Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) was a French economist and statesman who served as Controller-General of Finances under Louis XVI from 1774 to 1776. An early advocate of economic liberalism sometimes counted among the physiocrats, he is thought to have been among the first writers to state the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture. As intendant of Limoges from 1761 and later as a royal minister he pursued free trade in grain and fiscal austerity under the principle of no bankruptcy, no increase of taxation and no borrowing, and proposed the Six Edicts of 1776 abolishing guild monopolies and feudal labor obligations. Opposition from the nobility, the clergy and the royal court led to his dismissal in May 1776.
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