of the king did not daunt Vauban, who continued to write similar pleas to King Louis. 317 00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:56.960 Finally, at the end of his life, in 1707, this man, who had risen from birth in poverty in Saint-Léger to become the land's greatest military engineer, a marshal and a nobleman, published his comprehensive treatise, Project for a Royal Tithe. 318 00:31:56.960 --> 00:32:03.460 Boba proposed the abolition of most of the oppressive network of taxation and its replacement 319 00:32:03.460 --> 00:32:09.720 by a single tax, a proportional tenth of the income of each subject. 320 00:32:09.720 --> 00:32:14.960 The reasoning was that the state provided the people with the service of security and 321 00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:19.700 that those who receive such service should pay accordingly. 322 00:32:19.700 --> 00:32:25.220 One wonders, however, how anyone can demonstrate that those who receive such a service are 323 00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:32.160 are enjoying the service in proportion to their income. Furthermore, every other service 324 00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:38.420 on the market is paid for not in proportion to the buyer's income, but in a uniform single 325 00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:46.100 price paid by one and all. The purchasers of bread or automobiles or stereo sets pay 326 00:32:46.100 --> 00:32:52.960 a single price for each product, and not in proportion to their income or wealth. Why 327 00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:57.860 Why then do so for the alleged service of security? 328 00:32:57.860 --> 00:33:03.600 At any rate, Vauban was highly effective in pointing out that the impoverished producers 329 00:33:03.600 --> 00:33:09.720 of the country were shouldering a large part of the burden of taxation and was eloquent 330 00:33:09.720 --> 00:33:12.320 in urging their relief. 331 00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:19.940 Vauban refused to publish the project for a royal tithe widely in 1707 and only circulated 332 00:33:19.940 --> 00:33:23.700 and a small number of copies among friends. 333 00:33:23.700 --> 00:33:28.860 This did not save the aged marshal from Louis XIV's wrath, however. 334 00:33:28.860 --> 00:33:34.060 The king's censors and police condemned the book, and the publishers were hunted down 335 00:33:34.060 --> 00:33:36.140 and punished. 336 00:33:36.140 --> 00:33:40.460 General Vauban died on the day the King's Order was executed.