Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert

Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert was a French economist who was a precursor of the Physiocrats and an advocate of economic and fiscal reforms for France during the reign of Louis XIV. He was born in Rouen in 1646, into a noble family of Normandy, allied to that of Corneille. He received his classical education in Rouen, and was also taught at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal, a Jansenist school. He entered the magistracy and became judge at Montivilliers, near Le Havre. In 1690 he became president of the bailliage of Rouen, a post which he retained almost until his death, leaving it to his son. Boisguilbert made a close study of local economic conditions, personally supervising the cultivation of his lands, and entering into relations with the principal merchants of Rouen. He was thus led to consider the misery of the people under the burden of taxation. In 1695 he published his principal work, Le détail de la France; la cause de la diminution de ses biens et la facilité du remède (The Detail of France; the Cause of the Diminution of its Wealth and the Ease of the Remedy). In it he drew a picture of the general ruin of all classes of Frenchmen, caused by the bad economic regime. In opposition to Colbert's mercantilist views, he held that the wealth of a country consists, not in the abundance of money which it possesses but in what it produces and exchanges. The remedy for the evils of the time was not so much the reduction as the equalization of the imposts, which would allow the poor to consume more, raise the production and add to the general wealth. He demanded the reform of the taille, the suppression of internal customs duties and greater freedom of trade. In his Factum de la France, published in 1705 or 1706, he gave a more concise résumé of his ideas. But his proposal to substitute for all aides and customs duties a single capitation tax of a tenth of the revenue of all property was naturally opposed by the tax farmers and found little support. Indeed, his work, written in a diffuse and inelegant style, passed almost unnoticed. Saint-Simon relates that he once asked a hearing of the comte de Pontchartrain, saying that he would at first take him for a fool, then he would see that he deserved attention, and that eventually, he would be satisfied with his system. Pontchartrain, who was besieged with innumerable advice givers, began to laugh replying that he would go no further than the first, and turned his back on him. With Michel de Chamillart, whom he had known as intendant of Rouen (1689–1690), there was a plan to experiment with Boisguilbert's ideas in one province but the plan was abandoned when it was realized that the effort would provoke the collapse of the existing tax system before the experiment began. Boisguilbert is considered as one of the founders of modern economics, along with Richard Cantillon and François Quesnay. He was one of the first to use the concept of market as an analytical tool. He also anticipated some ideas of Adam Smith, such as the division of labour and the invisible hand. He influenced later economists such as Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot and John Maynard Keynes. Boisguilbert died in Rouen in 1714, at the age of 68. He was buried in the church of Saint-Godard, where his tombstone can still be seen. He left behind a son, Nicolas, who became a magistrate and a historian of Normandy.