[5] As one of four children, he had a younger sister and two older brothers, one of whom, Étienne-François Turgot (1721–1789), was a naturalist, and served as administrator of Malta and governor of French Guiana.

For Turgot progress covers not simply the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culture – manner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, and society.

[10] In August 1761, Turgot was appointed intendant (tax collector) of the genéralité of Limoges, which included some of the poorest and most over-taxed parts of France; here he remained for thirteen years.

His first plan was to continue the work, already initiated by his predecessor Tourny, of making a fresh survey of the land (cadastre), in order to arrive at a more just assessment of the taille; he also obtained a large reduction in the contribution of the province.

During the famine of 1770–1771 he enforced on landowners "the obligation of relieving the poor" and especially the métayers (sharecroppers) dependent upon them, and organized in every province ateliers and bureaux de charité for providing work for the able-bodied and relief for the infirm, while at the same time he condemned indiscriminate charity.

It was in 1770 that he wrote his famous Lettres sur la liberté du commerce des grains, addressed to the controller-general, the abbé Terray.

Three of these letters have disappeared, having been sent to Louis XVI by Turgot at a later date and never recovered, but those remaining argue that free trade in grain is in the interest of landowner, farmer and consumer alike, and in forcible terms demand the removal of all restrictions.

Dupont, however, made various alterations in the text, in order to bring it more into accordance with Quesnay's doctrines, which led to a coolness between him and Turgot.

[16] Turgot owed his appointment as minister of the navy in July 1774 to Maurepas, the "Mentor" of Louis XVI, to whom he was warmly recommended by the abbé Very, a mutual friend.

All departmental expenses were to be submitted for the approval of the controller-general, a number of sinecures were suppressed, the holders of them being compensated, and the abuse of the acquits au comptant was attacked, while Turgot appealed personally to the king against the lavish giving of places and pensions.

He also contemplated a thorough-going reform of the Ferme Générale, but contented himself, as a beginning, with imposing 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 croupes (the name given to a class of pensions), a reform which Terray had shirked on finding how many persons in high places were interested in them, and annulling certain leases, such as those of the manufacture of gunpowder and the administration of the royal mails, the former of which was handed over to a company with the scientist Lavoisier as one of its advisers, and the latter superseded by a quicker and more comfortable service of diligences which were nicknamed "turgotines".

Turgot suppressed, however, a number of octrois and minor duties,[b] and opposed, on grounds of economy, the involvement of France in the American Revolutionary War, though without success.

[6] Turgot at once set to work to establish free trade in grain, but his edict, which was signed on 13 September 1774, met with strong opposition even in the conseil du roi.

A striking feature was the preamble, setting forth the doctrines on which the edict was based, which won the praise of the philosophes and the ridicule of the wits; this Turgot rewrote three times, it is said, in order to make it "so clear that any village judge could explain it to the peasants."

In April and early May, when peasants begged the governor of Dijon for bread, he uttered those famous words that would later be recalled during the French Revolution: "The grass has sprouted, go to the fields and browse on it."

In the preamble to the former Turgot boldly announced as his object the abolition of privilege, and the subjection of all three Estates of the realm to taxation; the clergy were afterwards excepted, at the request of Maurepas.

His attacks on privilege had won him the hatred of the nobles and the parlements; his attempted reforms in the royal household, that of the court; his free trade legislation, that of the financiers; his views on tolerance and his agitation for the suppression of the phrase that was offensive to Protestants in the king's coronation oath, that of the clergy; and his edict on the jurandes, that of the rich bourgeoisie of Paris and others, such as the prince de Conti, whose interests were involved.

Louis XVI recoiled from this as being too great a leap in the dark, and such a fundamental difference of opinion between king and minister was bound to lead to a breach sooner or later.

[20] Turgot's only choice, however, was between "tinkering" at the existing system in detail and a complete revolution, and his attack on privilege, which might have been carried through by a popular minister and a strong king, was bound to form part of any effective scheme of reform.

French intellectuals saw America as the hope of mankind and magnified American virtues to demonstrate the validity of their ideals along with seeing a chance to avenge their defeat in the Seven Years' War.

On the social level, Turgot and his progressive contemporaries suffered further disappointment: a religious oath was required of elected officials and slavery was not abolished.

Others attribute it to the queen, and there is no doubt that she hated Turgot for supporting Vergennes in demanding the recall of the comte de Guînes, the ambassador in London, whose cause she had ardently espoused at the prompting of the Choiseul clique.

He at once retired to La Roche-Guyon, the château of the Duchesse d'Enville, returning shortly to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life in scientific and literary studies, being made vice-president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1777.

Oncken, to take the extreme of condemnation, looks upon him as a bad physiocrat and a confused thinker, while Leon Say considers that he was the founder of modern political economy, and that "though he failed in the 18th century he triumphed in the 19th.

For he was thrown out of his culminating position, as Comptroller-General of France, after serving but twenty months, and then lived only long enough to see every leading measure to which he had devoted his life deliberately and malignantly undone; the flagrant abuses which he had abolished restored, apparently forever; the highways to national prosperity, peace, and influence, which he had opened, destroyed; and his country put under full headway toward the greatest catastrophe the modern world has seen.