The Turgot Collection by David Gordon

Author:David Gordon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781933550947
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2011-01-26T06:00:00+00:00

Which Suppresses the Corvée and Decrees

the Construction of Highways for a Money Price

ouis, etc., The utility of roads designed to facilitate the transport of commodities has been recognized during all time. Our predecessors have regarded their construction and repair as one of the most worthy objects of their vigilance.

Never have these important works been prosecuted with greater ardor than under the reign of the late king, our venerated lord and grandfather. Many provinces are reaping the fruits of these activities in the rapid increase in the value of their lands.

The protection we owe to agriculture, the true foundation of plenty and public prosperity, and the favor we will to accord to commerce as a further encouragement to agriculture, cause us to seek to bind more and more by facile communications all parts of our realm, both among themselves and with outside districts.

Desiring to secure these advantages to our people by the means least burdensome to them, we have investigated carefully the means which have been employed heretofore for making and repairing public roads.

We have noted with pain that, with the exception of a small number of provinces, works of this kind have been executed, for the most part, by means of corvées required of our subjects, and even from the poorest part, while they have been paid no wages for the time they were so employed. We have been unable to escape being struck by the discomforts inherent in the nature of that contribution.

To draft the cultivator forcibly to these labors is always to do him a real wrong, even when he is paid for his day’s work. One would seek in vain to select, for demanding forced labor, a time when the peasants were unoccupied; the work of cultivation is so diversified and so incessant that no time is without its employment. Such times, when they do exist, differ in contiguous places, and frequently in the same place, owing to the varying nature of the soil, or different kinds of cultivation. The most attentive administrators cannot know all these variations. Besides, the necessity of assembling under foremen a sufficient number of laborers demands that the summary writs be general in the same district. Error on the part of the administrator may cause to the cultivators a loss of days for which no salary could repay them.

To take the time of the laborer, even for pay, is equivalent to a tax. To take this time without paying for it is a double tax; and that tax is out of all proportion when it falls on a simple day laborer who has nothing for his subsistence but the labor of his hands.

The man who works under compulsion and without recompense works idly and without interest; he does, at the same time, less work, and his work is poorly done. The peasants (corvoyeurs), obliged to travel frequently ten miles or more to report to the foreman, and as much more to return to their homes, lose a great part of the time demanded from them, without any labor return for it.

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