concerning Trade and the Interest of Money"; | who begat brother Baud..., who begat the A. M., Locke, who in 1691 wrote some curious Considerations on Money"; Dudley North, who proclaimed that same year the principle of free trade; Forbonnais, whose Eléments de Commerce dates as far back as 1734; Melon, whose Essai politique sur le commerce belongs to the same year; Dutot, whose Réflexions politiques sur le commerce et les finances was published in 1738, | etc.; and other writers who labored to elucidate economic doctrines contemporaneously with physiocrates such as Hume, whose "Essays" on various economic subjects appeared in 1752, earlier than the writings of Quesnay, and who knew how to free himself from the prejudices of the balance of trade; men like the no less celebrated Genovesi, who, beginning with 1754, delivered a scientific course on questions relative to wealth; Verri, who wrote on these matters in 1763; James Stewart, who published at London, in 1767, four volumes, with the remarkable title "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy"; Beccaria, who began at Milan, in 1769, lectures on the same subject, entitled "Course of Commercial Sciences"; and other writers, Italian and German, whom it would be too tedious to mention; finally, Adam Smith, who, before publishing his book in 1776, had come to Paris in 1764 to have a discussion with philosophic economists, after he had lectured on moral philosophy for fourteen years in the university of Glasgow, part of his labors being devoted to the subjects developed in his "Essay on the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." On the other hand, we must say that not all the persons whom Dupont de Nemours enrolls under the banner of Quesnay followed the doctrine of the master in every point; some held themselves somewhat aloof from the school. Among these was Morellet. On this point we believe it useful to reproduce certain passages concerning the quarrel of the latter with Linguet, so noted for his literary eccentricities, and his declamations against bread, which he treated as poison. Linguet having advanced several monstrosities, such as the following: that despotic governments are the only ones which render nations happy; that society lives by the destruction of its liberties, as carnivorous animals live on the timid ones, etc.- Morellet answered him sharply, in a pamphlet, entitled Théorie du paradore. Linguet replied by Théorie du libelle, where we read the following details, connected with our subject: "This illustrious pander of science, this invincible champion of the net product, this venerable archimandrite of the order of brothers of the economic doctrine, has risen above all eulogy by forcing his heart to outrage a prostrate man, and raising his foot to give him the last kick. If it be asked what the order in question is, we may answer, in order to spare commentators in ages to come a disagreeable task, that it is a new order, founded about 1760, under the name of the Economists Brothers, by Father Ques..., who had a spiritual son, brother Mirab..., | which brought forth the Théorie des Paradoxes. on natural law, and summed up in his fragments published under the title of Maximes. In endeavoring to condense them into a few words, we may imagine Quesnay as saying: The world is governed by immutable physical and moral laws. It is for man, an intelligent and free being, to discover them, and to obey them or to violate them, for his own good or evil. The end assigned to the exercise of his intellectual and physical powers, is the appropriation of matter for the satisfaction of his wants, and the improvement of his condition. But he should accomplish this task conformably to the idea of the just, which is the correlative of the idea of the useful. Man forms an idea of justice and utility, both individual and social, through the notions of duty and right which his nature reveals to him, and which teach him that it is contrary to his good and the general welfare to seek his own advantage in the damage done to others. These ideas enter the minds of individuals and peoples in proportion to the increase of enlightenment, and the advance of civil- | ization: they naturally produce feelings of fraternity among men, and peace among peoples. - The chief manifestations of justice are liberty and property, that is to say, the right of each one to do that which in no way hurts the general interest, and to use at his pleasure the goods which he possesses, the acquirement of which is conformable to the nature of things and to the general utility, since, without liberty and property, there would have been no civilization, and a very much smaller amount of goods at the disposition of men. Liberty and property spring, then, from the nature of man, and are rights so essential that laws or agreements among men should be limited to recognizing them, to formulating them, to sanctioning them. Governments have no mission but to guard these two rights, which, with a correct understanding of things, embrace all the material and moral wants of society. To say that liberty and property are essential rights, is to say that they are in harmony with the general interest of the species; it is to say that with them the land is more fertile, the industry of man in all its manifestations more productive, and the development of all his moral, intellectual, scientific and artistic aptitudes swifter and surer, in the path of the good, the beautiful, the just and the useful; it is to say, further, that man best gathers the fruit of his own efforts, and that he is not at least a victim of the arbitrary laws of his fellow-men.-"Before Quesnay," says Eugene Daire, “nothing was vaguer than the idea of the just and the unjust; and the determination of the natural and indefeasible rights of man had not been touched by any philosopher. It was tacitly agreed that the ideas of justice, applicable only to individual relations, should remain foreign to civil, public, and especially to international law. Morality, since the principles from which it must be deduced were only dimly perceived, seemed fit only to govern private relations, but not those of the state to its members, or those of one people to another, which, it was supposed, should be necessarily subjected solely to the law of force and cunning. Religion did not understand the economy of society, because it concerned itself only with the future life; and politics did not understand it any better, because it did not suspect the intimate connection of the moral with the physical order of the world. Setting out to govern men from the principle of the incompatibility of the useful with the just, it was impossible for the ministers of the one or the other to avoid the most disastrous results even if they had never been guided by any but the purest intentions. Struck with this fact, Quesnay be came persuaded that the truth lay in the opposite principle, and interrogating the nature of man and the nature of things, he discovered in them the proof that the three great classes of every civilized society, that is to say, landed proprietors, capitalists and workmen, as well as the various nations into which the human race is divided, have only to lose by violating justice, mutually oppressing and annoying one another. This was to establish social morality, the absence of which produces a false notion of right and wrong in every mind, even in things touching individual relations. It was to free from the clouds of mysticism the great principle of peace and fraternity among men, and set it on the bases most fitted to insure its triumph." -As Passy remarks in his report on the memoir which we have just cited, these maxims were not all equally new; and the most general of them were to be met with already in the works of certain writers; the Gospel itself contained many of them. But up to that time they had never been presented in the form of a broad system, never had there been deduced from them so clearly consequences of social application; which warrants us in saying, with Eugene Daire, that Quesnay was really the first thinker of the eighteenth century who made the organization of society the subject of his meditations; the man who gave to the world the newest doctrine, and at the same time the fittest to exercise a happy influence on the welfare of nations. Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau were great minds, beyond a doubt; but Quesnay served the human race most, in having shown that the happiness of the majority depends much less on the mechanism of governmental forms than on the development of human industry, and that it is impossible to discuss politics rationally without having previously acquired a knowledge of the economy of society. 'Of course wealth had not altogether escaped the attention of thinkers and governments previous to this philosophy," remarks Eugene Daire again, “but there is this difference, that, while among the first some only saw, so to speak, a necessary evil, it suggested to others nothing beyond systems of artificial distribution, and to governments merely fiscal inventions to plunder their subjects. Quesnay understood that the whole science of social organization may be summed up in that of the regular production and distribution of the goods of this world, that is to say, production and distribution effected according to the unchangeable laws established for the preservation, the indefinite increase, the happiness and the improvement of our species. To investigate these laws, by questioning our own nature and its necessary relations with the external world, such is the work which the chief of the school of physiocrates undertakes to accomplish. Instead of following the example of most philosophers, by declaiming against wealth, on which all the affairs of this world turn, he fathomed the laws of wealth, as well as those of human labor. To sum up, Quesnay and the school of physiocrates made a scientific study of the useful, considered men living in society as producers and consumers first of all, and drew the conclusion that the ideas of right, of peace and fraternity among men, do not rest exclusively on the mysterious dogma of a future life, but on the observance of natural laws, which may be obeyed with profit, and are not violated with impunity in this world."— IV. Political Economy of the Physiocrates. The philosophy of the physiocrates is, therefore, an economic philosophy; and while endeavoring to sum it up here we have given in part the general data of their political economy. It only remains for us to add a few technical indications of those of their ideas which belong more especially to the economic order. In doing this we shall limit ourselves to setting forth these ideas, because it would be impossible, in the limits granted us, to explain with even partial completeness, in what these ideas may appear to us correct or incorrect, and in what points it has been possible for them to be accepted or opposed by the chief economists. The history of the filiation of economic doctrines, moreover, has not yet been written. — The physiocrates set out with the principle that materiality is the fundamental character of wealth, and from this concluded to measure the value and utility of labor by the quantity alone of the raw material which it was able to produce. The first effect of this theory was to exclude from the domain of political economy an innumerable multitude of services which men render each other. They formed, therefore, an incomplete idea of the value of things, which prevented them from seeing into the phenomenon of production clearly, estimating correctly the position of land, labor and capital, and rendering an exact account of the relative and absolute utility of all the branches of human industry; agricultural industry, manufacturing industry, transportation, commercial industry, and the numerous professions in which men furnish or exchange physical or intellectual labor, that is to say, services. In this way they were led to accord the character of productiveness to agricultural industry only, and to treat as sterile the other industries, while they, at the same time, asserted that manufacturing industry, commerce and the liberal professions are essentially useful. Their theory, by being squint-eyed at the first, if we may so express ourselves, led them to consequences which they found it difficult to admit in the discussion VOL. III. - 13 132 | of questions and application of principles, according as they started from the point of view of the sterility of industries other than agriculture, to which they were obliged to give, both in theory and practice, an exceptional and false position. By virtue of their system, the economists really admitted, as a natural and social necessity, the pre-eminence of landed proprietors over all other classes of citizens. Now, this idea of pre-eminence, agreeing with the prejudices of the nobles, has left more than one trace in economic and political laws. - - Their error is explicable at the beginning of the science. It was not given to the physiocrates alone to make all analyses, and to grasp with precision all the differences and resemblances of the various modes of production. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that they combated the mercantile theory, which made wealth to consist only in the precious metals, and which exaggerated the advantages of foreign commerce; that they combated also the infatuation for the manufacturing system; that they allowed themselves to react too forcibly against these exclusive prejudices, and in turn to become exclusive by their favor for an industry too much ignored, whose excellence they were deeply desirous of demonstrating. - Of Quesnay's works the Tableau Economique attracted most attention. Quesnay's object was to describe synoptically the facts relative to the production, distribution, consumption and transformation of values. It is difficult to explain the success of this publication, which is itself not very intelligible. Made up of figures strangely disposed, this tableau contributed to throw discredit rather than light on the theory. The explanations of the Marquis Mirabeau rendered it still more cabalistic and mysterious; those of the abbé Baudeau and of Le Trosne, though much clearer, were still not clear enough. have just read the declaration of Morellet on the subject. In reality, the chiefs of the school wished to prove that society had no other revenue than the net product of the soil, all expenses deducted, including the maintenance of its cultivators; that consequently it had no greater interests than the increase of this revenue; that the power of the state and the progress of civilization depended on it; that this revenue alone should be taxed; that we must not see in the capital in agriculture, industry and commerce, anything but the sacred endowment of labor, without which there would be neither wealth nor landed proprietors; that the expenses of industry and commerce are merely an outlay which should be reduced to the lowest figure by free competition. - On the subject of territorial revenue and net product, the question arises: what did the school mean exactly by these expressions? and in what were their ideas on these these subjects like or unlike those on rent held by Adam Smith, J. B. Say, Ricardo, Malthus, Rossi, M'Culloch, etc.? This is still a question which does not appear to us to have been clearly settled by those who occupied themselves with the subject. We shall state merely that it was through We the impossibility of analyzing the economic phe- | of finding a sounder and more unimpeachable nomena connected with the subject, that Necker theory. If we wish to understand the ideas of and many others cast ridicule on the ideas which the physiocrates, we must begin with the writings the physiocrates advanced. For our own part, of their master, and then take up in succession we can not give an opinion on the subject without the works of his principal disciples: Mirabeau, entering into a long discussion, and we therefore Mercier, Baudeau, Le Trosne and Turgot. To refer to the writings of the authors whom we the elder Mirabeau, belongs the honor of having have just cited, and to the explanations given by been the first who was aroused to enthusiasm by Eugene Daire in his memoir, and by Passy in his re- the lofty reason of Quesnay, of having written, port on this memoir. (See RENT.)— Although the developed and commentated on his principles, and physiocrates did not form an exact idea of the of having introduced them into practical politics phenomena of production, and consequently of and administration. The first exposition of the the real nature of value and of exchange of wealth, economic system is found in his Philosophie Ruthey had correct notions on the subject of money: rale, published in 1763. It is one of the least unto them is due the beginning of the ruin of the intelligible books of the marquis. Its perusal is mercantile system, and, after Boisguillebert and of little value except to those who wish to know before Adam Smith, they contributed much to how the school began; but it must be acknowlelucidate the principle of the freedom of ex- | edged that, in spite of his eccentricities of style changes. First, they demonstrated that every and mistiness of thought, this economist philosobstacle to this freedom is a violation of the fun; opher had the talent of causing himself to be damental rights of labor and of property, and, read, and of calling public attention to the study secondly, that every hindrance to exportation and of questions which others knew how to explain importation causes an artificial change in the better than he. Each man has his mission in this value of products, and the revenue of lands, some- world. After the Philosophie Rurale, appeared times at the expense of producers, sometimes at the book of Mercier-La Rivière, who had met the expense of consumers, by reducing finally Quesnay, at the same time as Gournay and the public wealth and taxable property. In the ques- Marquis de Mirabeau; and who afterward left tion of finances they deduced from the produc- France to take the place of intendant at Martintiveness of agricultural industry (which they ique for a time; on returning, he renewed his considered the only productive one), and the former intimacy with Quesnay, and labored to hypothesis admitted by themselves, that taxation disseminate his doctrine. Mercier-La Rivière's always falls on the landed proprietors, whatever book is entitled l'Ordre naturel et essentiel des sobe the mode of its collection, the rule directly to ciétés politiques; it appeared in 1767, four years tax land rents or net product, that is to say, to after Mirabeau's work. The title of this book establish a single land tax to the exclusion of all promises a methodical treatise on social economy, personal contributions and all taxes on consump- a promise it does not fulfill. The first part is a tion, which they called, and which we still call, series of rather confused dissertations on the moral indirect taxes. - These are the principal points order, the politics and the material interests of of the physiocratic theory. Modern science has society. But the author becomes more positive rectified the idea of wealth and of the produc- and more interesting in the second part, where he tiveness of the different branches of industry; makes a close analysis, according to Quesnay's it has accepted the explanation of money and system, of all the questions of the material economy the demonstration of the principle of commer- of society, referring to the peculiar or distinct cial freedom in opposition to the doctrine of the effects of agriculture, industry and commerce, to balance of trade, definitively overthrown. It has the reciprocal relations of different nations, and not yet pronounced clearly on the theory of net to the nature and object of public revenue. This product, although it pays little attention to the work, in spite of its imperfections and an obscure famous economic tableau. It hesitates also on and sometimes ridiculous form, had much sucthe important question of taxation. But it is cess with the philosophic part of the public, just to recognize, in entering into the details of whose attention had been attracted to these matthe economic investigations to which the disci- ters by the sententious and abstract writings of ples of Quesnay devoted themselves, that we see Quesnay and by the dissertations of l'Ami des that they threw a clear light on all parts of the hommes, which were at once tedious and obscure. science, even if they started from a false princi- It was the first time, too, that the doctrine asple or got lost in a false theory; that, for exam- sumed a form intelligible to the common mind; ple, of the materiality of wealth, and that of the Dupont de Nemours made an analysis of it, a year productiveness of agriculture alone, which did later, under the title, Origine et progrès d'une not hinder them from finding, or which perhaps science nouvelle (1768). By publishing it, Mercier caused them to find, luminous views on different La Rivière helped spread the ideas of his master; points. It is, however, a common fact in the but at the same time he added to it a dangerous history of science, that a false theory, elaborated theory which was afterward very injurious to the by superior minds, advances them in the path of popularity of the economists. We mean his theory truth, which it is afterward easier for their succes- of despotism, to which we shall return a little sors to follow, and to whom is reserved the honor further on. - Five years after Mercier's book, there appeared another important work, so far as it was a general exposition of physiocratic ideas, that of the abbé Baudeau, a celebrated publicist of the time, who was converted to the doctrine of Quesnay while trying to refute, in his Ephémérides, the letters of Le Trosne, barrister of the king in the bailiwick of Orleans, and who wielded at an early day a vigorous pen in the phalanx of the economists. Baudeau published in 1771, l'Introduction à la Philosophie économique. It is not only one of the most remarkable of his writings; but in it he surpassed Mercier, and a fortiori Mirabeau, in his method, clearness and style. The year before he had published in the Ephémérides, and printed separately (but only a small number of copies of it) his Erplication du tableau économique. About the same time there appeared in the Ephémérides, whose management Baudeau had intrusted to Dupont de Nemours, two short catechisms of the doctrine, one by Turgot, without his signature, and the other under the name of the margrave of Baden. Turgot's short Traité on the formation and distribution of wealth, is remarkable in every way. It is a résumé of the ideas of Quesnay and Gournay, as explained by their most eminent disciple. It would be approximately a résumé of the general principles of the science laid down by Smith, if Turgot had not stopped at the physiocratic theory, on a fundamental point, that of the productiveness of the different kinds of labor, in consequence of which he was led to make the agricultural class the productive class par excellence, and the rest of mankind the salaried class, excepting, however, landowners, whom he calls the disposable class, disposable for the general wants of society, such as war, the administration of justice, etc. Turgot's book, written in 1766, appeared for the first time in vols. 11 and 12 of the Ephémérides, toward the end of 1769 and the commencement of 1770. The brief compendium of the margrave of Baden, published in 1772, in the Ephémérides du citoyen, which has also been attributed to Dupont de Nemours, and is perhaps the work of the two disciples, is not of equal importance, but is remarkable in many regards. It contains the principles of the physiocratic school, more abridged than in Turgot's work, condensed into formulæ synoptically arranged, and, as Dupont de The date of this publication is important in the history of the science. We have remarked, in an essay relating to the origin and filiation of the term political economy (Journal des Economistes, vol. xxiii., pp. 11, 217): ** Eugene Daire, after stating (xlv. of his Introduction to the Works of Turgot,' in the Collection des principaux Economistes) that this work was printed about 1766, inclines us to believe in the notice of Mercier de la Rivière (same vol., p. 430), that this date is not exact, and that Turgot's treatise appeared later. Eugene Daire was mistaken a second time; we have before us a copy of the edition of 1766 in 12mo." If Eugene Daire was mistaken, it was only in part, and we ourselves are also mistaken. The volume of which we speak, bore the last date which we mention; but this date points to the time when Turgot was writing, during his intendancy. The first edition seems to have been the separate one formed of the article in the Ephémérides, part of which appeared in the 11th vol., at the end of 1769, and a part in the 12th vol., at the commencement of 1770. | Nemours says, in the form of a genealogical tree. The title is a very curious one for the time, and leads us to suppose that the school and its master, who was still living, had abandoned the word physiocracy for the title political economy, not in the sense of administration as a synonym of pub lic economy, the oiconomia of Aristotle, which is to society what domestic economy is to the family (in which sense it was employed by Rousseau in 1755, in the article Economie Politique of the Encyclopédie), but in a scientific sense, to designate the science of the phenomena relating to wealth and human labor; a sense in which it had been used by James Stewart after 1767, who entitled his treatise on these subjects "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy," and, some years before, by Count Verri, in a work published in 1763, and entitled, Memorie storiche sulla Economia publica dello stato di Milano (Historical memoirs relative to the political economy of the state of Milan). Verri and Stewart seem to have been the first to adopt the name most generally given to the science in our time, a name which Turgot did not employ, which was scarcely ever used by Adam Smith, and which appeared only in the dictionary of the French academy in 1814, although it appeared in a book at the commencement of the sixteenth century, which, however, does not answer to its title, the Traité de l'Economie politique, by Antoyne de Montchrétien. After these various authoritative publications of the physiocratic school we cite, in conclusion, the principal work of Le Trosne; which appeared in 1777, under the title, De l'ordre social, followed by an elementary treatise on value, circulation, industry, and home and foreign commerce. This work contains two very distinct parts: the first, consisting of a series of lectures, is a dogmatic exposition of the principles of the school. In the second part, which bears the special title De l'Intérêt social, Le Trosne treats of value, circulation, industry, home and foreign commerce, with a remarkable understanding of these different subjects. This was the last general manifesto of the pure physiocratic school, properly so called. When it appeared, Quesnay was dead; Turgot was a minister, and had anticipated great reforms in the constitution of labor, which were to be effected by the constituent assembly, and Adam Smith had published his book after ten years of retirement, and of meditation on this great work. -V. Political Ideas of the Physiocrates. Having reached this point in our historical deduction concerning the physiocrates, we must direct the attention of the reader for an instant to the political ideas held by this phalanx of philosophers, or which were attributed to them. Mercier-La Rivière, discussing the purely political question of the form of government, decided in favor of the power of one man. Dupont explains to us the principal motive which, according to him, Mercier-La Rivière and the abbé Baudeau had in accepting such a doctrine, "thinking," he says, that it would be easier to persuade a prince than |