René Louis de Voyer, Marquis d'Argenson, 1694-1757.

French early Enlightenment aristocrat, statesman, minister and early liberal, originator of the popular liberal maxims 'laissez faire' and 'pas trop gouverner'.

René Louis de Voyer was from a leading family of Fench politicians and state officials.  He was eldest son of Marc-René de Voyer, Marquis d'Argenson, a long-time lieutenant-general of police in Paris under Louis XIV and contrôleur-général (minister of finance) and keeper of the seal (minister of justice) during the Orleanist regency, who was implicated by his support of the system of John Law, and forced to resign after it fell apart in 1720.

Despite their father's political disgrace, René-Louis (the new marquis d'Argenson) and his younger brother Marc-Pierre (the comte d'Argenson) both aimed for political office.  They were educated at the elite school Louis-le-Grand, counting Voltaire among their classmates and lifelong friends.  Setting off on official careers, René Louis secured an appointment as intendant of Hainaut. in 1720, while his brother Marc-Pierre served in the lieutenancy of Paris. After moving to Paris in 1724, René Louis joined the famous Club de l'Entresol, a new foreign affairs discussion club which met in the apartments of Abbé Alary near the Place de Vendôme, which counted among its members some of the earliest Enlightenment figures, such as the Abbé de Saint-Pierre and (briefly) Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke.  The club met weekly until 1731, when it was shut down on order of Fleury.

 Through the 1720s and 1730s, the d'Argenson brothers became associated with the 'war party' in French politics, urging steadfast opposition to Hapsburg Austria, and opposing the pacific and conciliatory policies of chief minister Cardinal Fleury.  When Fleury finally died in 1743 and Louis XV took personal charge of the government, Marc-Pierre was appointed Secretary of War, and, a year later,  in 1744, René Louis became Secretary for Foreign Affairs, during the middle of the War of Austrian Succession.  The d'Argensons helped secure the appointment of Machault d'Arnouville as contrôleur-général in late 1745. 

The d'Argensons political ascendancy was checked by the sudden emergence of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, at the center of French politics. In early 1747, criticized for failing to parlay French military victories into diplomatic success, René Louis de Voyer was forced to resign from ministry of foreign affairs.  His brother Marc-Pierre held on to the ministry of war for another decade, serving as the leading rival of the Madame de Pompadour for influence over Louis XV.  Contemporary accounts frequently contrast the socially tactless René-Louis, blunt and honest, with the smoother Marc-Pierre, a silver-tongued, diplomatic and often devious courtier, to explain the different careers of the siblings.  While too clumsy to hold office himself, René-Louis, the deeper philosopher of the two, nonetheless continued to be influential behind the scenes.  

The d'Argensons were ambivalent in their support for Machault d'Arnouville's attempts at fiscal reform, notably his 1749 proposal to replace the hole-ridden dixième with the vingtième, a new 5% tax on property and income, with no exceptions for nobles and clergy (a proposal vigorously opposed and eventually sunk by Pompadour, then the mouthpiece of the Parlements).  Pompadour's intrigues eventually managed to separate Machault d'Arnouville from the d'Argensons, with the result that the d'Argensons had little qualms dislodging Machault from finances, and securing the appointment of one of their own creatures, Jean Moreau de Séchelles, as contrôleur-général in 1754.  The Séchelles appointment, however brief (he lasted less than year), was the closest René-Louis d'Argenson got to getting his visions of economic liberalism implemented into policy.   Almost at d'Argenson's personal direction, Séchelles set about undoing a lot of the old restrictions and Mercantilist policies implemented in earlier years, but his tenure was cut short by illness in the Spring of 1756, and the ministry subsequently fell into the hands of Pompadour's clique.

René-Louis died in January 1757.  Two weeks later, Pompadour finally got rid of his brother Marc-Pierre, forcing him to surrender his office of Secretary of War in favor of his nephew  Marc-René, the son of René-Louis and new Marquis of d'Argenson.  Less ambitious than his father and uncle, Marc-René's tenure was brief and unremarkable.

Out of regard for his family's political careers, René-Louis d'Argenson published next to nothing in his lifetime.  Shortly after his death, only one significant treatise appeared, Considérations (written sometime before 1744, published  1765), a review of the political constitutions and histories of various countries, concluding with a proposal for a constitutional monarchy for France.  There also appeared the Essais, a collection of gossipy essays on the French upper political circles in 1785. 

But from 1725 until his death, d'Argenson diligently kept journals and wrote numerous memoirs and detailed notes.  Although d'Argenson's original notes were later lost in a great fire in the Louvre, numerous copies of much of them had already been made and were subsequently published.  A small collection of memoirs was published by Baudoin in 1825; another collection by Jannet in 1857 and still a third collection appeared in 1859-67, edited by Rathery under the auspices of the Société de l'Histoire de France. 

Although mentioned by Dupont de Nemours, d'Argenson's economic ideas were only really revealed when historian August Onken set out on a hunt for the origins of the "laissez faire" maxim, and traced its first appearance to d'Argenson's memoirs.  The phrase's first appearance is contained in a series of notes d'Argenson wrote sometime after 1735 (published in the 1857 Jannet collection), known as the Pensées sur la réformation de l'État.  Here (esp. p.361ff), d'Argenson articulates his opinion on economic matters, taking a strong position for free trade and the lifting of restrictions on commerce.  D'Argenson adopts as his maxim "pour gouverner mieux, il faudroit gouverner moins" (p.362) ("to govern better, govern less"), a maxim later Physiocrats reduced to simply Pas trop gouverner ("Govern not too much").

[Note: d'Argenson's phrasing is reminiscent of the popular American maxim, "That government is best which governs least", attributed variously to Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Henry Thoreau.  While d'Argenson's original writings were (probably) not accessible to the American maxim's author, it might have been channeled through a Physiocratic midwife.] 

It is in d'Argenson's Pensées that the laissez-faire slogan makes its first appearance:

"Laisser faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé. Les hommes sont sortis de la barbarie; ils cultivent très-bien les arts; ils ont des lois, des modèles,des essais en tous genre pour connoître où sont les bonnes pratiques. Laissez-les faire, et vous observerez que là où l'on suit le mieux cette maxime tout s'en ressent." (v.5, p.364)

setting up the observation that prosperity arises from competition and economic freedom, and denounces government interference enabled by monarchical tyranny and wrong-headed doctrines. He extends that freedom to foreign trade as well:

"Laissez les étrangers venir chercher vos marchandises; laissez-les jouir du métier de crocheteurs, de voituriers, de fiacres. Que craignez-vous? Un marchand ne viendra pas seul. Ainsi ile mettent au rabais, et vous vendez à juste prix." v.5, p.367

and concludes with his famous outburst against Mercantilist dogma on trade:

"Détestable principe que celui de ne vouloir grandir que par l'abaissement de nos voisins! Il n'y a que la méchanceté et la malignité du coeur de satisfaites dans ce principe, et l’intérêt y est opposé. Laissez faire, morbleu! Laissez faire!!" (p.372)

D'Argenson's ideas on liberalizing commerce were reiterated in the draft of an article Mémoire à composer (dated July 1742, published in v.4 of the 1865 Rathery ed., this memoir was unknown to Oncken).

D'Argenson has also been attributed as author of two anonymous articles in the Journal d'économistes of 1751. In the first of these, a review of the Marquis of Belloni's Dissertazioni on commerce, d'Argenson launches into a wholesale condemnation of Mercantilist doctrines and calling for the establishment of a regime of economic liberty.  It is here that Argenson relates the now-famous anecdote of the meeting (prob. c.1680) between the powerful French minister Jean Baptiste Colbert and a certain M. Le Gendre, a member of a deputation of merchants.  When the eager Mercantilist minister Colbert asked the merchants how he could be of service, what the French state could do to improve their commerce, M. Le Gendre, replied simply "laissez-nous faire" (Leave us be, lit. Let us do) (d'Argenson, 1951: p.111).  This is the first known appearance of the laissez-faire phrase in print.  His second JdE article is thinly-disguised allegory of royal administration and government, told in the form of advice to a landed noble in managing his private estates.

D'Argenson's favorite economic maxims also appear in other unpublished comments, e.g. d'Argenson reiterates his "pour gouverner mieux, il faudroit gouverner moins" maxim along with the exclamation "Eh morbleu, laissez faire!" in a comment on a 1755 essay on the grain trade  (Jannet ed., v.5, p.134), as well as just a little later "Laissez libre, tout ira bien" (p.136).

Naturally, d'Argenson was not the first to forge free trade and non-interference slogans.  Boisguilbert's "laisse faire la nature" (1707) is a close predecessor.  But it is probably the Colbert-LeGendre story, as related in d'Argenson's 1751 article, that introduced the phrase laissez faire as a slogan of economic liberalism.  Vincent de Gournay (whom d'Argenson met), was sufficiently charmed by the story (at least according to Turgot) to adopt the maxim laissez-faire, laissez-passer as his own.  It was enthusiastically popularized by the Physiocrats  (in the English-speaking world, the maxim finds its first appearance in another re-telling of Colbert-LeGendre tale in George Whatley's Principles of Trade (co-authored with Benjamin Franklin, 1774: p.401)
 

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