John Morley, the Victorian Liberal statesman and man of letters, devotes this essay to Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot — physiocrat economist, philosophe, and Louis XVI’s ill-fated Controller-General of Finances. Morley analyses Turgot’s reforming programme, his attempt to abolish the guilds and introduce free trade in grain, and his dismissal in 1776 — the failure of the last chance to reform the French monarchy before revolution became inevitable.
Written with Morley’s characteristic clarity and liberal conviction, the essay is essential reading for students of the French Enlightenment, pre-revolutionary France, and the intellectual history of economic liberalism.