ANNE ROBERT JAMES, a celebrated French financier, was born at Paris in 1727, of a very ancient Norman family. His father was a long time provost of the corporation of merchants; during which he was the object of general admiration, on account of his prudent administration. M. Turgot was the youngest of three brothers, and was destined for the church. He had scarcely attained the age at which reflection commences, when he resolved to sacrifice all temporal advantages to liberty and conscience, and to pursue his ecclesiastical studies without declaring his repugnance to their proposed object. At the age of 23 years he took his degree, and was elected prior of the Sorbonne.

The time when it was necessary for him to declare that he would not be an ecclesiastic was now arrived. He announced this resolution to his father by letter, showing the motives which induced him to decline the clerical order. His father consented, and he was appointed matter of requits. M. Turgot prepared himself for this office by particular application to those parts of science which are most connected with its functions and duties, viz. natural philosophy, agriculture, manufactures, commerce, &c. About this period he wrote some articles for the Encyclopédie, of which the principal are Etymology, Existence, Expanibility, Fair, and Foundation. He had prepared several others, but the persecution against the Encyclopedic induced him to decline farther contributions.

In 1761 M. Turgot was appointed intendant of Limoges, when he gave activity to the society of agriculture; opened a mode of public instruction for female professors of midwifery; procured for the people the attendance of able physicians during the raging of epidemic diseases; established houses of industry, supported by charity (the only species of alms-giving which does not encourage idleness); introduced the cultivation of potatoes into his province, &c. &c. While M. Turgot proceeded with unremitting activity and zeal, in promoting the good of the people over whom he was placed, he meditated projects of a more extensive nature, such as an equal distribution of the taxes, the construction of the roads, the regulation of the militia, the prevention of a scarcity of provision, and the protection of commerce.

At the death of Louis XV. the public voice called M. Turgot to the first offices of government, as a man who united the experience resulting from habits of business to all the improvement which study can procure. After being at the head of the marine department only a short time, he was, August 24, 1774, appointed comptroller general of the finances. During his discharge of this important office, the operations he carried on are astonishing. He suppressed 23 kinds of duties on necessary occupations, useful contracts, or merited compensations. He abolished the corvée, or the labour required from the public for the highways, saving the nation thirty millions of livres annually.—He fet afide another kind of corvée, which respected the carriage of military stores and baggage.—He abated the rigour in the administration of indirect impositions, to the great profit of the contributors, the king, and the financiers; beside many other essential improvements in political economy.

At length, however, by the artifices of the courtiers, he was deprived of his offices; and in retirement he devoted himself to the sciences and the belles lettres, which he had cultivated in his youth. Natural philosophy and chemistry were his favourite pursuits; sometimes he indulged in poetry. He composed, it is said, only one Latin verse, intended for a picture of Dr Franklin.

"Eripuit calo fulmen, max sceptra tyrannis."

He died in 1781.