Colbert, Jean Baptiste

kol-ber, Jean Baptiste (1619-1683), a noted French financier. Under Louis XIV, he was for twenty-two years minister of finance. He found an empty treasury and the public revenues spent two years in advance, with fraud, disorder, and theft rampant. He reduced the rate of interest on the public debt, cut the rate of taxation in two, weeded out incapacity and dishonesty, increased the public income by $5,000,000, paid the enormous expense of two years of foreign war, and filled up the public treasury; yet he died out of favor with the king and his spendthrift court. During his management of the public purse, Colbert was liberal and enlightened in the encouragement of the fine arts and the sciences. At his suggestion the Academies of Sciences, of Architecture, and of Painting, the Royal Library, and the Garden of Plants, were given large grants of money. See Neckar