There are two conditions of person that have greater weight in society than in former times, particularly in fashionable social circles. They are the men of letters and men of fortune....
Not long ago financiers saw men of good birth as their protectors but today they rival them.
Charles Duclos, Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (1751). Chapter X, sur les gens de finance.
The gross and ridiculous financier...no longer exists in Paris. This portrait might have been realistic fifty years ago, when Le Sage wrote his comedy "Turcaret"; today our financiers are very refined and likeable, have fine and agreeable houses and no longer resemble the financiers of old.
Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, 15 June 1753
If the financiers of bygone days merited the scorn and criticism of honest men, those of today merit their esteem and praise, through the integrity of their conduct, their noble sentiments and good manners.
Fréron, Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (1761)
Fréron, Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (1761)
The spirit [of the Farmers General], less absorbed by petty calculations, devoted itself with passion to the cult of the beaux-arts and literature. They exercised the happiest influence, whether by encouraging men of letters with pensions or artists by their generous purchases....But, when the Revolutionary torment came, no account was taken of their services to arts and letters.
Alix de Choiseul-Gouffier, vicomtesse de Janzé, Les Financiers d'autrefois (1886), p.24-5
Alix de Choiseul-Gouffier, vicomtesse de Janzé, Les Financiers d'autrefois (1886), p.24-5
Tax farmers as patrons
In 1971 the social historian Yves Durand, published a thèse d'Etat on the Farmers-General which emphasised their importance as arbiters of taste and patrons of the arts. A period of social mobility in the first half of the century favoured the integration of wealthy financiers into a broad-based nobility. In a world where liberal hospitality was a social norm, the sumptuous Parisian hôtels and country estates of the Farmers provided a neutral space where men of letters could mix freely with the noble élite. Certain of the Farmers-General were particularly close to the Encyclopédistes, notably Claude Dupin and La Pouplinière, the patron of Rameau. The salon of Madame Dupin, which was at its height in the 1740s, was frequented by Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Bernis, Voltaire, Buffon and the abbé de Saint-Pierre. Rousseau was employed as secretary and tutor to the Dupin children (c.1745-6).
Significantly, in the early 18th century, perjorative terms like "partisans" and "traitants" tended to give way in general parlance to the more generic and neutral "financiers". (See Delmas p.51) Charles Duclos - admittedly a biased observer - contended that witticisms about financiers, behind their backs showed "more envy of their opulence than scorn for their persons" - to their face, they were "showered with respect, consideration and praise." (quoted Janzé p.307-8).
References
Yves Durand, Finance et mécénat : les fermiers généraux au XVIIIe siècle (1971)
Jean-François Delmas, “Le mécénat des financiers au XVIII siècle: étude comparative de cinq collections de peinture", Histoire, Économie et Société, 1995, vol. 14( 1) p.51-70 [Available on JStor] http://www.jstor.org/stable/23611415
The intellectual rehabilitation of "finance"
The output of writers reflected the influence exerted by representatives of "finance" in the public sphere as a whole. This was at its height in the second third of the century, between the reincorporation of the General Farm in 1726 and the financial crises of the Seven Years War. It was these years too which saw the launch, under the protection of Madame de Pompadour and Choiseul, of the Encyclopédie - the high water-mark of state-sponsored Enlightenment (published 1751-1765). According to the American scholar Julia Abramson, the period was marked by "positive representations of financiers which signalled their rehabilitation and social integration" (Abramson, p.26)
Intellectual assessment of the newly wealthy often took as its starting point the classic debate on "luxury". In the 1730s and 1740s the cause of luxury had vocal defenders, influenced by the French follower of Mandeville, Jean-François Melon, whose Essai politique sur le commerce was published in 1734. Among Enlightenment proponents were Montesquieu, and Voltaire in Le Mondain (1736). "Useful" luxury was seen as linked to commercial prosperity, promotion of tolerance and the advancement of the sciences and arts.
Julia Abramson has studied two fictionalised apologies for "finance" in novels by Charles Duclos and by Charles de Fieux, chevalier de Mouhy. As a protegé of Madame La Pompadour, Duclos was an archetypal beneficiary of the "patrician Enlightenment" and was doubtless obliged to sing for his supper.(A veritable collector of pensions and positions, he was subsequently admitted to the Académie française in 1746 and became its permanent secretary in 1755; in 1750 he was appointed Royal Historiographer.) Mouhy, a prolific playwright and novelist, was further down the food chain - the thought is that he may well have been paid for his services in the tense political atmosphere created by the fiscal battles of the 1750s.
Both Duclos's Confessions du comte de ***(1741-1742) and Mauhy's rather later Le Financier (1755) relate the adventures of young men inducted into high financial circles. Duclos's protagonist learns the value of hard work, family ties, education and industry: "Finance is absolutely necessary in a State, and it is a profession whose dignity or baseness depends uniquely on the way it is practised", simpers Duclos.
Reference
Julia L. Abramson, "Narrating ‘finances’ after John Law: Complicity, critique, and the bonds of obligation in Duclos and Mouhy" Finance and Society, 2016, 2(1) p.25-44 [open access journal]
The Farmers-General and the Encyclopédie
Diderot famously disliked financiers and criticised the tax farmers for excessive wealth and philistine values; however, as Abramson observes, his personal behaviour was ambivalent - when he received money from Catherine the Great, he invested it in the General Farm (Abramson, p.30). The early volumes of the Encyclopédie drew heavily on the expertise of established financial circles. In 1756 Volume 6 featured five major articles - "Exemptions"; "Fermes du Roi"; "Ferme (cinq grosses)"; "Fermier (Général)"; "Finances"; "Financier" - penned by Charles-Étienne Pesselier, an official of the Farm . Pesselier was a keen amateur playwright and librettist who had composed several plays for the the Théâtre-Italien in the 1730s before embarking on a career in finance; he was a sous-fermier from 1753. According to the Dictionnaire des journalistes, his biographers all commended his "irreproachable probity" and the generosity of his hospitality. After 1759 he published several books on economics, including, in 1761, a refutation of Mirabeau's Théorie des impôts. This work attracted censure from Grimm in the Correspondance Littéraire , though chiefly because of Pesselier's criticism remarks directed at the great Montesquieu.
In "Fermier Général" and "Financier"(Vol.6, 1756) Pesselier lauds his subjects' disinterest and public virtue. Popular perception has been distorted by the disreputable behaviour of a few individuals who do not represent the Company as a whole. The diverse social backgrounds of members means that there can be no stereotypical Farmer-General.
See: "Pesselier" in Dictionnaire des Journalistes
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| François Véron de Forbonnais [Wikimedia] |
![François Véron de Forbonnais [Wikimedia]](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fran%C3%A7ois_V%C3%A9ron_de_Forbonnais.jpg){kind=link}
Forbonnais acted as economic advisor to Silhouette and Choiseul, though he later fell from grace in official circles through his attacks on the Physiocrats. His views chimed with the interests of the Farm since he defended the merits of indirect taxation - in 1763 he unveiled his famous plan for a uniform ad valorem 15% import duty with no exemptions.
In addition the Encyclopédie had recourse to experts from the Farm for articles on the salt and tobacco industries. According to the preliminary discourse, information on salt had been provided by Claude Dupin, who is described as a "Farmer-General, known for his love of Letters and of the public good". The anonymous article "SALINES" which appeared in volume 14 in 1765, is sometimes attributed to Dupin, though he probably did not actually write it.
Detailed articles on salt production in Franche-Comté ("SALINES DE FRANCHE-COMTÉ", "SALINE DE SALINS" and "SALINE DE MONTMOROT"), were furnished by Diderot's friend, the playwright and later inspector of saltworks, Fenouillot de Falbaire de Quingey.
Uneasy tightrope
It is clear, however, that the loyalties of the Encyclopédie's editors were not to be relied upon. In the sixth (1756) and seventh (1757) volumes, several articles were penned by the later Physiocrats, Quesnay, the young Turgot and the abbé Morellet.
The favourable view of luxury current in the 1730s also came under fire in these years. Discussion centred round the traditional distinction between socially useful luxury and le luxe vicieux. Opponents, like Rousseau, whose Discours were published in 1751 and 1755, reiterated the causal relationship between acquisition and moral corruption. Rousseau it was who contributed the important article "ÉCONOMIE" to Volume 5 (1755). Jaucourt in "FORTUNE" (1757) noted that it was a crime against "natural law and humanity" that millions of men should be deprived of necessities in order to support the scandalously luxurious lifestyle of a few idle citizens.
The most sensitive entry, "LUXE", which was penned by Saint-Lambert, sits carefully on the fence, but there is still a clear implied criticism. Luxury can be defined as " the use that one makes of wealth and industry to obtain a pleasant way of life". As such it is a product of human instinct and natural desire for betterment, and is not in itself morally pernicious. The root of moral corruption lies in the nature of society and its government - if society itself is reformed, Saint-Lambert suggests provocatively, luxury might still become socially benign.
References
Robert M. Will, "Economic thought in the Encyclopédie" Southern Economic Journal, 1965, vol.32(2): p.191-203 [Available on JStor]
"History of Economic Thought" website - articles on the Encyclopédie, Dupin, Forbonnais etc.
ARTFL Project - Biographical dictionary of writers of the Encyclopédie
The Farm's edition of the Tales of La Fontaine (1762)
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| Contes et Nouvelles en vers. by La Fontaine, 1762. Image from abebooks.com |
Reference
Professor David Adams of Manchester University has written several studies of the Farmers' edition of La Fontaine: here is an accessible version of his conclusions:
D. J. Adams, "The Publication of La Fontaine's 'Contes' by the Fermiers Généraux", Bulletin John Rylands Library, Vol 76(1), p 139-152
[to be continued]
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