The “doux commerce” approach

While Melon stressed the English inclination in favour of “universal trade” and the empire of the sea, English writers of a republican culture, such as Charles Davenant, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, emphasised the tendency of the French monar­chy towards universal domination, leading to the successive restriction of all kinds of freedoms.

The notion of “doux commerce” has been commented on (see Hirschman 1977). It generally means a certain number of effects caused by the expansion of trade, such as gentle manners, religious tolerance, freedom of opinion, security of property, a trade policy that is not arbitrary, and so on, but also an interest-oriented behaviour, particu­larly that of the trader, which should be assumed here neither reducible to the love of gain, nor identical to the public interest.

The effects of trade are, first, moral and political. They make themselves felt in dif­ferent ways, depending on the kind of government and territories. Montesquieu distin­guishes two cases. On the one hand, the “commerce du luxe”, typical of the spending of the higher ranks, is appropriate to a vast and fertile territory ruled by a monarchical government; on the other hand, the “commerce d’mconomie” (carriage and re-export) is fitted to a small and poor territory ruled by a republican government.

However, trade produces a second kind of effect on the functioning of the economy. The more it expands and the international circulation of goods is free, the less the initia­tive of government is arbitrary - commerce is incompatible with despotism. This does not mean however a reduction in the legal and political activity of the government. On the one hand, Montesquieu (1748, bk XX: ch. 9, bk XXII: chs 10, 14) maintains that inter­national competition - in the sense of free access - sets a just price for things and that foreign exchange sets a just price for money. He thus suggests that on the international markets there is an adjustment mechanism for quantities and prices which ultimately escapes the arbitrariness of territorial governments and prevents despotism. This is the same idea that explains his support for the quantity theory of money. Montesquieu’s position therefore leans towards cosmopolitanism, the criticism of privileges, monopo­lies and customs restrictions. On the other hand, like Melon, Montesquieu (ibid., bk XX: ch. 12) states that traders’ interest is not the national interest in trade, in the same way as the national interest in trade is not that of competing nations.

Moreover, practising trade is for noblemen the equivalent to abandoning their military function and losing their rank, and leads to unfair competition with the lower rank of traders. Hence, commerce would no longer be the “profession of equals”. This position of hostility to the “noblesse commerςante^,' is, in a way, running counter to the trend. A few years earlier, Dutot (1738 [1739]: 263-4) defended a contrary posi­tion. Vincent de Gournay (1993: 11) considers the emergence of such a nobility as one of the reasons for England’s economic success, and Forbonnais (Veron de Forbonnais 1753: 117), without denying that the function of the nobility is firstly military, sees no disparagement in the fact this nobility could maintain its rank thanks to income from commercial activity. This debate on the trading nobility (“noblesse commerςante^,,) is an element in a wider debate on whether France is a monarchy sufficiently free to promote commerce with as much success as in the trading republics, namely, whether this nation has broken with the politics of the empire on land and committed itself to the politics of freedom and protection. There are therefore two questions raised by Melon and Montesquieu: that of the compatibility of commerce and monarchy, and that of freedom and protection, namely, the substitution, as much as possible, of competition for war.