Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont

Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont

Jean-Paul-Alban, vicomte de Villeneuve-Bargemont (8 August 1784 – 8 June 1850) was a French economist and politician. A forerunner of the Catholic social movement in France, he was the first to denounce, with Armand de Melun, the manufacturing exploitation of the poor and had the first social laws passed.

He was a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), and was made Commander of the Legion of Honor.

Biography

Early life

Descended from one of the oldest noble families in Provence, Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont was born in Saint-Auban. He was the eighth of the fourteen children of Joseph de Villeneuve, Lord of Bargemon, prosecutor in Aix, and of Sophie de Bausset de Roquefort. He had five brothers, Christophe de Villeneuve-Bargemon, Emmanuel Ferdinand de Villeneuve-Bargemon and Joseph de Villeneuve-Bargemon, all three prefects, Jean-Baptiste de Villeneuve-Bargemon, a deputy, and Louis-François de Villeneuve-Bargemont, a historian. He was the nephew of Pierre-Ferdinand de Bausset-Roquefort, archbishop of Aix under the Restoration, the grand-nephew of Barthélemy Joseph de Villeneuve Bargenon, priest, deputy of the clergy of Marseille in the Estates General of 1789 and also that of Louis Jean Baptiste Le Clerc de Lassigny de Juigné, deputy of the Nobility of Draguignan at the same States-General.

Public Administrator

He was auditor at the Council of State (1810), subprefect of Zierickzée (Bouches-de-l'Escaut) (1811), prefect of Bouches-de-l'Ebre (1812), and of Sambre-et-Meuse (1814 ). He abandoned this last post when the allies arrived and returned to France to greet the return of the Bourbons. He lost his job as Prefect of Tarn-et-Garonne (1814) in the Hundred Days, and returned to the administration at the Second Restoration as Prefect of Charente (1817), then Prefect of Creuse, Meurthe (1820), Loire-Inférieure (1824), and of Nord (1828).

Appointed master of requests in extraordinary service on February 18, 1820, and state councilor on November 12, 1828, he refused the oath to the government of Louis-Philippe, and was retired, as prefect, on October 22, 1830, with a pension of 6,000 francs.

Legislator

He was elected, on July 3, 1830, deputy of the great college of the Var, by 71 votes (100 voters, 175 registered): he would vote with the Legitimists, and would not run again in 1831. In 1832 when the Duchess of Berry was planning to land in Provence, he accepted from her the commission of royal commissary in the Var, but he soon returned to Paris to devote himself chiefly to studies in political economy.

Again candidate on June 21, 1834, in the 12th college of Nord (Hazebrouck), he failed to gain a seat with 227 votes against 250 by the elected representative, Warein. On March 21, 1840, he was elected deputy of the 3rd college of the same department (Lille) by 540 votes (830 voters), replacing Hennequin, who had died, and was then re-elected, on July 9, 1842, by 536 votes (793 voters, 1,192 registered ), against 241 by Lefèvre. Villeneuve-Bargemont was one of the foremost authors of the law of 1841 limiting child labor; this law, for the first time in France, embodied the principle of legal protection for laborers. On August 1, 1846, he was elected once again by 529 votes (1,031 voters and 1,246 registered), against 491 by Auguste Mimerel. He was instrumental in securing the amendment of the fiscal law of 1847 to dispense the marriage of the poor and the legitimation of their children from stamp taxes and registration fees.

The revolution of February 1848 retired him to private life.

Writings

Villeneuve-Bargemont was elected member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques on April 12, 1845, replacing Lakanal. He published a number of works, inspired by social Catholicism, and also contributed to the Journal des Économies and Plutarque français.

As an economist he stood apart from the classical school represented by Adam Smith and Jean Baptiste Say, whom he regarded as materialists. He attributed pauperism to the English model of industrial development and the flawed science of classical political economy that supported that model. He distinguished traditional poverty, "isolated, circumscribed, and passing," from pauperism, which was "no longer an accident, but the forced condition of a large portion" of the population. He considered that political economy should be concerned less with the production of wealth than with its distribution and the general diffusion of well-being. He held to the concept of a "vital and family salary" sufficient to sustain both the workman and his family, and he believed that an employer should receive a profit only after the payment of this salary.

Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont referred several times to Jean de Sismondi among his sources, but reproached him for blaming the clergy for the increase in the population in countries of the Catholic faith.

He was a major influence on Tocqueville's economic thought.

Works

• Économie politique chrétienne, ou, Recherches sur la nature et les causes du paupérisme, en France et en Europe, et sur les moyens de le soulager et de le prévenir (1834)
• Discours prononcé... dans la discussion du projet de loi sur le travail des enfants dans les manufactures (22 décembre 1840) (1840)
• Histoire de l'économie politique, ou, Études historiques, philosophiques et religieuses sur l'économie politique des peuples anciens et modernes (1841)
• Le Livre des affligés, ou Douleurs et consolations (1841)
• Notice sur l'état actuel de l'économie politique en Espagne et sur les travaux de Don Ramon de La Sagra (1844)
• De l'influence des passions sur l'ordre économique des sociétés (1846)

External links

• Works by Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont at Gallica
• Works by Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont at Hathi Trust