ANNE ROBERT JACQUES TURGOT (1727-1781) was the son of a government official of distinction, and born and educated in Paris. Being destined by his family for the church, he obtained the degree of bachelor of theology, and entered the Sorbonne, of which he was later elected Prior. After about three years, however, he decided to enter government service, his first appointment being a judicial one. In 1761 he was appointed Intendant of Limoges, where he remained for thirteen years and instituted many important reforms. He was then appointed Controller General of Finance. During his two years in this office he established free trade in grain within France, abolished the burdensome corvée, and suppressed the guilds. These drastic measures aroused much opposition from those whose privileges were attacked, and the king was persuaded to dismiss him. The Réflexions were written in 1766 for two Chinese students, to help them in sending him information concerning economic conditions in their country, to which they were about to return. Turgot also wrote the articles Fairs and Markets and Foundations for the Encyclopédie, and numerous able letters and memoirs on economic questions, most of which were not published till after his death.

AS soon as there were men whose ownership of land assured them an annual revenue more than sufficient to satisfy all their needs, there must have been some, anxious about the future or merely prudent, who laid aside a portion of what they garnered every year, either to provide for possible emergencies or to increase their comfort. When the commodities which they garnered were difficult to keep for any length of time, they must have sought to exchange them for things of a more durable character, which would not lose their value with the passing of time, or which could be utilized in ways which would yield a profit to more than make up for the loss.

This class of property, resulting from the accumulation of unconsumed annual products, is known as moveable Riches. Furniture, plate, merchandise in warehouses, the tools of the various trades, and cattle belong to this class of riches. It is obvious that people had made vigorous efforts to acquire as much as possible of these riches before they knew about money; but it is no less evident that after money became known, after it was established that it was the most stable of all articles of commerce, and the easiest to preserve without inconvenience, it must have been the principal thing sought by people desirous of accumulating. It was not only the owners of lands who saved some of their surplus in this way. Although the profits of industry are not, like the revenue from land, a gift of nature, and the worker in industry derives from his labor only the price given him by the one who pays his wages; although the latter economizes as much as possible on these wages, and competition compels the worker in industry to accept a lower price than he would like, still it is certain that this competition has never been extensive enough or keen enough in all branches of industry to prevent a man who was more skillful, more industrious, and especially more economical about his living expenses than other men from being able in all periods to earn a little more than what was needed for the support of himself and his family, and to lay aside this surplus in order to accumulate a little property.

It is even necessary that, in each trade, the Workers or the Entrepreneurs who employ them should have a certain fund of moveable riches accumulated in advance. Here we have to retrace our steps again and recall several things which were only briefly referred to, when we discussed the different classes of professions and the various means available to Proprietors for exploiting their land, because at that time it would have been impossible to explain them without breaking the continuity of ideas.

All classes of work in agriculture, industry, or commerce require advances. Even if the earth were cultivated by hand, it would be necessary to sow before reaping; it would be necessary to live until after the harvest. The more elaborate and vigorous cultivation becomes, the larger the advances are. Cattle, farm implements, buildings to shelter the cattle and to store the crops are needed; a number of people in proportion to the extent of the operations must be paid and supported until the harvest. It is only by means of large advances, that a large product is obtained, and that lands yield a large revenue. Whatever the trade, the artisan must have tools in advance, and a sufficient supply of the raw materials upon which he works; he has to live while looking forward to the sale of his products.

Land is always the first and sole source of all riches; it is land which, as a result of cultivation, yields all revenue; it is land also which furnished the first fund of advances prior to all cultivation. The first cultivator took the seed which he sowed from plants which were the spontaneous product of land; while waiting for the harvest, he lived by hunting, fishing, wild fruits; his tools were branches of trees broken off in the forests and fashioned by means of sharp stones edged upon other stones; he captured with his hands or in his snares the animals wandering in the woods; he domesticated them; he used them at first for food, later to help him in his work. This first fund increased little by little; cattle were at first the most sought after kind of moveable riches, and the easiest to accumulate: they perish, but they reproduce, and wealth in this form is in a sense imperishable: this fund even grows as a result of mere natural increase, and yields an annual product, either in the form of milk, or wool, hides, and other things, which, with the wood gathered in the forests, constituted the first fund for industrial operations.

In an age when there was still a large supply of uncultivated land belonging to no one, it was possible to own cattle without being a Proprietor of land. It is even probable that men almost everywhere began to collect herds and to live on their product before devoting themselves to the more arduous labor of tillage.

Slaves were another kind of moveable riches, obtained at first by violence, and later by means of trade and exchange.

A man owning a large amount of land and no cattle or slaves would certainly make a good bargain by relinquishing a part of his land to some one who would give him in exchange cattle and slaves to cultivate the remainder. It is chiefly in this way that lands themselves came to be traded in and to have a value comparable with that of all other commodities. If four bushels of wheat, the net produce of an acre of land, were worth six sheep, the acre itself which produced them might have been given for a certain price, greater, to be sure, but always easy to determine in the same way as the prices of all other merchandise, that is, at first by discussion between the two parties concerned, and later according to the current price established by the intercourse of those who wish to exchange land for cattle and those who wish to give cattle for land. It is according to this current price that lands are valued when a debtor, sued by his creditor, is compelled to turn over his property to him.

It is evident that if a piece of land which yields a revenue equal to six sheep can be sold for a certain value which can always be expressed by a number of sheep equal to this value, this number will bear a definite ratio to six, and will contain it a certain number of times. The price of a piece of land will therefore be simply a certain number times its revenue; twenty times, if the price is a hundred twenty sheep; thirty times, if it is a hundred eighty sheep. The current price of land depends, therefore, upon the ratio between the value of the land and the value of the revenue; and the number of times which the price of land contains the revenue is called the penny in the price of land. Land is sold for the twentieth penny, the thirtieth penny, etc., when twenty, thirty, etc. times its revenue is paid for it. It is also evident that this price or penny must vary according to the greater or smaller number of people who wish to sell or buy land, just as the price of all other merchandise varies according to the different relation between supply and demand.

Let us come back now to the period subsequent to the introduction of money: the ease with which it may be accumulated soon made it the most desired of moveable riches, and provided the means of increasing them unceasingly through the simple process of saving. Anyone receiving more income per year than he needs to spend, whether from the revenue of his land, or from the recompense of his labor or his industry, can lay aside this surplus and let it accumulate: these accumulated values are what is called a capital. The timid miser who accumulates money merely to free his imagination from the fear of being in need of the necessaries of life in an indefinite future, keeps his money together. If the dangers he had foreseen came to pass, and he were reduced by poverty to living every year upon his treasure, or if it chanced that a prodigal heir spent it piecemeal, this treasure would soon be used up, and the capital entirely lost to the possessor: the latter can make a much better use of it. Since a landed property yielding a given revenue is simply the equivalent of a sum of value equal to a certain multiple of this revenue, it follows that any sum of values is the equivalent of a property yielding a revenue equal to a definite fraction of this sum: it makes absolutely no difference whether this sum of values or this capital consists of a mass of metal or of anything else, since money represents every kind of value, just as every kind of value represents money. The possessor of a capital can therefore, in the first place, employ it to buy land; but he has still other opportunities.

I have already remarked that all kinds of work, whether in agriculture or in industry, require advances, and I have shown how land, through the fruits and plants which it produces spontaneously for the support of men and animals, and through the trees from which men made their first tools, had furnished the first advances for agriculture, and even for the first objects wrought by individuals for their own use. For example, it is land which furnished the stone, the clay, and wood from which the first houses were built, and before the division of labor, when the man who tilled the soil provided for his other needs by his own labor, no other advances were needed: but when a large part of society depended on the labor of their hands for a livelihood, those who lived on wages in this way had to begin by having something in advance, either to procure the materials upon which they worked, or to live on while awaiting the payment of their wages.

In early times an employer used to furnish materials himself, and pay the workman his wages from day to day. The Farmer or Prop...