TURGOT, ANNE ROBERT JACQUES, BARON DE LAUNE (1727-1781) , French statesman and economist, was born in Paris on May ro, 1727, the youngest son of Michel ttienne Turgot "provost of the merchants" of Paris. He was educated for the Church, and at the Sorbonne, to which he was admitted in 1749 (being then styled abbe de Brucourt), he delivered two re markable Latin dissertations, On the Benefits which the Christian Religion has conferred on Mankind, and On the Historical Prog ress of the Human Mind. 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." In 1752 he became substitut, and later conseiller in the parlement of Paris, and in 1753 maitre des requetes. In 1754 he was a member of the chambre royale which sat during an exile of the parlement; in 1755 and 1756 he accompanied Gournay, then intendant of commerce, in his tours of inspection in the provinces, and in 176o, while traveling in the east of France and Switzerland, visited Voltaire, who became one of his chief supporters.
In August 1761 Turgot was appointed intendant of the generalite of Limoges, which included some of the poorest and most over-taxed parts of France; here he remained for 13 years. He was already deeply imbued with the theories of Quesnay and Gournay (see PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL) , and set to work to apply them as far as possible in his province. He continued the work on the cadastre, or new official survey, begun by his predecessor Tourny, in order to arrive at a juster 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 (r762-1770), and as president of the Societe d'agriculture de Limoges offered prizes for essays on the principles of taxation. Quesnay and Mirabeau had advocated a proportional tax (imp& de quotite), but Turgot a distributive tax (imp& de repartition). Another reform was the substitution for the corvee of a tax in money levied on the whole province, the construction of roads being handed over to contractors. In 1769 he wrote his Memoire sur les prets a interet, in which the question of lending money at interest was for the first time treated from a scientific, not from a moral standpoint. Among other works written during Turgot's intendancy were the Memoire sur les mines et carrieres, and the Memoire sur la marque des fers, in which he protested against state interference and advocated free competition.
During the famine of 177o-1771 he enforced on landowners "the obligation of relieving the poor" and especially the metayers dependent upon them, and organized in every province ateliers and bureaux de charite for providing work for the able-bodied and relief for the infirm. Turgot made the cures the agents of
his charities and reforms when possible. In 177o he wrote his famous Lettres sur la liberte du commerce des grains, addressed to the comptroller-general, the abbe Terray. Three of these letters have disappeared, having been sent to Louis XVI. by Turgot at a later date and never recovered.
Turgot's best known work, Re flexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, written in 1766 for the benefit of two young Chinese students, appeared in 1769-1770 in Dupont's journal, the Ephemerides du citoyen, and was published separately in 1776. After tracing the origin of commerce, Turgot develops Quesnay's theory that the land is the only source of wealth, and divides society into three classes, the productive or agricultural, the salaried (stipendiee) or artisan class, and the land-owning class (classe disponible). He advocates the imp& unique, i.e., that only the produit net of the land should be taxed, and the complete freedom of commerce and industry.
On July 20, 1774 Turgot was appointed minister of marine through the influence of Maurepas, and on Aug. 24 he became comptroller-general. His first act was to submit to Louis XVI. his guiding principles : "No bankruptcy, no increase of taxation, no borrowing." Turgot's policy, in face of the desperate financial position, was one of rigid economy in all departments. He con templated a thorough-going reform of the ferme generale, and, meanwhile, imposed certain conditions on the leases as they were renewed—such as a more efficient personnel, and the abolition for the future of the abuse of the troupes (the name given to a class of pensions), and annulling certain leases, such as those of the manufacture of gunpowder and the administration of the messageries, the former of which was handed over to a company with Lavoisier as one of its advisers, and the latter superseded by a better service of diligences which were nicknamed "turgo tines." He also prepared a regular budget. Turgot's measures reduced the deficit, and raised the national credit to such an extent that in 1776, just before his fall, he was able to negotiate a loan with some Dutch bankers at 4% ; but the deficit was still so large as to prevent him from attempting to realize his scheme of substituting for indirect taxation a single tax on land. He sup pressed, however, a number of octrois and minor duties.