Editing Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (section)

===Proposals for a representative government===

With the physiocrats, he believed in an [[Enlightened absolutism|enlightened political absolutism]], and looked to the king to carry through all reforms. As to the parlements, he opposed all interference on their part in legislation, considering that they had no competency outside the sphere of justice. He recognized the danger of the recap of the old parlement, but was unable effectively to oppose it since he had been associated with the dismissal of [[René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou|Maupeou]] and Terray, and seems to have underestimated its power. He was opposed to the summoning of the [[French States-General|states-general]] advocated by Malesherbes (6 May 1775), possibly on the ground that the two privileged orders would have too much power in them. His own plan is to be found in his ''Mémoire sur les municipalités'', which was submitted informally to the king.

In Turgot's proposed system, [[landed proprietor]]s alone were to form the [[constituency|electorate]], no distinction being made among the three orders; the members of the town and country municipalités were to elect representatives for the district municipalités, which in turn would elect to the provincial municipalités, and the latter to a grande municipalité, which should have no legislative powers, but should concern itself entirely with the administration of taxation. With this was to be combined a whole system of education, relief of the poor, and other activities. Louis XVI recoiled from this as being too great a leap in the dark, and such a fundamental difference of opinion between king and minister was bound to lead to a breach sooner or later.<ref>{{cite book
 | title=The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793
 | chapter=Chapter 5
 | author=Peter Kropotkin
 | year=1909
 | translator=N. F. Dryhurst
 | publisher=New York: Vanguard Printings
 | quote="Representative Government," such as was established by the English after their revolution, and was advocated in the writings of the contemporary philosophers, also began to be spoken of. With this end in view, Turgot had even prepared a scheme of provincial assemblies, to be followed later on by representative government for all France in which the propertied classes would have been called upon to constitute a parliament. Louis XVI shrank from this proposal, and dismissed Turgot; but from that moment all educated France began to talk of a Constitution and national representation.
 | url=http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=217
}}</ref> Turgot's only choice, however, was between "tinkering" at the existing system in detail and a complete revolution, and his attack on privilege, which might have been carried through by a popular minister and a strong king, was bound to form part of any effective scheme of reform.<ref name="EB1911"/>