The Physiocrats
Henry Higgs
[Part 4]
The meeting referred to in the last chapter (p. 49) at the Marquis of
Mirabeau's house in 1774, when he pronounced before the assembled
economists a sort of funeral oration upon Quesnay, was only one of a
long series, which had been suggested by Quesnay himself. From 1767
onwards the marquis had held a succession of Tuesday receptions. A
number of economists came to dinner (some of them bringing or sending
wine), and after dinner were read and discussed papers which were
frequently published later in the Ephiemcrides. Mirabeau describes
these Tuesdays in an interesting letter to Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom
he vainly attempted to convert to physiocracy.[1] They were, he says,
le foyer de la doctrine, were very largely attended, highly
successful, and gave their votaries the name of economistes. Among
those who attended them at one time or another were the Princes of
Weimar, the Marechal de Broglie, the Due de la Rochefoucauld, the Due
de Choiseul, the Mardchal de Belle-Isle, the Due de Nivernois, Turgot,
Malesherbes, Mme. de Pailly, a number of other ladies, and many
distinguished foreigners and notabilities, attracted sometimes by mere
curiosity rather than by scientific sympathy or economic interest.
It was there, says Mirabeau, that Galitzin, the ambassador of Russia,
came to tell Mercier de la Riviere that the Empress Catherine wished
him to come to St. Petersburg to counsel her upon the art of
government. On another occasion Forbonnais had been persuaded to come,
and was introduced by Mirabeau to the Abbe Baudeau. "I want, like
Cicero, to see," said the host, "if two augurs can look each
other in the face without laughing." "I am no augur,"
replied Forbonnais, "but monsieur (the Abbe) wears their robe."
Baudeau whispered to Mirabeau that he was just about to publish a
crushing attack upon Forbonnais in the Ephemerides. "Never mind,"
said the marquis confidentially, "we will gild the pill."
Adam Smith can never have attended the Tuesdays, for he returned to
England before they commenced. After the fall of Turgot (12th May
1776), the marquis was "invited" by Government to suspend
these assemblies, which thus had an existence of nine years. Some of
Mirabeau's Tuesday addresses are extant among his manuscripts in the
Archives Nationales at Paris. One of the papers still unpublished, on
Political Curves by Du Pont,[2] seems to have been an early example of
the diagrammatic (if not mathematical) treatment of economic
questions; and the promise of Daniel Bernoulli to study these curves
promised a serious development of the method, which was left, however,
to other hands in later years. The meetings were a powerful engine for
propagating and popularising the ideas of the school. A still mightier
force, however, was the periodical organ of the school, at first the
Journal de Agriculture as already stated, and later the Ephcmerides.
These contained a great number of interesting and valuable articles
upon a variety of economic subjects by different hands. The best
account of the Ephemerides is that written by Dr. Bauer for Mr.
Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy} The Journal was edited by
Du Pont, from September 1765 to November 1766. Mirabeau says that the
proprietors, impatient at the editor's unpunctuality and inexactitude,
dismissed him from his post.[3] Baudeau then put at the disposal of
the Physiocrats his Ephemerides, founded December 1765. And in January
1767 it became their organ. Baudeau continued to edit it till May
1768, when he was succeeded by Du Pont, who held the post till the
review was discontinued (May 1772; last number dated March 1772). It
is usually stated that it was then suppressed by the
comptroller-general, the Abbe Terray. But Mirabeau throws further
light upon this statement in a letter to his friend, the Marquis of
Longo. The inveterate dilatoriness of Du Pont had, it appears, annoyed
the booksellers, disgusted the subscribers, and run the journal into
debt.
"We profited," he says, "by the hailstorm upon
journalists to make it come to an end at the fourth volume of 1772
with the decorum of persecution." There had been sixty-three
volumes of this series. In 1774 Turgot, who had become minister,
sanctioned its resuscitation, and Baudeau put out in December his
Nouvelles Jipkemerides Economiques ou Bibliotheque raisonnee de
rHistoire et de la Politique of which eighteen further volumes
appeared, twelve in 1775, and six in 1776. This was suppressed in
1776, after the fall of Turgot. The Abbe Roubaud now (1775) began to
edit the Journal de V Agriculture, once more a physiocratic review
(1775-1783). Baudeau attempted to revive his Nouvelles Jiphemerides in
1788, but only a few numbers appeared before he went mad, and the
publication ceased. Both the fcphe'me'rides and the Nouvelles
fapheme'rides are extremely rare. Dr. Bauer states that the only known
complete set of the latter is to be found in the library of the
University of Giessen.
These journals of the Physiocrats, according to Dr. Bauer, are "the
first example of journalism made subservient to social science, the
richest source for the history of contemporary economic life, and the
growth of modern ideas, not only in France but even in eastern Europe."
They were written "with a distinct practical tendency, namely to
struggle for free trade, free enterprise, and equal taxation; to
combat the crushing burdens imposed by commercial restraints,
industrial monopoly, arbitrary assessment, and lavish public
expenditure . . . and by inducing monarchs, statesmen, and landlords
to introduce agricultural and financial reforms, to alleviate feudal
burdens and commercial restraints, they benefited even the lower
classes in Sweden, Denmark, Baden, Austria, and Tuscany. Thus they
helped towards transplanting economic progress eastward both in
thought and practice."[6] Among the contributors were Quesnay,
Mirabeau, Du Pont, Mercier de la Riviere, Baudeau, Abeille, Le Trosne,
Butre, Roubaud, St. Peravy, Turgot, Morellet, Franklin, Freville,
Fourqueux, De Vauvilliers, the Due de Saint Megrin, Bigot de Ste.
Croix, the Abbe Loiseau, Rouxelin, De la Touane, Treillard, Belly, St.
Maurice de St. Leu, and the Margrave of Baden. They had a wide and
respectful circle of readers, of whom Voltaire was one.
One illustration must suffice to serve as an indication of the
practical utility of these reviews. In 1767 a bad harvest having
driven up the price of bread to a very serious extent, Baudeau
published an article, Avis aux honnetes gens qui veulent bien faire,
in which he pointed out that a better system of grinding corn and
baking would enable flour and bread to be sold at a cheaper rate.
Mirabeau set up one of these economical flour-mills, and bakeries
(fours economiques), at his property at Fleury, near Paris, and sold
good bread at one-third less than the current price. He turned out
nine hundred livres a day, and could, he says, have sold double as
much if it could have been supplied. "The poor people," he
writes, "fight who shall have my bread. It has become the
fashion. The Due de Choiseul sends a courier out twice a week for
Fleury bread and so does Mme. du Deffand." He intends to set up
these mills everywhere, "send to the devil his feudal rights of
banalite" and instead of compelling his people to bring their
corn to his mills and pay their legal dues for grinding, will attract
them voluntarily by the low price, which will upset the crying abuses
of monopoly and regulation.
The Prince of Rohan - Rochefort and other celebrities followed his
example; and M. de Lomenie tells us that the millers themselves
adopted the improved form, which is in use in France to-day and
produces more, flour than the old system from the same amount of corn.
The interest of Mirabeau in this reform was so strong that the younger
Mirabeau malignantly explains his father's preference for one of his
daughters, the Marquise du Saillant, by saying that, among other
things, her husband had feigned an enthusiasm for the moulins
economiques.
Another blow which the Physiocrats struck at monopolies to the
enhancement of their own reputation is also associated with the name
of Baudeau. The corporation of butchers had been compelled since 1743
to take loans of capital at high rates from a body of financiers, the
farmers of the caisse de Poissy who had advanced money to the
Government. Baudeau denounced the iniquities of this arrangement, and
was cited by the farmers before .the tribunal of the Parliament in
1776. He successfully defended himself at two sittings against the
famous advocate Gerbier, and was borne home in triumph by the
victorious butchers through the streets of Paris amidst a concourse of
his physiocratic brethren.
But it was not in Paris alone that these apostles of economic liberty
obtained honour. Carl Friedrich, Margrave of Baden (1728-1811),
enrolled himself in their ranks. On the 22nd of September 1769 he
wrote to Mirabeau as follows: "I have a right as a man to claim
your friendship" (a delicate allusion to UAmi des Homines), and
he says that without being personally acquainted with Mirabeau he
feels entitled to seek his counsel. God had brought him into the world
to govern a country whose climate and soil held out the prospect of a
good return to industry, when the necessary capital was applied to the
land. But from time immemorial the land had, when handed down, been
divided into as many portions as there were heirs. There were now no
large owners and practically no tenant-farmers; and the produit net of
the country was small and taxes were hard to collect. What advice
would Mirabeau, as an economic expert, offer? Should there be a new
law of succession to substitute for the compulsory partition of land a
money payment by one heir to the others? And how could the produit net
be made the basis of taxation in a simple and practical form?
Answers to these questions would contribute to "spread the light
of economic science by showing that it is applicable to all places and
to all circumstances." Mirabeau deprecates new legislation. "You
have not the right," he says, "to make such a law"; and
he piquantly refers him upon the second point to his Theorie de
VImpot, for the publication of which his own sovereign had cast him
into prison. The correspondence thus begun ripened into friendship,
and continued to the time of Mirabeau's death twenty years later.[8]
Personal visits were exchanged as well as books and letters, and Carl
Friedrich consented to become the guardian of. manuscripts which
Mirabeau might leave behind him. The Margrave proposed free trade in
corn to the German Diet, and even introduced the impot unique, 20 per
cent of the produit net, in his own Duchy of Baden. The experiment was
made in 1770 in the three villages of Dietlingen, Theningen, and
Balingen a fact of which Adam Smith was probably unaware when he
declared that "that system which represents the produce of land
as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country has, so
far as I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present
exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and
ingenuity in France. ... A system," he says, "which never
has done, and probably never will do, any harm in any part of the
world."[9]
The experiment was abandoned at Theningen and Balingen in 1776, but
was maintained at Dietlingen till 1792.[10] The Margrave invited Du
Pont to Carlsruhe, intending to put him at the head of his finances,
but, not venturing actually to appoint a foreigner to this post, made
him conseiller aulique, retained him at his side as an adviser, and
made him tutor to his son. The Margrave himself wrote an abridgment of
political economy, based mainly on Mirabeau's Les conomiques. It first
appeared in the phemerides^& was separately printed and seen
through the press by Du Pont in 1772 under the title Abrcge de I
Economic Politique. It forms a commendable precis of physiocracy.
Another prince, Gustavus III., King of Sweden, who had made
Mirabeau's acquaintance when travelling in France, honoured the Friend
of Men, as well as himself, by the following letter (18th August 1772,
the day before his coup d'etat): "Monsieur the Marquis de
Mirabeau, the title which humanity has long since conferred upon you,
is much above what kings can do for your glory. I have, however, been
jealous to pay at least my share of the tribute which all nations owe
to you. I have thought, moreover, that an institution created in
honour of agriculture would be defective without the name of him who
has taught sovereigns to recognise all its importance. Henceforth I
consider myself more than ever authorised to beg of you the
continuation of the useful lessons to which you have dedicated your
labours and your rare knowledge; on my side I feel bound more than
ever to profit by them. And I pray God, Monsieur le Marquis, to
preserve you in His high and holy keeping. GUSTAVE." This letter
was accompanied by the grand cross of the Order of Wasa, just founded
"in honour of agriculture."
Du Pont was made a knight of the Order, and, when the Ephemerides
were suppressed, Gustavus joined with his fellow-disciple the Margrave
of Baden in commissioning Du Pont to send them a manuscript journal in
which matters of economic interest should receive a large share. The
king attempted to pursue, in his own politics, the liberal ideals of
the school ; and it was at his request that Mercier de la Riviere
wrote his work on public education, De r instruction publique 1775.
Mention has already been made of the advances of Catherine of Russia
to Mercier de la Riviere, but these seem to have been little more than
a womanly whim for the fashion of the moment, and to have had little
practical result. When the philosopher arrived at her Court at Moscow
she had an interview with him, which Thiebault reports as follows:[11]
"Sir," said the Czarina, "could you tell me the best
way to govern a State well?" "There is only one, Madame,"
answered the pupil of Quesnay; "it is to be just, i.e. maintain
order, and enforce the laws." "But on what basis should the
laws of an empire repose?" "On one alone, Madame, the nature
of things and of men." "Exactly, but when one wishes to give
laws to a people, what rules indicate most surely the laws which suit
it best?" "To give or make laws, Madame, is a task which God
has left to no one. Ah! what is man, to think himself capable of
dictating laws to beings whom he knows not, or knows so imperfectly?
And by what right would he impose laws upon beings whom God has not
placed in his hands?" "To what, then, do you reduce the
science of government?" "To study well, to recognise and
manifest, the laws which God has so evidently engraven in the very
organisation of man, when He gave him existence. To seek to go beyond
this would be a great misfortune and a destructive undertaking." "Monsieur,
I am very pleased to have heard you. I wish you good-day." She
sent him home richly rewarded, and wrote to Voltaire: "He
supposed that we walked on all fours, and very politely took the
trouble to come to set us up on our hind legs."
A more serious interest in the Physiocrats was taken by Leopold II.,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, afterwards Emperor of Austria, to whom Mirabeau
had dedicated Les liconomiques, 1769-1772. He carried out some of
their reforms in practice, ordered his ministers to consult with
Mirabeau, and corresponded with Du Pont. Stanislas of Poland, Charles
III. of Spain, the Emperor Joseph II., Ferdinand of Naples are also to
be mentioned among their adherents.[12] A tribute to the fashionable
craze for the "Agricultural System" was the ceremony
performed by the Dauphin at Versailles, I5th June 1768, when he
publicly "held the plough" a toy bedecked with ribbons.
The Emperor Joseph more sturdily drove a peasant's plough in Moravia,
10th August 1769. The Dauphin boasted of knowing LAmi des Hommes by
heart, and, but for Mirabeau's sturdy opposition, would have been
willing to become the patron of the Ephcmcrides. Du Pont classes Carl
Friedrich and Leopold (brother of Marie Antoinette) among the
followers of Quesnay; Joseph II. with Turgpt and Adam Smith; La
Riviere and Baudeau as a separate branch. Du Pont wrote a heroic,
drama upon Joseph II., which Turgot with difficulty persuaded him not
to publish. Turgot's own chief economic work, his Reflexions sur la
formation et la distribution des Richesses, November 1776, 12 mo,
first appeared in the phemerides in 1770, and the only cloud which for
a moment shadowed his friendship with Du Pont was when the latter
subjected these Reflexions to editorial amendment and "improvement,"
to bring them into harmony with the sacrosanct doctrines of Quesnay,
when there appeared to be any departure from them. In his early
writings in the Encyclopedie Turgot had expounded Gournay's ideas of
freedom in industry 'and commerce (articles "Foires" and "Fondations"),
and his noble efforts as intendant and as minister to carry these
ideas into practice are permanently engraven in the history of France.
He believed in the doctrines of the produit net and the impot tmique y
the central ideas of the school, but upon numerous points of detail he
emphasised his differences and his independence, while he always
speaks of the economists as an outsider,[13] and is never tired of
deploring their sectarian spirit and preaching the advantages of an
open mind.
It was at Quesnay's rooms that he met Adam Smith in 1766. It was by
Turgot's money, and sometimes by his pen, that Du Font's Ephemerides
were aided to keep afloat so long as they did; and he supported the
expense of Baudeau's Nouvelles Ephemerides during his ministry. His
youthful essay on Law's paper money, a letter to the Abbe de Cice in
1749, was written when he was but twenty-two years of age, and before"
the influence of the Physiocrats came into existence, but it shows
already the powerful calibre of his mind. He was for many years
immersed in administration; from 1761 to 1774 was intendant of
Limoges, and from 1774 to 1776, after serving five weeks as Minister
of Marine, was Comptroller- General of Finance, the most important
minister of the kingdom. Nevertheless he found time in his active life
to endow economic literature with valuable writings, as well as to
enrich economic history by useful measures. We can refer only to those
which directly concern us. In Limousin he applied himself to the
Herculean labour of a complete survey or cadastre a kind of Domesday
which should serve as a more rational basis for assessing the tattle.
He boldly abolished the corvee in his province, had the roads repaired
by hired workmen, and threw the exp'ense on the ratepayers. He
proposed, but could not carry, a reform of the militia. And in
numerous able memoirs he urged upon the Comptroller- General, the Abbe
Terray, free trade in corn, free trade in capital, and reforms of the
taxes.
When he found himself at the head of affairs he at once established
the first,[14] and took numerous steps to secure the last of these
objects throughout the country, amended the octrois or municipal
duties on articles of food and drink brought into the town, and in
twenty - three towns abolished the droit daubaine, a special tax upon
foreigners. He swept away the corvee everywhere, as well as the
privileged jurandes or gilds,' and battled at all points against
monopolies and fiscal abuses. The opposition stirred up by this
reforming zeal not only drove him from power, but within three months
brought back again the corn laws, the corvee^ and the jurandes. The
jurandes were finally abolished in 1789, and the corvees in 1791,
while all internal duties or local tolls except the octroi were
suppressed by the National Assembly in 1790, on the ground that "they
had made the different parts of the country foreign to one .another."
The preambles of Turgot's edicts, striking denunciations of old abuses
and closely-reasoned pleas for their reform, had sunk in the minds of
the people and prepared the way for their ultimate triumph.
Some of his writings have been mentioned already. The letter on paper
money, the articles in the Encyclopedia, the loge dc Goumay, the
letter on Mines -and Quarries a plea for free mining even under the
land of a neighbour provided his superficies be uninjured and on la
marque des fers, an argument against an apprehended tax on foreign
iron, need not detain us. Of his seven letters to Terray on free trade
in corn three were subsequently handed by Turgot to the king, and
disappeared at the Revolution. Those which remain speak the language
of the Physiocrats. "The revenues of the landowners," he
says, "are the only source from which the State can derive its
own revenue. In what form soever taxes be imposed or collected they
are always, in the last result, paid by the proprietors of the land,
either by increase of their expenses or diminution of their receipts."[15]
And he expressly builds his policy upon Quesnay's estimates in the
article "Grains."[16] In his Me moire sur les prets a"
Argent he seized, as often, a particular occasion to lay down a
statement of general principles. Defaulting debtors at Angouleme
having denounced their creditors for infractions of the usury laws the
whole fabric of credit was rudely shaken. Adam Smith need not have
waited for Bentham to convert him from Quesnay's opinion in favour of
usury laws if he had carefully studied Turgot's admirable argument
against them. The canonist and the jurist are alike refuted. St.
Thomas Aquinas and appeals to Scripture are dealt with on one side,
the eminent Pothier on the other.
Turgot approximates somewhat closely to the position which Adam Smith
subsequently assumed by admitting that loans to prodigal sons are
injurious to society. But he logically urges that they should be
punished on that ground alone, and not because they are loans.[17] The
Usury Laws were abolished in France at the Revolution, long before
they disappeared from the Statute Book in England. The Reflexions sur
la formation et la distribution des Richesses were written in 1766 for
two Chinese students who were returning from France to their own
country. They appeared in the pheinerides in 1770, and were published
in book form in 1776. Cossa considers that "this work states in a
clear and taking form the common doctrines of the Physiocrats,"
but it also marks a step forward in the history of our science, since
Turgot achieved in it a complete separation of economics from
jurisprudence. It therefore deserves to be entered in red-letter, as
the first scientific treatise on social economics." This judgment
can hardly stand, for Cantillon at least preceded Turgot, and, as
comparison would abundantly show, influenced this work very
considerably. Turgot divides his book into a hundred short sections or
paragraphs. Commerce, he says, arises from (1) the unequal
distribution of land; (2) the diversity of the soil in fitness for
production; (3) the multiplicity of human needs, and (4) the
advantages of the division of labour, which" he illustrates by
examples. The agricultural labourer is pre-eminent over the artisan,
not in honour or dignity but in physical necessity, for he might do
without them but they cannot do without him. In fact, what his labour
produces from the soil is the only Wages Fund (t unique fonds des
salaries) and the commodities which he buys are the exact equivalent
of the produce which he gives in exchange. Competition forces
artisans' wages down to subsistence level (the doctrine of Necessary
Wages). But the agricultural labourer produces a surplus over and
above this, for Nature does not higgle with him for a
subsistence-wage, and he is thus the only producer of wealth. The
extractive classes, then, are productive, the artisan classes salaried
(tune productive, tautre stipendiee).
As society progresses and lands are all taken up, the owner becomes
distinct from the labourer, the newcomers may as well earn wages on
the land as in manufactures. The product is now divided into two parts
the wages of labourers and the surplus which goes to the landlord as
his revenue. The landlord becomes available for social needs like war
and justice, either by personal service or by deputies whom he pays.
He may therefore be assigned to a third class, an available reserve
(classe disponible). The evolution of labour on the land is traced
from (1) labourers to (2) slaves, (3) serfs, (4) metayers, (5)
farmers. He proceeds to examine the mechanism of exchange, and
describes the stage of barter and the rise and nature of money in
terms reminiscent of Cantillon, and suggestive of comparison with Adam
Smith. The accumulation and social utility of Capital is next
sketched, and its functions in aid of production are described with an
argument that interest for the use of capital is as legitimate and
should be as free as the sum paid for the use of land or any other
object of commerce, and depends, in either case, upon supply and
demand. The annual net produce of the land of a country capitalised,
plus the movable wealth in the country, gives the sum of the national
riches, excluding loans, for they would otherwise count twice over.
The capitalist, who lends at interest, does not form part of the
classe disponible, and his income is not available for the State, for
it is not a produit net, but the result of a buying and selling like
the profit of other merchants. It should no more be taxed than the
manure which fertilises the land. "Cest toujours la terre qui est
la premiere et V unique source de toutc richesse" "…
riy a de revenu que le produit net des terres" a frankly
physiocratic conclusion.[19] Yet the Physiocrats hardly claimed Turgot
for their own, and even in the height of his prosperity Mirabeau's
letters refer to him with a mistrust not unmingled with disdain a
feeling partly due, no doubt, to Turgot's somewhat haughty
independence, his lack of political tact, his reservations upon
monarchy, his friendship with Voltaire, and his alleged scepticism.
Yet, upon the last point, it is Mirabeau himself who recounts Turgot's
phrase, "Je ne suis point encyclopediste car je crois en Dieu. Je
ne suis point economist e car je ne voudrais pas de roi."[20]
Other writers who were, like Turgot (himself known as an abbe the
Abbe de Laulne in his Sorbonne days), in virtual but not unreserved
accord with the Physiocrats, were the Abbe Morellet and the Abbe de
Condillac. Morellet (1727-1819), a follower of Gournay, and a college
friend of Turgot, was called by Voltaire the Abbe Mord-les from his
polemical sarcasms. He wrote Reflexions sur les avantages de la libre
fabrication et de usage des toiles peintes en France, Geneva, 1758,
supporting Gournay against Forbonnais, and a pamphlet addressed to
Malesherbes, Fragment d'une lettre sur la police des grains, Brussels
and Paris, 1764. He published in 1769 a memoir against the monopoly of
the East India Company, and carried on a warfare against Necker as
well on this subject as on Free Trade in corn. Of interest to
economists are also his Refutation of Galiani, London, 1770, his
Prospectus d'un nouveau Dictionnaire du Commerce followed by a
bibliography of economics, Paris, 1769, and his Mcmoires sur le XVI IP
siecle et sur la revolution, posthumously published in 1821. The last
of these contains oft-quoted references to his acquaintance with
Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith. Lavergne, in his conomistes fran$ais
du XVI IP siecle, has devoted an essay to Morellet, almost the latest
surviving friend of the physiocratic leaders. He disclaims being a
member of the inner circle, says he had never attended their meetings
or understood the Tableau Oeconomique, and accepted their doctrines
only with some modifications.
Condillac (1714-1780), better known as a philosopher, is remarkable
by his treatise, Du commerce et du Gouvernement consider es
relativement Vun a Vautre, 1776, in which he follows the doctrine of
Quesnay so far as to regard the land as the sole source of wealth, but
refuses to regard industry as "unproductive." Jevons, while
praising the work as "original and profound," points out its
obligations to Cantillon. Mr. M'Leod has covered it, in his Dictionary
of Political Economy, with exaggerated praise, while J. B. Say
stigmatises it with undeserved contempt. The orthodox Le Trosne
engaged in a discussion with Condillac upon his dissent from the
school, but was unable to convince him.
Condorcet (1743-1794), likewise a philosopher, and a friend and
biographer of Turgot, is also to be mentioned among the allies of the
Physiocrats. He pleaded for freedom in the Encyclopedic (arts. "Monopole"
and "Monopoleur"), and in his Lettres sur le commerce des
grains, Paris, 1775; Reflexions sur le commerce des bles, Londres,
1776; Reflexions sur Vesdavage, Neufchatel, 1781; and wrote to Necker
a Lettre dun laboureur de Picardie a M. N., auteur prohibitif a Paris,
Paris, 1775.
It is hardly possible to do more than mention the principal disciples
of the Physiocrats in foreign lands. The more important are in
Germany, besides Carl Friedrich of Baden, already referred to,
Schlettwein, Fr. Karl von Moser, Mauvillon, Schmalz and Krug; in
Switzerland, Iselin; in Italy, Longo; and in Russia, Galitzin. Mention
of other lesser lights will be found in the Histories of Political
Economy of Roscher, Kautz,[21] and Cossa. Schlettwein (1731- 1802),
Professor at the University of Giessen, is regarded by Professor
Oncken as the chief of the German physiocratic school. Officially
charged with the administration of the domains of the Margrave of
Baden, it fell to him to conduct the experiment of the impot unique in
I77O,[22] and his faith remained firm to the last. F. K. von Moser
(1723-1798) not to be confounded with the more famous Justus Moser,
the cameralist, nor his own father Johann Jakob von Moser[23] was an
adherent of the Ami des Homines.
Mauvillon (1743-1794) became a Physiocrat through translating into
German the Reflexions of Turgot, and spread the doctrine in Germany by
his Physiokratische Briefe an den Herrn Professor Dohm, Brunswick,
1780. He also wrote an essay on "Public and Private Luxury,"
how to check it according to the principles of the French Physiocrats,
in his Sammlung von Aufsatzen, etc., 1776-1777. Roscher considers him
the ablest of the German Physiocrats, and Cossa describes him as a
profounder thinker than Schlettwein, views which Professor Oncken does
not share. Other adherents are Fiirstenau, Versuch einer Apologie des
physiokratischen Systems 1779, and Springer, Uber das physiokratische
System, 1780. Schmalz (1760- 1831), Professor of Law at Berlin,
examines the various systems of Political Economy, and (as late as
1808) gives the palm to that of Quesnay. The same year Krug
(1770-1843) expressed his concurrence in the view that it is the land
upon which all taxes ultimately fall, and is therefore the only proper
object of taxation. 2 The adherents of the Physiocrats are thus
brought down to the memory of those still alive.
Isaak.Iselin (1728-1782), Secretary to the State Council at Basle,
seems to have been introduced to a study of the Physiocrats by
Schlettwein, before he wrote his Versuch ilber die gesellige Ordnung,
I772. The phemerides, he says, made Quesnay appear to him what Newton
is to a mathematician. He recast his Tratime eines Menschenfreundes
(Dreams of a Friend of Men) in 1776, abandoning the views of his
earlier edition twenty-one years before, and started a German
phemerides, Ephemeriden der Menschheit, the same year, with the
co-operation of the chief German writers on Political Economy.[24]
The Marquis de Longo, Professor of Political Economy at Milan, has
already been referred to[25] as a friend and assistant of Mirabeau,
with whom he exchanged a lengthy correspondence, upon which Lomenie
has drawn with advantage. The Prince de Galitzin 3 (1730-1803), it
will be remembered, was the Russian ambassador at Paris, who
frequented the Tuesdays, and persuaded Catherine to send for Mercier
de la Riviere. Many years later he published at Brunswick a work De
Vesprit des economz'stes, ou les economistes justifies d avoir pos par
leurs principes les bases de la revolution franqaise, 2 vols. 8vo,
1796, in which he exculpates the Physiocrats from responsibility for
the more violent principles of the Revolution.
NOTES
1. Levallois, J. J. Rousseau, ses
amis et ses ennemis, Paris, 1865, vol. ii. p. 385.
2. Knies, Carl Friedrichs von Baden brieflicher Verkehr mit Mirabeau
und Du Pont, Heidelberg, 1892, vol. ii. p. 289.
3. Vol. i. p. 743, s.v. phtmridcs, London, 1894.
4. The Journal existed from 1751 to 1783.
5. The Comte d'Albon assisted Baudeau to edit this series.
6. Loc. cit.
7. See phtmtrideS) 1776, vol. i. ; Daire, vol. i. p. 649, note; and
the authorities there cited. The butchers had to pay 6 per cent for a
fortnight on their purchases of cattle, whether they borrowed the
money or not. The sale of cattle at Paris was interdicted except at
Sceaux and Poissy. See Lomenic, vol. ii. p. 249. Turgot abolished the
caisse in 1776.
8. See the work referred to at p. 79 note, supra.
9. Wealth of Nations, bk. iv. ch. ix.
10. See the account given by Emminghaus in Hildebrand'sya-, 1872,
vol. ii. p. i. Also the Ephtmtrides, 1771, vols. iv. to vii.
11. Souvenirs de Berlin, vol. iii. pp. 167; 168, 2nd edition.
12. See Knies, Brieflicher Verkehr, vol. i. p. 74.
13. E.g. in a letter to Du Pont, ' ' Les gconomistes sont trop
confiants pour combattre un si adroit ferailleur" as Galiani.
GLuvres de Turgot , vol. ii. p. 800.
14. See supra, p. 62.
15. CEuvres, 1808, vol. vi. p. 158.
16. See pp. 29-35, -supra.
17. CEuvres, vol. v. p. 332.
18. Introduction to the Study of Political Economy ^ 1893, p. 264.
19. The book was translated into German by. Mauvillon, who was
converted by the task into an ardent Physiocrat. See p. 100, post.
20. Lomenie, vol. ii. p. 416.
21. Kautz, referring to J. J. Rousseau's article Economic politique
in the Encyclopedic, strangely describes him as a follower of the
Physiocrats. The truth is that this article was written before their "school"
was founded, and Mirabeau's efforts in later years to con- vert
Rousseau, or even to capture his attention to their doctrines, proved
fruitless.
22. See p. 86, supra.
23. Abriss der Staats-0ekonomie> Berlin, 1808,
24. See A. von Miaskowski, Isaak Iselin, Basle, 1-875.
25. Page 58, supra. 3 Pages 69, 79.
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