Guillaume-François Le Trosne

De l'ordre social , 1777

Guillaume-François Le Trosne (born October 13, 1728 in Orléans , † May 26, 1780 in Paris ) was a French lawyer and economist . He was one of the most important figures of the physiocracy and a school of thought founded in July 1757 by François Quesnay and the Marquis de Mirabeau .

biography

Le Trosne was born on October 13, 1728 in Orléans as the son of Guillaume Le Trosne, adviser and secretary to the king, high judge of the bailiwick and the presidential seat of Orléans, and the Thérèse Marguerite Arnault, daughter of Louis Arnault de Nobleville, a bourgeois merchant from Orléans, born.

He decided at an early age to follow his father's example and pursue a legal career. He began his law studies in Orléans in 1748, where he became a student of the well-known legal advisor Robert-Joseph Pothier in his first year of study , for whom in 1773 he compiled a "Historical Lobschrift" ( Éloge historique ). In addition, for two years he enjoyed the privilege of working with M. de Guienne, parliamentary lawyer and close friend of Pothier, on the manuscript of his major work Pandectae Justinianeae in novum ordinem digestae .

In 1753 he was installed in the office of royal attorney in the presidential seat of Orléans. Until 1763 he dealt with questions of natural law , civil law and feudal law. In connection with his function as a founding member of the "Society for Agriculture of the Generality of Orléans" he became in the same year an avid supporter of the teaching developed by François Quesnay. From 1765 to 1767 he published articles on economics in specialist journals, particularly in the newspaper of this school of thought, the Éphémeriden des Bürger . From 1768 he intensified this publication activity and presented the most important principles of the physiocratic movement. It is assumed that the memorandum against the cash register of Poissy (Paris, 1770) was written by him.

Parallel to his writing activity, he was from 1769 a member of the "Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Caen" (Royal Academy of Literature in Caen), where he gave five lectures in 1770 and 1771, which he later in his work About the social order processed. He was also an honorary member of the "Economic Society" of Bern. In 1774 he gave up his office as the king's lawyer and was given the title of honorary advisor to the presidential seat of Orléans.

His most important work, which contains a complete and very detailed treatise on the administrative thinking of the physiocratic current, is also his last and dates from 1779: De l'administration provinciale et de la réforme de l'impôt ( German  About the Provincial administration and on tax reform ). Even before it was published, the book received a prize sponsored by the Toulouse Academy. However, since a meeting of the clergy was to take place in Paris in 1780 , the French Minister of Justice, Jacques Necker , feared that the book could upset the clergy, mainly because it proposed, among other things, a taxation of church property. In order to avoid any unrest and a scandal, the book was confiscated, although Necker, despite his disdain for the physiocrats, was actually rather positive about publication.

A short time later, on May 26, 1780, Le Trosne died in Paris of complications from pneumonia.

Fonts

• Mémoire sur les vagabonds et les mendiants , 1764.
• Lettres a un ami sur les avantages de la liberté du commerce des grains et le danger des prohibitions. Paris 1768.
• La Liberté du Commerce des Grains toujours utile & jamais nuisible. Paris, 1768.
• Éloge historique de M. Pothier, conseiller au présidial d'Orléans et professeur de droit françois en l'Université de la même ville , 1773.
• De l'Intérêt social, par rapport à la valeur, à la circulation, à l'industrie, & au commerce intérieur & extérieur: ouvrage élémentaire, dans lequel on discute quelques principes de M. l'abbé de Condillac. Paris 1777.
• De l'ordre social, ouvrage suivi d'un traité élémentaire sur la valeur, l'argent, la circulation, l'industrie & le commerce intérieure & extérieur. Paris 1777.
• Vues sur la justice criminelle. Paris, 1777.
• De l'Administration provinciale, et de la Réforme de l'impôt. 2 volumes. Basel, Paris 1788.

literature

• Guillaume-François Le Trosne: Les lois naturelles de l'ordre social , presentation and transcription by Thérence Carvalho. Genève, Slatkine, 2019.
• Jérôme Mille: Un physiocrate oublié: G.-F. Le Trosne. Étude économique, fiscale et politique. Paris, Librairie de la Société du recueil général des lois et des arrêts, 1905.
• Anthony Mergey: L'Etat des Physiocrates: autorité et decentralization. Aix-en-Provence, PUAM, 2010, pp. 564-565.
• Thérence Carvalho, "Guillaume-François Le Trosne: reformer l'administration à l'aune de la physiocratie" (Nicolas Kada, Vincent Aubelle (eds.): Les grandes figures de la decentralization . Boulogne-Billancourt, Berger-Levrault, 2019, Pp. 529-537).
• Bruno Miglio (Ed.): I fisiocratici. GLF editori Laterza, Rome 2001, ISBN 88-420-6222-7 ( Biblioteca universale Laterza 531).