 A recurrent theme both in the “Letter from a Young Mechanic” and “Observations on the King’s Letter” is the financial cost of maintaining a royal family. Grouchy, who had lived for some years in the Hotel de Monnaies while Condorcet was the inspector general of the Monnaie de Paris under Necker, had some knowledge of economics. Condorcet himself advocated a liberal economy, much closer to his previous superior, Turgot, a Physiocrat who believed in a laisser-faire economy. Together Turgot and Condorcet had attempted in 1774 to solve the problem of the growing price of bread by letting the farmers decide how they sold their flour, instead of controlling the market. Unfortunately their reform was followed by a drought and later severe hail storms so that whatever grain had managed to push through the dry soil was destroyed because it could not be harvested. The king, rather than following Necker’s advice and waiting for his reforms to have their effect—after all no amount of reform could change the weather—sacked Turgot and gave his job to Necker. This did nothing to prevent the people from starving and France found itself in the midst of the “flour wars” with riots in Paris and pillages in the countryside by people who could no longer afford to buy bread, or who spent their entire income on it, leaving nothing for clothes or housing. The final issue of the journal contains a long essay on the creation of an electoral council, a piece later reprinted as part of Condorcet’s works.