The Physiocrats
Henry Higgs
[Part 3]
THE artist has not yet arisen who has chosen to paint a great
historical picture of the scene which M. de Lomenie l describes as
follows:
"On the 20th December 1774, amidst the enthusiastic hopes to
which a new reign gave birth, five months after Turgot's entrance into
the ministry, a considerable number of persons, attired in mourning,
were gathered in the principal room of a townhouse in the Rue
Vaugirard [at Paris]. At the end of the room had been placed a large
pedestal surmounted by a marble bust, and the whole assembly being
turned towards this bust in an attitude of sorrow and respect, the
master of the house pronounced a speech of a rather odd character,
especially for the epoch."[1] "Gentlemen," began the
orator, "we have just lost our master; the veritable benefactor
of humanity belongs to this earth only by the memory of his good deeds
and the imperishable record of his achievements."
He goes on to declare that Socrates[2] had been said to have drawn
down morality from heaven. Their master had done more, he had made it
germinate upon earth. Religion was a solace and a ruling power only to
a few elevated souls. The terrestrial guide of conduct based upon the
produit net appealed to the reason and intelligence of every man,
persuading him by the enlightened pursuit of self- interest to promote
the welfare of mankind at large. The speaker, now left, he says, the
leader of the band, appeals to his hearers to carry on their immortal
founder's work, and further the progress of "the science which
shall one day render societies peaceful and prosperous, and men
reasonable and virtuous." And he concludes by apostrophising the
bust on which they gazed: "O venerable bust, that represents to
us the features of our master,"[3] etc. The silent bust which
looked down upon this somewhat theatrical mise en scene was that of
Quesnay. The extravagant and stilted eloquence, its pomp redeemed by
sincerity and affection, was the characteristic language of the Friend
of Humanity, the Marquis of Mirabeau, refraining, even now, with pious
fidelity, from speaking the doctor's name. We can guess who were many
of the disciples gathered round, but none of them was so popular or
authoritative an exponent of physiocracy as Mirabeau himself, and
several of them were his own proselytes. His indefatigable industry
and ardent zeal had spread the fame of the Physiocrats and their
system through all the countries of Europe.[4]
He brought to the service of Quesnay in 1757 a literary reputation
already firmly and widely established, a considerable amount of social
influence, and valuable resources of time and energy, as well as of
money. The history of his family a "tempestuous race," he
himself confesses is, as recounted by M. de Lomenie, one of the most
striking and fascinating in the whole range of biographical
literature, and is not without importance for the student of his
works. He was born on the 4th October 1715, the year of the death of
Louis XIV., and died on the 13th July 1789, the day before the
storming of the Bastille. His life thus coincides with what is usually
regarded as the inception and the triumph of the French Revolution.
After serving with bravery in the army, he succeeded, in 1737, when
only twenty-two years of age, to his father's title and estates, and
gave up the profession of arms. He seems early to have cherished the
ambition of becoming a great philosophical statesman, and of
aggrandising the honour and power of his own family.
He married a wife whose great expectations, her only recommendation,
became a veritable apple of discord. When her unspeakable misconduct,
approaching if not over-stepping the bounds of madness, and the
sensational follies of his famous but dissolute and spendthrift son,
wounded his family pride, he acted with the despotism of a Highland,
chief smarting under a sense of dishonour to his clan. But in 1757
these troubles were yet to come. He had been the friend of
Vauvenargues and an acquaintance of Montesquieu. The system of
government appeared to him hopelessly unsuited to the needs of the
nation, and far better than most of his contemporaries he saw the real
power which lay dormant in the people the force of numbers. "He
was," says Victor Hugo, "at once in advance of and behind
his age." "He presents in himself," says de
Tocqueville, "the spectacle of a feudal character invaded by
democratic ideas." He had argued in the first part of LAmi des
Homines for a multiplication of small peasant proprietors; but he
allowed Quesnay to persuade him that the true ideal was the maximising
of the produit net of the country, which was to be better achieved by
an economical exploitation of land on the larger scale. He had also
urged, following Cantillon, that imports of corn should be encouraged
and exports discouraged; but, as we have seen, this too was in
opposition to Quesnay's views, for the doctor considered such a
course, in the long-run, inimical to a large food supply, since low
prices of corn would discourage its national production. But while
giving way upon these points he remained the most independent member
of the school. Utilising the popularity acquired by LAmi des Hommes,
he proceeded, after allying himself with Quesnay, to publish
continuations of the work (part 4, no imprint, 4to and 12 mo, 1758 ;
parts 5 and 6, do. do., 1760), making a whole of three quarto or six
duodecimo volumes. In these later parts the co-operation of Quesnay is
evident.
Part 4 contains a Dialogue entre le Surintendant D'O. et L.D.H., a
reprint of the Memoire sur les Etats provinciaux, with a reply to an
anonymous criticism of Naveau's, and a series of (separately paged)
Questions interessantes sur la Population, r Agriculture, et le
Commerce proposees aux Academies et autres societcs sqav antes des
Provinces, asking for local information upon agricultural conditions,
and also suggesting some general considerations somewhat in the style
of Berkeley's Querist. These questions, the reader is informed, are
not by the author of the Memoire sur les tats provinciaux} The 5th
part contains the essay which Mirabeau had written for the prize of
the Berne Agricultural Society in 1759, on the reasons why Switzerland
should give preference to the cultivation of corn. The essay is
followed by extracts from the first six books of an English work
(translated from T. Hale's Compleat Body of Husbandry, 1756).
The 6th part consists of a Reponse a VEssai sur les Fonts et
Chaussees, La Voierie, et Les Corvces, and of the Tableau Oeconomique
avec ses explications. In the same year with this later part, 1760,
appeared his Theorie de Hmpot, 4to and 12 mo, without imprint, which
immediately had an enormous vogue. It was a spirited and able attack
upon the financial administration of the country, and especially upon
the farmers-general, whom Mirabeau regarded as parasites preying upon
the vitals of the nation.[6] The tax- gatherer is never a welcome
visitor, even when he is the direct representative of local or central
authority; but when he presents himself in the guise of a speculator
whose personal profit or loss turns upon the amount of taxation he can
collect, whose agents have no bowels of compassion, no willingness to
hear or ability to accept excuse or appeal, and who violate the public
conscience by relentless severity, while their employer is seen to be
making a considerable fortune at the public expense, then indeed an
outcry against him will awaken innumerable echoes, and the Theorie de
V ImpotqjxzaA like wildfire. "Seigneur," more or less,[7]
all with a little money, and almost all capable of rendering you such
service as you require; and yet you can no longer obtain service
without money, nor money to pay for service. In plain language your
people are holding back from you, without knowing it, for they are
still well disposed to your person even though they be not to the
agents of your authority." And he puts into the mouth of the king
the soliloquy that his position as the head of his people is justified
only so long as, and only because, he costs them less than he is worth
to them.
This remorseless test, "Are you worth what you cost?" must
have been like acid to a raw wound, for the colonial empire was
falling to pieces, and within a year the French had been driven out of
Canada and of India. He makes the king add: "Where my people
loses its rights, there is the limit of my empire." Taxes are
really of the nature of voluntary offerings rather than forced
contributions. The sovereign has not the right to tax his subjects
without their participation and assent, and the collection of taxes
should be handed over to the representatives of the people
themselves.[8] The powerful financial interest, fastening upon such
passages, where exhortation is mingled with barely- veiled menace,
denounced the Ami des Hommcs to the king, who caused him to be
imprisoned (16th December 1760) in the chateau of Vincennes, which was
afterwards to receive the author's son. The anger of the king was
mollified by Madame de Pompadour[9] and Mirabeau's friends, and on
Christmas Eve he allowed him to be liberated under orders to reside at
his property at Bignon and not in Paris.
This sharp reminder of the limits of freedom kept the Physiocrats
silent, though not inactive, for two and a Half years. In 1763
Mirabeau made a convert of Du Pont de Nemours, who, writing in 1769 of
the Theorie de I'lmpot, says: " This sublime work has, to my
knowledge, been multiplied by eighteen editions." Beyond the
abolition of the practice of farming out the taxes it recommends
reforms in the direction of making taxation lighter, simpler, and more
direct. It urged that the tax on salt should be reduced, with the
object of increasing the total yield (a recognition of the principle,
now well known under the name of the elasticity of the exchequer),
that there should be a special tax upon tobacco farms, and that apart
from the Post Office, the Mint, and the Domaine (crown lands and crown
dues) the rest of the national revenue should be derived from a tax
upon land. This is the Impot unique with modifications. The work
contains many valuable remarks, and is of real importance in the
history of financial theory.
In 1763 appeared the Philosophic rurale, Amsterdam (Paris), 4to,
which presents perhaps the most complete and magisterial account of
the views of the physiocratic school, and was called by Grimm "the
Pentateuch of the sect." Daire, who shows little sympathy for
Mirabeau, declares it to be "the best, or rather the least bad,
of all his works"; but he would have expressed himself more
respectfully had he known the large share taken in the work by
Quesnay, who, according to Du Pont, inspired it and wrote the whole of
the seventh chapter himself.[10] An abridgment of it, under the title
Elements de philosophie rurale, was published in 12 mo at The Hague in
1767. Of his other works it is sufficient to mention Reponse du
correspondant a son banquier, 1759, 4to (a reply to Forbonnais);
Lettres sur le commerce des grains, Amsterdam and Paris, 1768, I2mo;
Les Jiconomiques, Amsterdam and Paris, 1769-72, 2 vols. 4to, or 4
vols. 12mo; Lettres d?un ingenieur . . . pour servir de suite a FAmi
des Hommes, Avignon, 1770, 12 mo; Lettres Economiques, Amsterdam,
1770, I2mo; Les Devoirs, Milan, 1770; La science, ou les Droits et les
Devoirs de rhomme, Lau- sanne, 1774, I2mo; Lettre sur la legislation,
Berne, J 775> 3 vols. 1 2 mo; Supplement a la theorie de La Haye,
1776; Entreticn d'un jeune Prince avec son gouverneur par L.D.H.
Publie par M.G. . . . [1'Abbe Grivel], Paris, 1785, 4 vols. Svo and
I2mo; Education civile d'un Prince, Doulac, 1788, Svo; Reve d'un
goutteux, ou le Principal (end of 1788), an octavo pamphlet, his hopes
of the Constituent Assembly about to meet and Hommes a celcbrerpour
avoir bien nitrite de rhumanite par leurs ecrits sur ? Economic
politique. Ouvrage publie' par P. Bosco- vitch, ami de Vauteur,
Bassano, 2 vols. Svo. Many of these works were announced as by L.D.H.
(L'Ami des Homines), but the later ones appeared sometimes anonymously
and in foreign countries by the care of his friends. Les Devoirs had
been seen through the press by the Marquis of Longo, professor of
political economy at Milan. It urged that, in the interests of
society, men should receive economic instruction as a guide to
conduct. And so elementary education should be compulsory, and even
free where the recipient cannot afford to pay.
It is sometimes supposed that the French Revolution destroyed the
influence of the Physiocrats. But in truth their reputation in France
had in 1789 long been on the wane. The year 1776 struck it three blows
from which it never entirely recovered. The fall of Turgot, though he
is not strictly to be reckoned as one of the sect, paved the way to
their discomfiture. The publication of the Wealth of Nations
more slowly but effectually destroyed their authority by sapping the
scientific basis on which it reposed. And finally, in 1776, began the
scandalous dissemination of lies and [unreadable]
Mirabeau's
wife and children which shook the Friend of Men from his pedestal of
popularity, and dragged him through the mire as a hideous impostor,
whose private life, at hopeless variance with his public precept,
would show the teacher of morality unmasked as a monster of hypocrisy.
In his well-known Lettres de Vincennes the younger Mirabeau ridicules
the Physiocrats, and does not spare their chief: "It will sooner
or later be seen," he says, " that my father owes only to
his own generosity the title of LAmi des Hommes ... a man who calls
himself tender, compassionate, the legislator of kings, the benefactor
of humanity at large, and is the oppressor of his wife and children."
"I know," whines the young profligate, "that
appearances are against me. But so they are against my father, who
imprisons me. Facts can be so easily distorted. It might, for
instance, be said that he had ruined himself in creating a political
economy that he had compromised two millions of the fortune of his
wife and children, while protesting against luxury and debts; that he
had persisted in founding a sect at Paris and living there to the
detriment of his means while declaiming vigorously against absentee
landlords; and that after denouncing lettres de cachet in his writings
he had employed fifty-three of them against his wife and children, of
whom all but one are under lock and key. "No doubt," he
suggests, "my father could defend himself against all these
charges. Why, then, will he not hear a defence from me?"
The labours of M. de Lomenie, exposing the prejudice and
misrepresentation of M. de Montigny, have rehabilitated in great
measure the economist's reputation, and in his later years the orator
of the Revolution rallied to his father's side and loaded him with
praise and respect. But it concerns us to note that the immediate
effect of these attacks was, on the one hand, to weaken the elder
Mirabeau's popular repute, while, on the other, they drove him to
absorb himself more and more in economic writing as a distraction from
his family troubles. He left 400 quartos in manuscript written by his
own hand, forty published volumes, several contributions to journals,
a number of unpublished writings, and an immense correspondence,
exchanging upwards of 4000 letters with his brother alone. Other
branches of his activity will be mentioned in the next chapter. "Had
my hand been of bronze," he said in his old age, "it would
long since have been worn out."
Among the "persons attired in mourning" who "turned
towards the bust of Quesnay in an attitude of sorrow and respect,"
there was one notable gap. There was a vacant place for an eminent
young disciple returning from Poland to serve with Turgot, Du Pont de
Nemours (b. 18th December 1739, d. ;th August 18-7), who, converted by
Mirabeau in 1763, became the amiable hard-working hack of his masters,
editing the works of Quesnay (Physiocratie y 1767-8), and the economic
Journals of the school, besides becoming the secretary, biographer,
and friend of Turgot, a trusted adviser of foreign princes, and
finally a member of the Constituent Assembly. The bibliography of his
own writings, appended to M. Schelle's excellent monograph, contains
112 separate entries in addition to new editions and translations, and
one of these entries alone covers some 120 articles in the
Epheme'rides^vthile others embrace a number of separate writings.
In 1763 the nation stood, at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War,
literally bankrupt. The question of finance was one of life and death.
An anonymous pamphlet, La Richesse de VfLtat 1763, 8vo, written by a
state official, Roussel de la Tour, proposed to replace all taxes by a
progressive poll-tax. Du Pont, then twenty-three years of age,
criticised it in a pamphlet entitled Reflexions sur la Richesse de r&tat.
Taxes really fall, he says, on the land, and should be levied directly
on landowners. This pamphlet interested Quesnay and Mirabeau (whose
exile to Bignon had not yet been cancelled) for two reasons. They
found in it a statement of their own doctrine; and they concluded,
since the Government allowed it to circulate, that they might venture
to renew their own activity. Mirabeau's exile was now soon brought to
an end. Du Pont was invited to one of Quesnay's meetings in the
entresol of Mme. de Pompadour, and was definitively recruited as a
member of the school the same year, 1763. "Let us have a care of
him," said Quesnay to Mirabeau; "he will speak when we are
dead."
On the 25th May 1763, the edict of 1754, permitting internal freedom
in the corn trade, was re-enacted with extensions; nobles might trade
in corn without derogation, and corn was to be free from tolls for
transport. The edict was suspended by Terray in 1770; but on Turgot's
accession to office in 1774, his first act was a still more liberal
edict permitting virtual freedom of export and import the preamble,
drafted by Du Pont, following very closely the views of Quesnay in his
article "Grains." The new policy was de- signed, says the
edict, "to animate and extend the cultivation of the land, whose
produce is the most real and certain wealth of a state to maintain
abundance by granaries and the entry of foreign corn; to prevent corn
from falling to a price which would discourage the producer to remove
monopoly by shutting out private licence in favour of free and full
competition ftand by maintaining among different countries that
communication of exchange of superfluities for necessaries which is so
conformable to the order established by Divine Providence."
The Physiocrats appeared to have gained a large part of their cause.
But they recognised that it was necessary, in Quesnay's phrase, to "act
upon opinion."[11] Popular prejudice feared that rings and
corners would force up the price of corn to famine point for private
profit by sending it abroad. It was necessary to educate the public
upon the safeguards which "the obvious and simple system of
natural liberty," as Adam Smith called it, carries within itself;
and the Physiocrats therefore sought for a journal in which they might
circulate their ideas. Such a journal they found in a supplement to
the Gazette du Commerce, founded 1763, entitled Journal de V
agriculture, du commerce, et des finances, of which Du Pont was
appointed editor in September 1765, probably on the recommendation of
Trudaine.[12] The proprietors, instigated by the opponents of the
school,[13] dismissed him after the issue of the November number,
1766, and the economists were obliged to find another organ. The
Epheme'rides du citoyen, ou Chronique de V esprit national, a
bi-weekly paper, had been founded in 1765 by the Abbe Baudeau on the
model of our Spectator. The Abbe defended the mercantile sys- tem, but
admitted articles criticising his views, and to one such article by Le
Trosne he proposed to reply in nine articles, the first of which he
sent to Du Font's Journal in 1766. Du Pont published it, with some
annotations. "You argue," he said, "that nations grow
rich or are ruined 'according to the balance of foreign trade. But
surely you will admit that a nation may have no foreign trade and yet
be ruined. How does your theory account for this?" Baudeau
visited Du Pont, discussed the matter,. said he had found his road to
Damascus, and threw in his lot with the Physiocrats.
The Ephemerides suspended publication for two months, and in January
1767 reappeared with a new sub-title, Ephemerides du citoyen, on
Bibliotheque ties sciences morales et politiques, a monthly duodecimo.
In May 1768 Baudeau received ecclesiastical preferment in Poland. Du
Pont, now employed in Limousin with Turgot, sacrificed his position to
come to Paris and take over the post of editor, which he retained till
the Journal was suppressed by Government (November 1772). The Margrave
of Baden next appointed him Privy Councillor, and drew him to
Carlsruhe, where he remained until (July 1774) he started for Poland
to serve as tutor to the son of Prince Czartoryski. Arrived in Poland,
he heard from Turgot of his accession to the ministry, and was offered
a place, which he did not feel justified in accepting immediately. In
September, however, Turgot formally nominated him inspector-general of
manufactures, and Du Pont rendered Turgot valuable service till they
fell together in 1776.
The Memoire sur les municipaliteS) Turgot's plan of reform in local
government, was the work of his pen; and when Turgot died in 1781 he
wrote an account of his life and writings (1782), and many years later
edited his works in nine octavo volumes (1809-1811).
In 1782 he negotiated with England the treaty recognising the
American Independence. In 1786 he was entrusted with the negotiation
of the commercial treaty with England. In 1787 he took part in the
Assembled des notables. In 1789 he was elected to the Constituent
Assembly,[14] struggled for freedom and for an economic policy,
opposed the assignats and the Jacobins, and, after running many
dangers, in 1793 voluntarily exiled himself to America. He came back
in 1802, and took office under Louis XVIII., but with the return of
Napoleon he again quitted France for America, where he spent the two
remaining years of his life.
So much of history and biography is necessary to the comprehension of
the march and influence of the physiocratic school, Of Du Font's other
writings space does not permit mention. Many of the articles written
by himself and others in the Journal and the &phemerides appeared
as separate publications. The Physiocratie, 1 767-8,2 consisted of
several such articles by Quesnay, edited by Du Pont, and a pamphlet of
1768, De Vorigine et des pr ogres d'une science nouvelle, has for many
years been the fountain of the history of the Physiocrats.[16] It is
now seen to contain numerous inaccuracies, some of which are due to Du
Pont's anxiety to repel the sectarian charge which had been urged
against the school. To him all economists worked together, their
differences were less important than their points of agreement. "You
are an economist like ourselves, my dear Say," he wrote to J. B.
Say at the end of his life, when the French Adam Smith had tried to
dissociate himself from the school of Quesnay. And in sketching the
origin of the school he declared that Quesnay and Gournay were its two
founders. Of Gournay, pending the publication of Professor Oncken's
volume, little more is known than is contained in the 6,loge of his
friend Turgot (1759). He was born in 1712, engaged in commerce at
Cadiz (1727-1744), travelled over Europe (1744- 1751), came back to
France, was made an intcndant of commerce (1751), and went about the
country, taking Turgot with him on some occasions, on his visits of
official inspection. He chafed at the trammels which harassed trade,
recommended the study of economics, especially the writings of
Cantillon, Tucker, Culpeper, Child, 1 and other English authors, and
was in favour of internal free trade and of light customs duties. He
died in 1759, held few of the peculiar doctrines of the Physiocrats
with regard to land and taxation, and it is doubtful whether he ever
had any personal acquaintance with Quesnay himself. Du Pont attributes
to Gournay the origin of the famous maxim Laissez-faire,
Laissez-passer, which Gournay indeed seems to have popularised. But a
study of Turgot's feloge de Gournay shows that the expression
Laissez-faire is really due to Le Gendre, a merchant who attended a
deputation to Colbert about 1680 to protest against excessive state
regulation of industry, and pleaded for liberty of action in the
phrase ^Laissez-nous faire? Bois- guillebert and D'Argenson had used
it also before Gournay, who may, however, be said to have made it
classical in its later form. His personal influence stimulated many
persons, notably Turgot; and Du Pont mentions a number of writers as
belonging to his school "the commercial rather than the
agricultural advocates of free trade.
The next eminent Physiocrat to require mention is Mercier de la
Riviere (1720-1794), a magistrate who filled for some time the post of
Governor of Martinique, and wrote an important treatise, already
referred to, LOrdre naturel et esseniiel des societes politiques,
1767, which Adam Smith has described as " the most distinct and
best connected account of the doctrine " of the sect. It is
composed in the "grand style," to which the Scotch economist
was not insensible, and like many of the chief works of the school was
prepared under the eye of Quesnay, though the author omits the usual
eulogies of him, and moved Mirabeau to write in later years, "I
have seen him at work in his dressing-gown six whole weeks in the
entresol of the doctor, casting and recasting his work, and then
renounce his father and his mother."[19] [Quesnay and Mirabeau.]
In 1767 the school was still young. Daire asserts that the public had
only a choice between the laconics of Quesnay and the disheartening
prolixities of Mirabeau, whose oddities of style, diffusion of matter,
and profusion of figures were, he says, enough to kill political
economy on the spot.[20] Exception must be taken to this statement, so
far as the writings of Du Pont and Abeille and the articles of the
Journal are concerned. But it is none the less true that the Ordre
naturel et essentiel was at once warmly greeted. Du Pont called it "sublime,"
"eloquent," " ogical and closely reasoned," and
the Russian ambassador, Prince Galitzin, wrote to Voltaire that it was
"far superior to Montesquieu."
The followers of Colbert and lovers of state- regulation had attacked
the Physiocrats from the political side. On one occasion Carl
Friedrich of Baden, who had come to Paris on purpose to see his master
Mirabeau, asked with naive sincerity whether it might not be hoped
that, with the spread of physiocratic knowledge, sovereigns would
become unnecessary and be reformed out of existence. Mirabeau admitted
that their role would be much restricted, but the public domains would
need an owner, and his duty would be to preserve social order and
encourage social instruction. The question addressed to the
Physiocrats was, "If your system says 'Hands off!' to the state,
and begs it to let things alone what do you consider the functions of
the state to be?" Mercier de la Riviere attempts to create a
philosophy of the state. Newton and others had discovered great laws
governing the harmonious order of the physical world. There were
surely similar laws governing the moral order of the social world, and
the motto of the book is a sentence from Malebranche's Traite de
Morale: "Lordre est la Lot inviolable des esprits et rien n'est
rcgl s'il riy est conformed The general plan of creation had provided
natural laws for the government of all things, and man could be no
exception to the rule. He needed only to know the conditions which
conduce to his greatest happiness to follow and observe them. All the
ills of humanity arise from ignorant opposition to these laws, study
of which will show that the welfare of each member of society is
inseparably bound up with the welfare of others, and the attainment of
this common welfare will dispose mankind to grateful adoration of the
beneficent Being by whose order this perfect cosmos is maintained.
The organisation of man proves that he is a social animal, designed
by nature to live in society. In this state of society there are no
rights without duties, no duties without rights. The right of self-
preservation implies the right to property; but the faculties of men
are by nature , unequal, which gives rise to a natural inequality of
conditions. Individual property in the products of the soil carries
with it a physical necessity for individual property in the soil
itself. Increased wealth is the mediate object of society, as a
condition of increased happiness; and this happiness is enhanced by an
increase of numbers, rendered possible only by additional production.
But the right to property would be null without the liberty of using
it, and social liberty is a branch of property. The natural and
essential order of society is thus unarbitrary, simple, evident,
immutable, and the most advantageous to the human race. It binds
together prince and people in common interest, its evident character,
publicly recognised, makes it socially dominant, despotic without
violence. Two social institutions are necessary: (i) Magistrates,
distinct from the legislature, to resolve doubts and put into
execution all laws of whose justice they are satisfied and no other
(to act differently would be as if a doctor should follow with his
patient a course which he knows to be mortal; (2) a tutelary
authority, the depositary of the public power, and enacting laws in
accordance with justice (for the right of law-giving rests on the duty
of not enacting laws evidently bad). This power must be single and
indivisible. A so-called legislative body is not a body but a
multitude of units momentarily brought together without unity of
views. If they differ, they are not all perfectly wise: if they agree,
one would do as well as many, or better, since it is contrary to order
that authority should be divided among many hands.
The best tutelary authority is a single sovereign who can gain
nothing by ill government, but has the greatest interest in governing
well. He must be hereditary, not having a mere usufruct but a
fee-simple interest in the nation, co-proprietor of the produce of its
soil. Despotism is held in horror, because we confound what it has
been (an arbitrary despotism which is fatal) with what it might be (a
legal despotism, which is the most advantageous form of government).
In fact an arbitrary despot commands but does not govern, for as his
caprice is above law, there are, under him, neither rights, laws, nor
nation, "a nation being a political body whose members are united
by a chain of reciprocal rights and duties, inseparably combining
governor and governed in one common interest."
Thus far the first twenty-six chapters. The remaining eighteen are of
more direct economic interest, and are the only ones printed by Daire
in his collection of the Physiocrats. The sovereign, as already
stated, is co-proprietor with landowners, a partnership involving
mutual rights and duties and mutual interests, and has a share in
their produit net. In the origin of society this share was at the
expense of the first landowners, though even to them the kingly office
was of more utility than their contribution. Subsequent holders of
land have taken it subject to this royal charge, so that it has ceased
to be a burden upon individuals. But if the sovereign takes more than
his proper share, he injures his partners and thereby injures himself.
Government exists to secure the rights of property, and any arbitrary
element in taxation is not only unwise and suicidal, but essentially
unjust, for it is an attack upon and an infringement of the very
rights which it is the business of Government to protect. An
invariable sum of taxation would be unfair, either to the sovereign or
the landowner, for the produit net varies with the seasons. The proper
form of taxation is therefore a proportional share of the produit net.
From each harvest must be set aside the whole costs of production, for
these are the necessary elements of new wealth, and the surplus must
be divided part to the landowner, part to the king. It must be
collected direct, for if it be imposed upon commodities or upon
persons, its equity and incidence cease to be evident and become
arbitrary, which is its condemnation, to say nothing of the expense of
collection, the taxation twice over (once when the material is
produced and once when it is manufactured), and the fact that part of
the taxes will fall upon the sovereign himself.
Every vendor is a purchaser, and every purchaser a vendor. The
liberty of individuals holds as well for external as for internal
trade, and the different nations should be regarded by the economist
as if they all formed part of one nation. International freedom of
trade would enable each nation to pursue its greatest natural
advantage ; and it is the interest of a single nation to adopt this
view, even though it be not adopted by other nations. Industry and
commerce are in themselves unproductive. A weaver buys fifty francs'
worth of material, works it up, and sells it for 200. He has, it is
said, quadrupled its value; but this is not so. He has added to its
original value an outside value, that of 150 francs' worth of material
which he has consumed in clothing, food, etc., while engaged on his
work. Addition is not multiplication. If there were no one to take the
finished product off his hands, this additional value would be
irretrievably lost. But if I let you an acre of land for ten francs,
you spend ten more in cultivation, and obtain a harvest of thirty
francs, the acre returns you your rent and your expenses, and a
surplus over and above. The role of industry and of commerce which
makes values change hand, but does not multiply them, is thus narrowly
restricted, and the main economic ideal of a nation is to maximise its
net products.
Adam Smith remarks of the Aconomistes that "in their works,
which are very numerous, and which treat not only of what is properly
called Political Economy, or of the nature and causes of the wealth of
nations, but of every other branch of the system of civil government,
all follow implicitly, and without any sensible variation, the
doctrine of M. Quesnai. There is, upon this account, little variety in
the greater part of their works." And then he adds the statement,
already referred to (p. 66 .), that "the most distinct and best
connected account of their doctrine" is given by Mercier de la
Riviere. But La Riviere's book, which deals especially with the
political side of their teaching, was not entirely accepted by some
members of the school in its plea for an enlightened despotism.
Mirabeau and Du Pont, Abeille and Morellet, for instance, while
agreeing in the letter with most of these opinions, differed from them
in spirit, and even, later on, in practice. As for Turgot, Mirabeau
relates that Du Pont repeated to him Turgot's words when Du Pont was
leaving for Poland: "I am not an encyclopaedist, for I believe in
God: I am not an economiste, for I should wish to have no king."
We shall have some glimpses of other members of the school in later
chapters; but space does not admit of any such detailed account of
their lives and work as it has been thought best to give of the four
chief writers of the school. Mention must, however, be made of the
following works as among the most important not yet referred to.
The Abbe Baudeau's (1730-1792) chief service to the school consisted
in his editing the Ephemerides and the Nouvelles Ephemerides, to which
he contributed largely. His Premiere introduction a la philosophtie
economique ou analyse des tats polices, Paris, 1771, deserves special
attention among his separate writings, and has been reprinted in the
collection of Daire.
Le Trosne (1728-1780), a lawyer of ability and a distinguished pupil
of Pothier, is best known by a work in two volumes, the first entitled
De Vordre social^ and the second De Vinteret social, 8vo, Paris, 1777,
a clear and methodical exposition of the physiocratic system. Turgot
distributed broadcast throughout his province in 1765, Le Trosne's La
Liberti du Commerce des Grains, toujours utile et jamais nuisible,
with a covering memorandum in which he gives it the highest praise.
Saint-Pe"ravy (1732-1789) is remembered chiefly for his Memoire
sur les effets de Vimpot indirect sur le revenu des proprietaires de
biens fonds, qui a remporte le prix propose par la societe royale d
agriculture de Limoges en ij6j, 1768, I2mo, Londres et Paris, which
owes its fame in part to the Observations sur la memoire de M.
Saint-Peravy of Turgot, the president of the society, which he had
himself founded in his province. The memoir supported the impot
unique.
Abeille (1719-1807), secretary of the Agricultural Society of
Brittany, a contributor first to the Journal and then to the &phemerides,
wrote Lettres d'un negociant sur la nature du commerce des grains,
Paris, 1763; Reflexions sur la police des grains en A ngleterre et en
France, Paris, 1764; Principes sur la liberte du commerce des grains,
Paris, 1768; Faits qui ont influe sur la chertt des grains en France
et en A ngleterre, Paris, 1768, and other pamphlets, besides editing
the Observations of his society. He became inspector-general of
manufactures in 1768, deserted the school, and became "anti-liberal."
He had long been jealous of Quesnay's fondness for Du Pont.[22]
The Abbe Roubaud (1730-1789) at one time edited the Journal, and
later the Gazette du Commerce, in a physiocratic spirit, until it was,
at Turgot's expense, and at the commencement of his ministry,
amalgamated with Baudeau's Nouvelles Ephemerides. His Recreations
economiques^ Amsterdam and Paris, 1770, attempted to refute the
Dialogues of Galiani.[23] He contributed to the Ephemerides and was
exiled from Paris by Maurepas on Turgot's fall in 1776, like Du Pont
and Baudeau. A jesting contemporary compared the sound of the names of
the chief Physiocrats to that of a pack of hounds, Mirabeau, Turgot,
Baudeau, Roubaud!
If we add the agricultural writers, H. Patullo, Essai sur r
amelioration des Terres, 1759? and the Marquis de Turbilly, Memoire
sur les defrichements, 1760, to the authors mentioned in the next
chapter, we have a tolerably complete list of Quesnay's disciples.
NOTES
1. Les Mirabeait) vol. i. p. 335.
2. The Physiocrats pretended that Quesnay resembled Socrates in
personal appearance. A lady-in-waiting to Mme. de Pompadour, Mme. du
Hausset, whose Mbnoires furnish some biographical details of the
doctor, respected his probity and his learning (which she did not
understand), but irreverently calls him a monkey-face.
3. The speech, which was printed in the Nouvelles EpJu ! mt ! rides,
1775, vol. i., may be read in Oncken's Quesnay, pp. I sqq. Another tog
of Quesnay was published in vol. v. the same year, by the Comte
d'Albon.
4. He says of Quesnay, "I, like posterity, owe everything to
him. He owes me nothing but his repute." And de Lomenie justly
adds, "In effect he did owe it to Mirabeau."
5. Du Pont says by Quesnay, Ephemerides, 1768, vol. ii. p. 191. Daire
says by Quesnay and Marivelt, Physiocrates, vol. ii. p. 340.
6. begins the author, an address to the king -- "Seigneur! you
have 20,000,000 of subjects, had lost 200,000 livres in the "system"
of Law, and he always held financiers in abhorrence.
7. Quesnay's article "Grains" had put the number at
16,000,000; see p. 34 supra. Mirabeau probably here makes a concession
to Messance, whose Recherches sur la population, 1766, was designed to
refute UAmi des Homines, so far as it alleged depopulation.
8. See p. 20 supra.
9. She had little sympathy with Mirabeau himself, but was much
attached to Quesnay, who had twice saved her life.
10. Du Pont de Nemours et rcole physiocratique, par G. Schelle,
Paris, 1888, 8vo, p. 25.
11. See p. 45, supra.
12. According to Schelle. De Lomenie tells us it was due to Morellet.
13. But cf. post, p. 81, probably a more accurate account.
14. As a representative of Nemours. There was another Du Pont in the
Assembly. This led to his being distinguished as Du Pont de Nemours.
He acted for some time as President of the Assembly.
15. The title of this volume, designed to indicate "government
in consonance with nature," is accountable for the name
Physiocrats which J. B. Say r conferred upon the school, known to
their con- temporaries as Economistes. Du Pont has long been regarded
as the inventor of the title, but there is more reason for the belief
that it was due to Quesnay.
16. It was really an endeavour to present to the public at Diderot's
suggestion a succinct account of Mercier de la Riviere's Ordre natarcl
et essentiel des socittes politiques, 1767, I vol. 4to, 3 vols. 12mo.
M. Schelle imagines that Adam Smith may have mistaken it for the
larger treatise, which he calls "a little book." Adam Smith
was, however, too well acquainted with the Physiocrats to make a
mistake of this kind ; and we know that he possessed the work of
Mercier de la Riviere himself. See Economic Journal, vol. iv. p. 706
(Dec. 1894).
17. He translated Child and Culpeper into French. See supra, p. 15.
18. See Professor Chicken's Die Maxime Laissez-faire et Laissez-
passer, ihr Ursprung, ihr Werden, Berne, 1 886. The erudite professor
of history, Lord Acton, in his introductory lecture at the University
of Cambridge, refers to ' ' the economic precept Laissez-faire, which
the eighteenth century derived from Colbert" (The Study of
History, 1895, ' p. 30), and quotes from the Comptes rendus de
VInstitut, vol. xxxix. p. 93, in support of this statement ; but, as
stated above, the phrase was really a remonstrance against the settled
policy of Colbert, which was, except for the aim at economic
unification of the nation, directly opposed to this precept.
19. Mr. John Rae has misunderstood the significance of this statement
in his Life of Adam Smith, p. 218.
20. Les Physiocrates, vol. ii. pp. 429, 430.
21. See p. 10 1, post.
22. See Schelle, p. 24, note.
23. See /tor/, p. 117.
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