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388 Economic thought before Adam SmithTurgot added that all such regulations and inspections 'always involve expenses,and that these expenses are always a tax on the merchandise, and as aresult overcharge the domestic consumer and discourage the foreign buyer' .Turgot concludes with a splendid flourish:Thus, with obvious injustice, commerce, and consequently the nation, are chargedwith a heavy burden to save a few idle people the trouble of instructing themselvesor of making inquiries to avoid being cheated. To suppose all consumers tobe dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect ofauthorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of thecommunity.Turgot goes on once more to the 'Hayekian' theme of greater knowledgeby the particular actors in the market. The entire laissez-faire doctrine ofGournay, he points out, is grounded on the 'complete impossibility of directing,by invariant rules and continuous inspection a multitude of transactionswhich by their immensity alone could not be fully known, and which, moreover,are continually dependent on a multitude of ever changing circumstanceswhich cannot be managed or even foreseen' .Turgot concludes his elegy to his friend and teacher by noting Gournay'sbelief that most people were 'well disposed toward the sweet principles ofcommercial freedom', but prejudice and a search for special privilege oftenbar the way. Every person, Turgot pointed out, wants to make an exception tothe general principle of freedom, and 'this exception is generally based ontheir personal interest'.One interesting aspect of the elegy is Turgot's noting of the Dutch influenceon the laissez-faire views of Gournay. Gournay had had extensivecommercial experience in Holland, and the Dutch model of relative free tradeand free markets in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, especially underthe republic, served as an inspiration throughout Europe. In addition, Turgotnotes that one of the books that most influenced Gournay was the PoliticalMaxims of lohan de Witt (1623-72), the great martyred leader of the classicalliberal republican party in Holland. Indeed, in an article on 'Fairs andMarkets', written two years earlier for the great Encyclopedie, Turgot hadquoted Gournay as praising the free internal markets of Holland. Whereasother nations had confined trade to fairs in limited times and places, 'InHolland there are no fairs at all, but the whole extent of the State and thewhole year are, as it were, a continuous fair, because commerce in thatcountry is always and everywhere equally flourishing' .Turgot's final writings on economics were as intendant at Limoges, in theyears just before becoming controller-general in 1774. They reflect his embroilmentin a struggle for free trade within the royal bureaucracy. In his lastwork, the 'Letter to the Abbe Terray [the controller-general] on the Duty on