A minor figure of the 18th century can teach a lesson to today’s rulers of the deep or shallow state of all countries. René-Louis de Voyer, Marquis d’Argenson (1694-1757) was an early Enlightenment figure, friend of Voltaire, and, for a short time, minister of Louis XV.
In his memoirs, he wrote (Vol. 5, p. 372, of the 1858 edition)–my translation follows the original French:
Il est temps de prendre ce parti. Toutes les autres nations nous haïssent et nous envient. Et nous, ne les envions point si elles s’enrichissent : tant mieux pour elles et aussi pour nous ; elles nous prendront davantage de nos denrées, elles nous apporteront davantage des leurs et de leur argent. Détestable principe que celui de ne vouloir notre grandeur 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 !
It’s time make that choice. All other nations hate us and envy us. But let’s not envy them if they get rich. Good for them, and good for us to. They will take more of our products and bring us more of theirs and of their money. It is a despicable principle to want our greatness only through lowering our neighbors! Only wickedness and malevolence of the heart are gratified by this principle, which is contrary to our interests.
Laissez faire, for God’s sake ! Laissez faire !
We should forgive d’Argenson’s collectivist way of speaking (the “nations” who hate, for example). On this, he is not worse than most of today’s rulers and “their” people.
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DALL-E got my idea to imagine d’Argenson on the first try but with many errors, including the candles dangerously close to bookshelves and the anachronistic desk lamp. No doubt that historians of 18th-century France will discover other anachronisms. D’Argenson, who was around 45 when he wrote the quoted passage, also looks a bit young (although I admit I don’t quite remember how one looks at that age). He also does not look like the real d’Argenson, but that is DALL-E’s standard practice. Moreover, the robot made a typo in “morbleu” and I was unable to have “him” correct it. Still not bad for a virtual machine! Certainly better than a pocket calculator. Perhaps he should run for office?
How DALL-E imagines d’Argenson, with one big anachronism and a typo in “morbleu”
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Sep 27 2024 at 11:19am
“But let’s not envy them if they get rich. Good for them, and good for us to. They will take more of our products and bring us more of theirs and of their money”
Many sadly seem to have a zero-sum, “capital is fixed” mentality.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 29 2024 at 12:26pm
Craig: I have the impression that, ceteris paribus, merchants and businessmen have a better understanding of the world and form more realistic moral and political values because they need to understand simple ideas like the benefits of exchange, the requirements of production and trade, the function of the middleman, and indeed the notion of capital.
Craig
Sep 30 2024 at 9:59am
Sadly at times many, and I’m no exception to this, can slip into a pro-business mindset instead of a free market mindset.
Robert EV
Oct 1 2024 at 3:43pm
At root remember that power tends to corrupt. This is no different for merchants and businessmen then for anyone else. The exceptions are notable for their strong moral characters.
Monte
Sep 27 2024 at 12:57pm
Do you suppose his views regarding laissez faire were inspired by the fine bottle of Cognac to his right that he appears to have consumed complètement?
A malignancy of attitude all too prevalent today. Voltaire said of D’Argenson that he was “the best citizen to ever taste the ministry”. He appears to have been a model statesman.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 27 2024 at 1:43pm
Monte: I had not noticed that the bottle is nearly empty, nor that it can look like Cognac. D’Argenson did not last long in the ministry, but his non-diplomatic character might be a cause.
Monte
Sep 27 2024 at 3:16pm
Indeed. His most vocal critic was the very influential and skilled politician, Cardinal de Fleury, against whom D’Argenson’s non-diplomatic nature would have been a considerable liability.
“Give me 6 lines from the most honorable person alive, and I shall find enough in them to condemn them to the gallows.” – Cardinal Richeleiu
Jose Pablo
Sep 28 2024 at 6:01am
I don’t quite remember how one “looked” at that age … “in 18th Century France” …
Well, for the most part, like Hamlet’s skull. After all, life expectancy back then was 25.
And I am sure, d’Argenson way of reasoning doesn’t apply to the Chinese of today, these cunning people trying to steal the world from the deserving hands of Americans.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 29 2024 at 12:18pm
Good points, Jose!
nobody.really
Sep 30 2024 at 12:16am
“[W]hy, if there are so many other ways to heaven and to salvation [than Catholicism], should it still be demanded of us that we bear, day by day, the whole burden of ecclesiastical dogma and ecclesiastical ethics?
. . .
[T]his can easily conceal a sidelong glance at what we suppose to be the easier and more comfortable life of other people, who will also get to heaven.
We are too much like the workers taken on in the first hour whom the Lord talks about in his parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-6). When they realized that the day’s wage of one denarius could be much more easily earned, they could no longer see why they had sweated all day….
[W]hat a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people’s damnation—just like the workers hired in the first hour. That is very human, but the Lord’s parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because that kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.”
Fr. Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger (1964) (later, Pope Benedict XVI), published in What It Means to Be a Christian (2006) (emphasis added)
Mactoul
Oct 1 2024 at 1:02am
From Milton Friedman’s interview with the International Society for Individual Liberty (1999):
What role of the state, if any, do you advocate?
I believe that you do need a state, and you need a government to have certain basic functions. The most important of those functions is to make the rules of the game. You know, we all speak of the importance of private property.
But private property is not a self-evident notion. You have to have some way of deciding where your property ends and where mine begins. If I own a house and you fly up an airplane a 100 feet over the top of my house, are you violating my private property? If you fly 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet, 40,000 feet, or again, we have houses next door to one another. You turn your radio and television set on at a very high amplitude.
Are you invading my private property or not? So how do you make those rules? And the basic function of government is, I think, first as a rule-making body. Second, as providing a mechanism for adjudicating disputes about rules. And third, as providing a means of defending the country against foreign enemies and individuals against private individuals.
Those I think are the three fundamental functions of government. And I would hope that you could do without them, but I don’t believe it. However, I am not sure as a practical matter that there’s any real reason to argue. My son and I, as you all probably know, David, my son, has written a book on a non-government, a complete libertarian system with no government. He and I disagree on that, but that doesn’t mean that we disagree on any practical measures under consideration.
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