Nicolas Baudeau

Explication du tableau économique , 1967

Nicolas Baudeau (born April 24, 1730 in Amboise , † 1792 in Paris ) was a French economist , theologian and publicist . He was a follower of the physiocratic doctrine and disseminated it as part of his work as a popular science author.

biography

Born in Amboise on April 24th, 1730, Nicolas Baudeau comes from a family who worked in tailoring . As a youth, Nicolas Baudeau moved to the Périgord in south-west France to receive religious education in the Abbey of Chancelade. He then became a regular canon and taught theology in this abbey , parallel to his research on the history of the Perigord. At the end of the 1750s, following a call from Archbishop Christophe de Beaumont, he traveled to Paris with the intention of joining the Collège des Prémontrés .

From now on he neglected his historical studies and became increasingly interested in financial questions, as is clear from the publication of a series of memoranda in 1763, which are dedicated to the general controller of finances, Henri-Léonard Bertin . On November 4, 1765, Baudeau had the first volume of the Éphémeriden des Citizens, or Chronicle of the National Spirit, published, a magazine that appeared twice a week and of which he is the main author. From the following year, following a polemic with Guillaume-François Le Trosne , he let himself be seduced by the physiocratic-based utterances of this latter and joined the movement founded by François Quesnay . His newspaper then became a public stage dedicated exclusively to the dissemination of this doctrine of economics , and was accordingly renamed the Citizen's Ephémerids or the Elaborate Library of Moral and Political Sciences . This newspaper passed into the hands of Dupont de Nemours in 1768.

With his degree of fame, which transcended the borders of France, Baudeau managed to get the attention of Prince Ignatius Massalski at the beginning of 1768, who had liked Baudeau's writings about Poland and who suggested that he follow him to his archbishopric in Lithuania. Baudeau accepted this offer and was appointed episcopal steward by Widziniski. However, his departure was delayed by his greed for money, as he was offered a position as provost of the Augustinian monastery of Sankt-Lô, which was connected with a substantial pension. Nevertheless, he left for Poland in October and stayed there during the winter of 1768–69.

After a short trip through Russia and a second stay in Poland in 1769, he returned to France and began to distance himself from religion. Again he found refuge in reading and continued to publicly defend the teachings of the Physiocrats. In 1774 he was called back to Poland, but he preferred to stay in France, where he got a job as provost in Notre Dame du Bois-d'Arcy in the diocese of Auxerre . After the publication of the Ephémerids ceased in November 1772, Baudeau began publishing the New Economic Ephémerids, or Elaborate Library of History, Morals and Politics , in January 1775 to further spread the principles of physiocratic thought. Following Jacques Turgot's dismissal, and following an article condemning the king's spending during the Seven Years' War , Baudeau was exiled to Auxerre for several months while his magazine was censored .

Discouraged, he gave up some of his manifestos for the Physiocracy, but without denying his connection to this school. In the early 1780s he became administrator of the Duke of Chartres, the future Philippe-Égalité .

In 1785, he continued his previous work in the fields of history and economics. In 1787 he published the ideas of a nearly sixty-year-old citizen , a very detailed work on royal finances and taxes, with reference to the financial difficulties of the kingdom and the summons of the notables . In 1788 he revived his New Éphémerids again.

His mental confusion began in 1790 and tragically ended in suicide in 1792.

Fonts

theology

• Analysis de l'ouvrage du pape Benoît XIV sur les béatifications et canonisations (Paris, 1759)

economy

• Idées d'un citoyen sur l'administration des finances du Roi (1763)
• Idées d'un citoyen sur les besoins, les droits, et les devoirs des vrais pauvres (1765)
• Idée d'une souscription patriotique en faveur de l'agriculture, du commerce et des arts (1765)
• Principes de la science morale et politique sur le luxe et les lois somptuaires (1767)
• Lettres sur les émeutes populaires (1768)
• Lettres d'un citoyen sur les vingtièmes et autres impôts (1768)
• Première introduction à la philosophie économique (1771)
• Avis au peuple de Paris, sur la caisse de Poissy [paru également sous le titre: Mémoire sur la caisse de Poissy] (1774, 35 p.); mémoire écrit en 1768, imprimé en 1770 pour les Éphémérides , entraînant alors la colère des fermiers de cette caisse
• Principes économiques de Louis XII et du Cardinal d'Amboise, de Henri IV, et du duc de Sully sur l'administration des finances (1775)
• Sur l'état présent de l'agriculture en Angleterre, traduit de l'anglais, avec des remarques sur l'état de l'agriculture en France (1778)
• Charles V, Louis XII, et Henri IV aux Français (1787)

Magazines

• Ephémérides du citoyen (1765–1772, 63 volumes; bihebdomadaire, et mensuel à partir de 1767)
• Nouvelles Éphémérides Economiques ou bibliothèque raisonnée de l'Histoire, de la Morale et de la Politique (1774–1779, 19 volumes)

Web links

• Nicolas Baudeau in: The Original Catholic Encyclopedia