In June 1700, King Louis XIV, seeking advice from the nation's leading merchants, established a council of commerce, in which merchants of ten leading towns elected ten deputies who would serve as a kind of advisory economic parliament. The king soon came to regret this step, for the merchants’ representatives seized the occasion to unleash a torrent of attack against the mercantilist polices developed by the Sun King.
In particular, the enraged merchants zeroed in on the grants of monopoly privilege bestowed by the government on chartered companies. Pointing out that such monopolies restrict trade and raise prices, a number of merchants declared: ‘It is a most certain maxim that nothing but competition and liberty in trade can render commerce beneficial to the State; and that all monopolies or traffic appropriated to companies exclusive of others are infinitely burdensome and pernicious’.
The most consistent and most radical of the merchants’ voices was the deputy from the western port city of Nantes, Joachim Descazeaux du Hallay, a wealthy shipper and merchant and former associate of Thomas Le Gendre. Arguing vehemently against privileged monopolies that restrict trade, Descazeaux widened his argument into a general plea for freedom and free competition. Free competition, Descazeaux pointed out, benefits the public by supplying abundant goods at low prices. Even business losses, he declared perceptively, benefit the public, since they reflect plentiful production at low prices. Furthermore, liberty causes innovations and fuels the spirit of enterprise:
Liberty is the soul and element of commerce; she excites the genius and application of merchants who never cease to meditate on new methods to make discoveries and found enterprises. [Liberty] kindles a perpetual movement which produces abundance everywhere. The moment we limit the genius of merchants by restrictions, we destroy trade.
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