Louis Paul Abeille
| Louis Paul Abeille FRS |
|
|---|---|
| Born | 3 June 1719 Toulouse |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Paris |
| Occupation | Economist |
Louis Paul Abeille FRS (3 June 1719 – 28 July 1807 Paris) was a French physiocrat economist.
Biography
He was born in Toulouse, the son of Joseph Abeille, king's engineer and his wife Madeleine de Labat. He was the brother of Françoise Abeille de Keralio and the uncle of Louise-Félicité de Kéralio. Abeille settled in Brittany at a young age, where, after brilliant studies, he became a lawyer at the Parliament of Brittany and bought the office of King's prosecutor of the Maréchaussée. Protected by Louis-René de Caradeuc de La Chalotais, Attorney General of the Parliament of Brittany, he became his secretary. In this capacity he drew up the general table by subject of the registers of the Parliament since its creation.
Interested in economic questions, he joined the project to create a Society of Agriculture, Commerce and Arts, and obtained a position in the central office of Rennes. Abeille, who had been a protégé of the liberal intendant of commerce Vincent de Gournay, wrote the Corps d'Observations of the Society with Montaudouin de la Touche from Nantes.
In July 1764, he was appointed adviser to the Contrôle Général for commerce and manufactures. In June of the following year, he was promoted to the position of Inspector General of Manufactures and Commerce. Finally, on December 19, 1768, he was appointed Secretary of the Bureau du Commerce.
In October 1763, Louis-Paul Abeille published a pamphlet entitled Lettres d'un négociant sur le commerce des blés ("Letters from a merchant on the wheat trade"), in which the physiocratic doctrine was exposed and defended with vigor and talent. The author was approached by Quesnay's followers, and joined the movement. He then published Réflexions sur la police des grains en Angleterre et en France ("Reflections on the Grain Police in England and France"; 1764), and another pamphlet, the following year, dealing with the Effets d’un privilège exclusif en matière de commerce sur les droits de propriété ("Effects of an Exclusive Privilege in Trade on Property Rights").
In April 1768, continuing tirelessly on the same subject, he put on sale a small pamphlet entitled Faits qui ont influent sur la cherté des Grains, en France et en Angleterre. Very well received by Quesnay's school, one read very laudatory comments in the Éphémérides du Citoyen, the Physiocratic house organ. As soon as this first success was achieved, his new book, Principes sur le commerce des grains ("Principles of Grain Trade"), was announced: "Another work on the same subject, and by the same author, is announced," one could read in the Éphémerides at the time. "The talents, the light and the wisdom that he has deployed in a great number of economic Writings, which are distinguished by their lucidity, guarantee in advance the merit and the success of the one he is going to give to the public."
In September 1768, Étienne Maynon d'Invault was appointed Controller-General of Finances, replacing François de Laverdy. A convinced physiocrat, he asked three economists, the André Morellet, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, and Louis-Paul Abeille, to assist him as advisors, and to participate in weekly meetings, every Thursday evening, "to discuss political economy". The minister, as a token of his esteem, appointed Abeille secretary of the Bureau du Commerce by a decree of December 19, 1768.
In 1769, to protect his new career in the administration, and out of fatigue with the increasingly sectarian tendencies of Quesnay's disciples, Abeille decided to separate from them. He sent two letters to Du Pont de Nemours, their main leader, asking that he no longer be considered part of their movement. In his Notice abrégée sur les économistes, Du Pont de Nemours wrote: "We find ourselves, to our great regret, obliged to pass over in silence the writings of a single author, a known and commendable author, who has demanded it of us with the strongest of urgings on two different occasions by two different letters that he has taken the trouble to write to us, and in spite of everything we have been able to represent to him. This author did not deign to inform us of his motives: we do not know if his opinions on economic matters have changed, if he disapproves today of the principles set forth in his works, if he would like to disavow them." Later, Abeille will defend Necker in his controversy with Du Pont de Nemours.
He was ennobled and given the noble title of Esquire by letters patent of King Louis XVI dated January 13, 1787 and took over the ancient arms of the "Abeille" which are azure with three golden bees. In September 1796, he asked for and received permission to produce a detailed analysis of France's commercial relations since the seventeenth century.[1]
Louis-Paul Abeille died in Paris in 1807.
See also
Works
- Table raisonné des registres du Parlement depuis sa création jusqu'en 1750 (1750)
- L'Amour et Psyché (1758; opera libretto; attributed to him)
- Lettre d’un négociant sur la nature du commerce des grains (1763)
- Réflexions sur la police des grains en France et en Angleterre (1764)
- Principes sur la liberté du commerce des grains (1768)
- Faits qui ont influé sur la cherté des grains en France et en Angleterre (1768)
- Lettre sur les découvertes de M. Didot l'aîné (1783)
- Mémoire présenté par la Société royale d'agriculture à l'Assemblée nationale, le 24 octobre 1789 , sur les abus qui s'opposent aux progrès de l'agriculture, & sur les encouragemens qu'il est nécessaire d'accorder à ce premier des arts (1789)
- Observations de la société royale d'agriculture, sur l'uniformité des poids et mesures (1790)
Notes
- ↑ Kingston, Ralph (2011). "The French Revolution and the Materiality of the Modern Archive," Libraries & the Cultural Record, Vol. XLVI, No. 1, pp. 1–25.
References
- La Mothe-Langon, Étienne Léon de (1823). "Abeille (Louis-Paul)." In: Biographie toulousaine, chez L. G. Michaud imprimeur-libraire, Vol. 1. Paris, pp. 467–70.
- D'Haucourt, Xavier (1938). " Autour du Parlement de Bretagne, l'avocat Abeille et 'La Table raisonnée des Registres du Parlement depuis sa création jusqu'en 1750'," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, Vol. XLV, No 3/4, pp. 368–81.
