Pierre de Boisguilbert

Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert (1646 to 1714) was a French magistrate and Jansenist who is counted among the inventors of the idea of an economic market. Born at Rouen into an old Norman noble family, he studied at the Port-Royal schools and became a judge at Montivilliers and later president of the bailliage of Rouen. Watching the misery that taxation caused around him, he published Le détail de la France (1695), arguing against the mercantilism of Colbert that national wealth lies in what a country produces and exchanges, not in the money it holds. He urged equalising taxes so that the poor could consume more, abolishing internal customs duties and allowing freer trade, and in 1705 proposed one capitation tax in place of aides and duties. His diffuse style and the opposition of tax farmers left his work little noticed in his lifetime.