TURGOT AND THE ANCIEN REGIME IN FRANCE By Douglas Dakin
Mr. Dakin's scholarly work (Methuen, 15s.) is the first thorough account of Turgot's policy to appear in English. It illuminates the financial and economic abuses that helped to bring about the French Revolution, and that could only be removed by such a volcanic eruption. The author's detailed study of Turgot's administration of the Limousin from 1761 to 1774 is not easy reading, but it is necessary to show how thoroughly bad the system of taxation was for the State as well as for the peasant. Mr. Dakin shows very dearly how the lawyers in the Parliaments or tribunals used their privileges to hamper genuine reforms no less than to thwart a rather timid and confused monarchy. When Turgot became Comptroller General in 1774, soon after Louis XVI's accession, he thought that he had secured the young King's unfailing support. But every economy that he proposed and every reform, such as the abolition of the trade guilds or of forced labour on the roads, stirred up the hostility of the privileged classes, and Maurepas, whom Choiseul's friends were ceaselessly trying to oust, thought to save himself by sacrificing his Finance Minister. There is tragi-comedy in the Court intrigues that Mr. Dakin outlines so dearly when one remembers that in less than fifteen years the whole fabric of folly and corruption was swept away. Mr. Dakin defends Turgot very well against the usual charge that he was a theorist in a hurry. He was in truth an expert administrator whose programme was moderate. But no one could have reformed the old regime.
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