| 1664 |
The businessman Legendre, responded to Colbert
when asked, "What should we [the
government] do to help you?" Legendre answered:
"Nous laissez faire - let us do it,
let us alone."
|
| 1690 |
John Locke, in his second essay
on Civil Government raises the question about what is a just
distribution of wealth. He writes that God gave the earth to all
mankind, so how is its ownership by individuals to be justified?
He says that he who clears land is surely entitled to keep it
(conditioned upon there being good and enough for everyone else).
|
| 1694 |
Francois Quesnay is born, in Mere, France. He is
brought up in the country and largely self-taught
|
| 1706 |
Benjamin Franklin is born, 17
January, Boston, Massachusetts
|
| 1715 |
The Marquis de Mirabeau is born
|
| 1720 |
Pierre-Paul Mercier de la
Riviere is born
|
| 1721 |
Franklin takes over his brother's newspaper, the
New England Courant, after his brother is prohibited by
authorities from continuing as editor and publisher; among the
books he read at the time was John Locke's Essay Concerning
Human Understanding. At this time he also adopts Deism as his
religious doctrine - by reading the arguments against it
|
| 1723 |
Adam Smith is born, Kirkcaldy;
educated at Glasgow and Oxford
|
| 1724 |
Franklin leaves Boston for London, to work for a
year at two London printing houses; Franklin makes an acquaintance
with Sir Hans Sloane, president of the English Royal Society of
Arts and Sciences
|
| 1725 |
Franklin prints his own essay,
A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain,
while in London
|
| 1726 |
Franklin returns to the American colonies, and to
Philadelphia, where he works some months in the employ of a
merchant he came to know in London. After the merchant's untimely
death, Franklin moves on to work once again at his previous
employer's Philadelphia printing house
|
| 1727 |
Franklin starts a club, The
Junto, with friends and acquaintances to discuss readings and
popular subjects. The club continued for thirty years
|
| 1727 |
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot is born in Paris
|
| 1728 |
Franklin and friend start their
own printing house; in October he begins to publish a newspaper,
which the following year became The Pennsylvania Gazette
|
| 1728 |
Franklin publishes A Modest Enquiry into the
Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency. He writes:
"The riches of a country are to be
valued by the quantity of labour its inhabitants are able to
purchase, and not by the quantity of silver and gold they possess."
He also concludes that a significant issuance of currency would
beneficially raise the value of land and wages. His reading
included the writings of political economist Sir William Petty
|
| 1730 |
Franklin and The Junto members
establish a private collective library, which lasts only a year
|
| 1731 |
Franklin develops a plan for a subscription
library, with some fifty dues paying members
|
| 1731 |
Franklin becomes a Freemason; he
prints an article in the Gazette pretending to reveal the Masonic
mysteries. Carl Van Doren writes: "Freemasonry
in America had been social and local, with little influence in
politics. In France it was freethinking and opposed to absolutism.
…The Masons of the most eminent lodge in France became his
informal colleagues in the service of the new republic."
(p.656)
|
| 1731 |
Franklin writes: "There
seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a United
Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all
nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and
wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous
in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws."
|
| 1732 |
Franklin introduces "Poor
Richard's Almanac"
|
| 1734 |
Richard Cantillon writes, in his Essay on the
Nature of Commerce, writes: "Land
is the source or material from which wealth is extracted, [but]
human labor is the form which produces wealth."
|
| 1734 |
Franklin becomes Grand Master of
the Philadelphia Freemasons
|
| 1730s |
Comment after attending the Presbyterian church
for several weeks: Franklin found the sermons "very dry,
uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle
was inculcated, or enforced,, their aim seeming to be rather to
make us Presbyterians than good citizens."
|
| 1736 |
Franklin is appointed clerk of
the colonial Assembly
|
| 1737 |
Franklin is appointed postmaster of Philadelphia
|
| 1738 |
Franklin responds in a letter to
his mother's questions about his religious beliefs:
"I think vital religion has always
suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue."
And on Freemasonry: "…I assure
her that they are in general a very harmless sort of people, and
have no principles or practices that are inconsistent with
religion and good manners."
|
| 1739 |
Pierre-Samuel DuPont de Nemours is born in Paris
|
| 1743 |
Franklin and members of The
Junto form the American Philosophical Society. Of the state of
civilization in the colonies her writes: "The
first drudgery of settling new colonies, which confines the
attention of people to mere necessities, is now pretty well over;
and there are many in every province in circumstances that set
them at ease and afford leisure to cultivate the finer arts and
improve the common stock of knowledge."
|
| 1743 |
Franklin draws up a proposal for an education
academy, enlisting the support of members of The Junto; he writes
a pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in
Pennsylvania
|
| 1744 |
Franklin wrote to an English
correspondent: "Our governments,
parliaments, wars, treaties, expeditions, fashions, etc., though
matters of great and serious consequence to us, can seem but
trifles to you."
|
| 1747 |
Franklin purchases 300-acre farm near Burlington,
New Jersey, which he immediate set out to improve
|
| 1747 |
Mercier begins to serve in the
Parlement of Paris
|
| 1747 |
Franklin produces a pamphlet, Plain Truth,
"in which I stated our defenceless
situation in strong lights, with the necessity of union and
discipline for our defence, and promised to propose in a few days
an association to be generally signed for that purpose."
Thanks to Franklin's efforts, Pennsylvania soon had more than
10,000 members formed into a volunteer militia.
|
| 1748 |
WAR ENDS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
FRANCE
|
| 1748 |
Franklin is elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly:
his primary concerns are with the indigenous tribes, paper
currency, and the taxation of the proprietary lands. Carl Van
Doren writes: "The heirs of Penn, no
longer Quakes, thought of their province as a source of revenue.
Belated feudal lords of the domain, they received large sums form
leases and quit-rents, and on their unsold land had the benefit of
steadily rising prices. …The proprietors took the position
that they were no more obligated to help meet the public charges
than nay royal governor of any other colony would be."
|
| 1749 |
Franklin becomes Grand Master of
the Pennsylvania Freemasons |
| 1749 |
Honore Gabriel Riqueti, the Comte de Mirabeau is
born in Bignon near Nemours on 9th March 1749. Mirabeau was
educated at a military school in Paris subsequently entering a
cavalry regiment.
|
| 1749 |
Franklin begins his experiments
with electricity; the following year, his papers on electricity
are submitted to the Royal Society in London and soon thereafter
translated into French and published in France early in 1752.
Franklin's name was now becoming known throughout Europe
|
| 1749 |
With Franklin as President, "the Academy"
is founded in Philadelphia (the building was on leased land,
subject to a ground-rent); the school opened in January of 1751;
Franklin remained as President until 1756
|
| 1750 |
Quesnay meets Gournay and soon
writes several contributions for Diderot's Encyclopedie
|
| 1750 |
Franklin writes to his mother:
"I enjoy, through mercy, a tolerable
share of health. I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little
business for myself, more for others, retire when I can, and go
into company when I please; so the years roll round, and the last
will come, when I would rather have it said 'He lived usefully'
than 'He died rich.'"
|
| 1751 |
Benjamin Franklin's essay, Observations
Concerning the Increase of Mankind, is published; he points
out the reasons wages will tend to be high in a territory where
there is an abundance of free land
|
| 1751 |
Adam Smith is appointed Professor of Logic and
later of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow
|
| 1751 |
David Hume's essay, Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals, is published. He observes
that were the necessities of life are readily provided by nature,
the institution of property does not arise. Regarding the division
of land into individual property, Hume refers to Mosaic law as one
arising out of scarcity: "Why raise
land-marks between my neighbour's field and mine, when my heart
has made no division between our interests; but shares all his
joys and sorrows with the same force and vivacity as if originally
my own?" He goes on to argue that property will be more
carefully looked after if the owners of property and the persons
or small groups have a direct interest in its preservation…"
|
| 1752 |
Franklin is chosen as one of twelve initial
directors of the first American fire insurance company
|
| 1753 |
Franklin is fast becoming the
leader of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and is regarded negatively by
the Penn family as "a tribune of the people."
|
| 1753 |
Following the death of his mother, Pierre Samuel
left his home, apparently to escape a brutalizing father. Soon
thereafter he was accepted in the Freemasons. At some point he
became a Deist
|
| 1753 |
Franklin is awarded an honorary
degree of Master of Arts by Harvard College and by William and
Mary in 1756
|
| 1753 |
Franklin is awarded the Sir Godfrey Copley gold
medal by The Royal Society "on account of his curious
experiments and observations on electricity."
|
| 1753 |
Franklin is appointed a
commissioner to meet with representatives of western tribes; he
later prints the document of the proceedings, A Treaty Held
with the Ohio Indians at Carlisle in October, 1753
|
| 1754 |
Franklin proposes a plan for colonial
cooperation, referred to by historians as the Albany Plan for
Union. Franklin writes: "It would be a
strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable
of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it
in such a manner as that it has subsisted agrees and appears
indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable
for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary
and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want
an equal understanding of their interests."
|
| 1755 |
GEN. EDWARD BRADDOCK IS AMBUSHED
AND DEFEATED IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA BY THE FRENCH AND INDIANS,
July
|
| 1755 |
Richard Cantillon's book, Essay on the Nature
of Commerce, is published (twenty-one years after Cantillon's
death by assassination). The essay is published, first, in French,
and was utilized extensively by the elder Mirabeau in his own
writing on population. On the relationship between population
growth and access to land, Cantillon writes: "Men
multiply like Mice in a barn if they have unlimited Means of
Subsistence; and the English in the Colonies will become more
numerous in proportion in three generations than they would be in
thirty in England, because in the Colonies they find for
cultivation new tracts of land from which they drive the
[inhabitants]." (p.83). Economist Lionel Robbins
writes of Cantillon: "There are many
anticipations of physiocratic doctrine in … Cantillon, but it
is to my way of thinking at any rate not nearly so doctrinaire as
the physiocrats." (p.83)
|
| 1755 |
Cantillon concludes:
"All Classes and Individuals in a
State subsist or are enriched at the Expense of the Proprietors of
Land." (p.43)
|
| 175- |
Mirabeau sends to Quesnay a copy of Cantillon's
essay. Several meetings between the two follow, the result of
which is that Quesnay convinces Mirabeau that Cantillon is wrong
on key elements of political economy. Mirabeau then goes on to
recruit others to Quesnay's "physiocratic school"
|
| 1755 |
Franklin is elected President of
the board of the new Pennsylvania Hospital
|
| 1755 |
Franklin publishes an essay, Observations
concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.
He writes: "There is … no bound
to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by
their crowding and interfering with each other's means of
subsistence. Was the face of the earth vacant of other plants, it
might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only; …And
were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be
replenished from one nation only; as, for instance, with
Englishmen. …How important an affair then to Britain is the
present treaty for settling the bunds between her colonies and the
French, and how careful should she be to secure room enough, since
on the room depends so much the increase of her people."
In the first edition of his essay he questioned the wisdom of
permitting non Anglo-Saxons to settle in British North America.
His essay is ready by Adam Smith and influences the Scottish
philosopher's thinking on the subject
|
| 1756 |
Mirabeau's book on population is
published, later revised after his conversion to physiocratic
perspectives. He attacked the system of allowing the rich to enjoy
huge estates because these lands could be turned into productive
farms
|
| 1756 |
Franklin is elected a member of The Royal Society
|
| 1757 |
Franklin leaves Philadelphia for
London
|
| 1758 |
Francois Quesnay, court physician to Louis XV,
published the Tableau Economique (or Economic Table) in
1758. The first English translation was in 1766. Other key members
of the Physiocratic school included Condorcet, Mirabeau, Mercier
de la Riviere, Abbe Baudeau, Dupont de Nemours, and Gournay
(reported to have coined the term Laissez Faire Laissez Passer
which roughly translates to "clear the way and leave things
alone")
|
| 1759 |
Franklin is awarded an honorary
Doctor of Laws degree by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland
|
| 1759 |
Mercier is appointed intendant of the colony of
Martinique, where he antagonized his mercantilist superiors by
apply the principles of free trade.
|
| 1759 |
Franklin meets Adam Smith and
dines with him at the Edinburgh house of William Robertson with a
learned group of men, September.
|
| 1759 |
Franklin writes: "I have long been of
opinion that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability
of the British Empire lie in America; and though, like other
foundations, they are low and little seen, they are nevertheless
broad and strong enough to support the greatest political
structure human wisdom ever yet erected."
|
| 1759 |
Franklin publishes a book he
worked on off-and-on for two years with James Ralph, An
Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of
Pennsylvania |
| 1760 |
Franklin, seeking a resolution to the conflict
between the Pennsylvania Assembly and the Penn Proprietors, meets
with Lord Granville, president of the Privy Council. Franklin
stated: "I had always understood from
our charters that our laws were to be made by our assemblies, to
be presented indeed to the king for his royal assent, but that
being once given the king could not repeal or alter them. And as
the assemblies could not make permanent laws without his assent,
so neither could he make a law for them without theirs."
Franklin's efforts served only to create hostility toward himself
from the Penn heirs
|
| 1760 |
Franklin is appointed as agent
of Pennsylvania in London, a position he holds until 1765
|
| 1760 |
DuPont's pamphlets on finance are published,
which came to the attention of Quesnay
|
| 1760 |
Franklin's essay, The
Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to her Colonies
and the Acquisition of Canada and Guadaloupe, is published. In
this essay he emphasizes the principle of division of labour, and
explains why manufacturing industry is difficult to introduce
where the profits of agriculture are high. He also argues that
Canada must be made English to fully secure the existence of
Britain's colonies. Further, writes Carl Van Doren:
"Where land was free and easy to get,
the people would remain agricultural, even though the Americans in
some centuries might number a hundred million. This would be an
immense outlet for British industry, and British ships would carry
British goods." As to the possibility of future
rebellion, Franklin wrote: "People who
have property in a country which they may lose, and privileges
which they may endanger, are generally disposed to be quiet, and
even to bear much rather than hazard all. While the government is
mild and just, while important civil and religious rights are
secure, such subjects will be dutiful and obedient. The waves do
not rise but when the winds blow."
|
| 1761 |
Turgot is appointed Administrator of Limoges.
|
| 1761 |
Franklin visits Belgium and
Holland
|
| 1761 |
Franklin enters into correspondence with David
Hume, and a discussion on the virtues of America and on scientific
matters
|
| 1762 |
Adam Smith delivers lectures on
justice at the University of Glasgow. Writing against the
tradition of entail, he states: "Upon the whole nothing can
be more absurd than perpetual entails …The utmost extent of
entails should be those who are alive at the person's death, for
he can have no affection to those who are unborn. Entails are
disadvantageous to the improvement of the country, and those lands
where they have never taken place are always best cultivated:
heirs of entailed estates have it not in their view to cultivate
lands, and often they are not able to do it. A many who buys land
has this entirely in view, and in general the new purchasers are
the best cultivators."
|
| 1762 |
Franklin is awarded an honorary Doctor of Civil
Laws degree by Oxford |
| 1762 |
Franklin returns to North
American, reaching home early in November
|
| 1763 |
SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF PARIS, February
|
| 1763 |
David Hume visits Quesnay. He
later writes that the physiocrats were "the
most chimerical and arrogant set of men to be found nowadays since
the destruction of the Sorbonne."
|
| 1763 |
Mirabeau writes Philosophie rurale,
described by A. Wolf as "the most comprehensive treatise on
economics prior to Adam Smith."
|
| 1760s |
Adam Smith travels to France to
meet with Turgot and other Physiocratic writers
|
| 1764 |
Franklin writes a pamphlet, Cool Thoughts on
the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs, dealing with the
conflicts between the Pennsylvania Assembly, the Governor and the
Penn Proprietors. He writes: "I
suspect … that the cause is radical, interwoven in the
constitution and so become of the very nature of proprietary
governments; and will therefore produce its effects as long as
such governments continue. …so the political body of a
proprietary government contains those convulsive principles that
will at length destroy it."
|
| 1764 |
Franklin is selected to return
to England to work for the interests of Pennsylvania; initially
his efforts focused on opposition to the proposed Stamp Act; once
passed, Franklin is attacked in the colonies for his alleged
support of the measure and efforts to profit by it
|
| 1765 |
Adam Smith visits Quesnay
|
| 1765 |
1765 - THE VIRGINIA HOUSE OF
BURGESSES ISSUES THE VIRGINIA RESOLVES
|
| 1765 |
Physiocratic writings are published in the Journal
d'agricultures, du commerce et des finances, which was then
edited by DuPont de Nemours. He remains as editor through 1767
|
| 1766 |
Turgot writes for two Chinese
students prior to their return to China a 100-page outline of
political economy (later published by DuPont)
|
| 1767 |
Mercier wrote The Natural and Essential Order
of Political Societies, which restated physiocratic positions
but also included the possibility of the forceful removal of an
abusive sovereign. He writes: "By
uniting to live in society men have no other aim than to establish
among themselves rights of both common and individual property
with the aid of which they are able to procure for themselves all
the happiness and enjoyment of which mankind is capable."
On the subject of justice, he writes: "It
is not because men live in society that they have mutual duties
and rights; it is because they have, by nature and of necessity,
mutual duties and rights that they live, by nature and necessity,
in society. These duties and rights, which are of an absolute
necessity in the physical order, represent the absolutely just."
|
| 1767 |
DuPont writes On the Origin
and Progress of a new Science, essentially an abridgement of
Mercier
|
| 1767 |
DuPont published his Physiocratie, the
definitive statement of the school.
|
| 1767 |
Franklin's essay, On the
Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, is published; here,
he elucidates the reasons why export taxes are injurious and
contends that "The best way to do good
to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or
driving them out of it."
|
| 1767 |
In Britain, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the
exchequer, promised the House of Commons he would find revenue in
America for its own military establishment, for the benefit of the
land tax at home
|
| 1767 |
Franklin writes to Lord Kames:
"I have lived so great a part of my
life in Britain, and formed so many friendships in it, that I love
it and sincerely wish it prosperity; and therefore wish to see
that union, on which alone I think it can be secured and
established. As to America, the advantages of such a union to her
are not so apparent. She may suffer at present under the arbitrary
power of this country; she may suffer awhile in a separation form
it; but these are temporary evils that she will outgrow."
|
| 1767 |
Franklin visits France; he learns from peasants
they are required to work two months each year without
compensation on the upkeep of the roads; in September, he had an
audience before the King and Queen. He comments that the French
have clean drinking water by filtering river water thru cisterns
filled with sand. Van Doren writes: "To
Franklin the most important friends he made in Paris were not
electricians but economists." In October, he meets
Francois Quesnay, leader of the physiocratic school, but missed
meeting DuPont de Nemours. He also meets the Marquis de Mirabeau.
|
| 1767 |
Franklin accepted three key
elements of Physiocratic thought: (a) only agriculture is
productive; (b) trade should be free for all; and (c) indirect
taxation was absurd
|
| 1767 |
On Franklin's meeting with the Physiocrats, David
Schoenbrun writes: "The circle of
physiocrats in Paris all knew Franklin's reputation and his works.
A few months before he arrived, they had published in their
journal, Ephemerides, a letter Franklin had written 'On
the Price of Corn'. Franklin shared their opposition to 'welfare
schemes' because of their destructive influence on incentive to
produce." |
| 1767 |
Franklin writes in a letter his
developing views on political economy: "After
all, [England] is fond of manufactures beyond their real value,
for the true source of riches is husbandry. Agriculture is truly
productive of new wealth; manufacturers only change forms and,
whatever value they give to the materials they work upon, they in
the meantime consume an equal value in provisions, etc. So that
riches are not increased by manufacturing; the only advantage is
that provisions in the shape of manufactures are more easily
carried for sale to foreign markets."
|
| 1767 |
Franklin produces a pamphlet, On Smuggling,
reminding British authorities that this was practiced widely
beyond the American colonies
|
| 1768 |
Franklin wrote to Cadwalder
Evans from London that he viewed agriculture as productive of new
wealth in a unique sense. In his pamphlet, Positions To Be
Examined Concerning National Wealth, Franklin wrote:
"All food or substance for mankind
arises from the earth or waters." And,
"where the labour and expense of both
commodities (that are exchanged) are known to both parties,
bargains will generally be fair and equal. Where they are known to
one party only, bargains will often be unequal, knowledge taking
advantage of ignorance. …Thus the advantage of having
manufactures in a country does not consist … in their highly
advancing the value of rough materials … the advantage of
manufactures is that … by their means, our traders may more
easily cheat strangers. …"
|
| 1768 |
Franklin writes to DuPont (28 July):
"There is such a freedom from local
and national Prejudice and Partialities, so much Benevolence to
Mankind in general, so much Goodness mixt with the Wisdom, in the
principles of your new Philosophy, that I am perfectly charmed
with them and wish I could have studied at your School, that I
might be conversing with its Founders have made myself quite a
Master of that Philosophy. …It is from your philosophy only
that the maxims of a contrary and more happy conduct are to be
drawn, which I therefore sincerely wish may grow and increase till
it becomes the governing philosophy of the human species, as it
must be of superior beings in better worlds."
|
1767
or
1768 |
Franklin writes a pamphlet, Remarks
on Chapter XI of the Considerations on Policy Trade.
Influenced by Physciocratic doctrines, he modifies his own theory
of value, writing: "the Value of
Manufactures arises out of the Earth and is not the Creation of
Labor as commonly supposed."
|
| 1768 |
Franklin writes: "There
seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The
first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered
neighbours. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is
generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way,
wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the
ground, in a kind of continual miracle."
|
| 1768 |
Voltaire writes a satire on the
physiocrats, The Man with Forty Ecus, saying essentially
that it is quite odd that people described by physiocrats as "sterile
producers" should go untaxed while landowners should have
their net product taxed away 1769 - DuPont obtained financial
backing for his business ventures from friends such as Jacques
Necker and the Marquis de Lafayette
|
| 1769 |
DuPont takes over management of the Physiocratic
journal, Les Ephemerides du Citoyen's
|
| 1769 |
DuPont's Essay, Positions to
be Examined Concerning National Wealth, published, in which he
considers, and gives partial adherence to, the Physiocratic
doctrine. One element of this doctrine was opposition to the
establishment of corporations
|
| 1769 |
David Hume writes to Morellet (10 July)
expressing his distaste for the Physiocrats. Hume writes:
"I hope that in your work you will
thunder them, and crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to
dust and ashes! They are, indeed, the set of men the most
chimerical and most arrogant that now exist, since the
annihilation of the Sorbonne."
|
| 1769 |
Franklin writes on the virtues
of the design of colonial government in the British empire:
"…Excelency of the Invention of
Colony Government, by separate independent Legislatures, [resulted
in] "the remotest Parts of a great Empire … as well
governed as the Center." To Franklin, it was this
broad autonomy allowed the colonies that minimized the prospect of
"Misrule, Oppressions of Proconsuls,
and Discontents and Rebellions."
|
| 1769 |
Franklin, writing on the advantages of shifting
from wool to silk for clothing: "There
is no doubt with me but that it might succeed in our country. It
is the happiest of all inventions for clothing. Wool uses a good
deal of land to produce it, which, if employed in raising corn,
would afford much more subsistence for man than the mutton amounts
to. Flax and hemp require good land, impoverish it, and at the
same time permit it to produce no food at all. But mulberry trees
may be planted in hedgerows on walks or avenues, or for shade near
a house, where nothing else is wanted to grow. The food for the
worms which produce the silk is in the air, and the ground under
the trees may still produce grass or some other vegetable good for
man or beast."
|
| 1770 |
Franklin produces the essay,
A Conversation between an Englishman, a Scotchman, and an
American, on the Subject of Slavery. He writes:
"In truth there is not, take North
America through, perhaps one family in a hundred that has a slave
in it. Many thousands abhor the salve trade … conscientiously
avoid being concerned with it, and do everything in their power to
abolish it."
|
| 1770 |
Turgot's book, Reflections on the Formation
and Distribution of Wealth, is published by DuPont in the
journal, Ephemerides due Citoyen. Expressing the central
role of the farmer, he writes: "The
husbandman can, generally speaking, subsist without the labour of
other workmen; but no other workmen can labour, if the husbandman
does not provide him wherewith to exist. It is this circulation,
which, by a reciprocal exchange of wants, renders mankind
necessary to each other, and which forms the bond of society: it
is therefore the labour of the husbandman which gives the first
movement." He also traces the existence of all wealth
to the land: "Not only there does not
exist, nor can exist, any other revenue than the clear produce of
land, but it is the earth also that has furnished all capitals,
that form the mass of all the advances of culture and commerce. It
has produced, without culture, the first gross and indispensible
advances of the first labourers; all the rest are the accumulated
fruits of the economy of successive ages, since they have begun to
cultivate the earth." And, importantly, he
distinguishes between the "cultivator" and "proprietor"
and their claims on production
|
| 1770 |
Turgot offers his theory of
value: "Each commodity can serve as a
scale or common measure with which to compare the value of all
others." However, "Every
commodity does not present an equally convenient scale of values.
Preference was bound to be given in practice to those which are
not susceptible to any great difference in quality and thus have a
value which is in the main relative to their number of quantity."
|
| 1770 |
Franklin writes to Pierre Samuel DuPont de
Nemours (October): "I could take with
me [to America] Messrs. du Pont, Dubourg, and some other French
friends, with their good ladies. I might then, by mixing them with
my friends in Philadelphia, form a little happy society that would
prevent my ever wishing again to visit Europe."
|
| 1771 |
Franklin visits Ireland and was
invited to attend a session of the Irish Parliament. Van Doren
writes: "For Franklin the poverty and
misery of the Irish people were an example of what might come to
America if the old colonial system of exploitation were kept up.
America must defend itself form such a future. America and Ireland
had a common cause against England."
|
| 1771 |
Franklin leaves Ireland for Scotland in
mid-October, first visiting with David Hume
|
| 1771 |
Franklin writes of Ireland and
Scotland: "In those countries a small
part of society re landlords, great noblemen, and gentlemen,
extremely opulent, living in the highest affluence and
magnificence; the bulk of the people tenants, living in the most
sordid wretchedness in dirty hovels of mud and straw and clothed
only in rags. …I thought often of the happiness of New
England, where every man is a freeholder, has a vote in public
affairs, lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good food and
fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture
perhaps of his own family. …if my countrymen should ever wish
for the honour of having among them a gentry enormously wealthy,
let them sell their farms and pay racked rents; the scale of the
landlords will rise as that of the tenants is depressed, who will
soon become poor, tattered, dirty, and abject in spirit."
|
| 1771 |
Franklin, begins to write his Autobiography
|
| 1772 |
Thomas Paine spends the winter
of 1772-73 in London, attempting to find support in Parliament for
the cause of the excise-men; Paine makes the acquaintance of
Oliver Goldsmith and of Benjamin Franklin
|
| 1773 |
Condorcet opens a correspondence with Franklin on
a wide range of subjects, asking, among other things, about the
condition of free Blacks in America.
|
| 1773 |
Franklin writes for the Public
Advertiser, two satires, one titled Rules by Which a Great
Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One. With regard to colonies,
he wrote: "Suppose them always
inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. …By this
means, … you may in time convert your suspicions into
realities." As for taxation, remind the colonials "that
your power of taxing them has no limits; so that when you take
from them without their consent one shilling in the pound you have
a clear right to the other nineteen."
|
| 1774 |
Turgot (a disciple of Vincent de Gournay and the
concept of laissez-faire, i.e., "clear
the way and let things alone") is appointed contrôleur
general and begins to introduce Physiocratic policy
propositions -- e.g. the lifting of internal tariffs, the
abolition of the corvée, the single tax, Turget
declares his program is one of "no bankruptcy, no increase of
taxes, no loans."
|
| 1774 |
At Turgot's instruction, DuPont
de Nemours writes a Memorandum on the Municipalities, which
developed Turgot's proposals regarding the assessment and
collection of taxes, to assist the development of agricultural
productivity, to give home rule to village communities, and to set
up a system of assemblies of property-owning societies to
implement reforms
|
| 1774 |
Franklin writes to the Marquis de Condorcet,
responding to questions about Pennsylvania. He comments about the
conditions of "free Negroes" and on slavery: "I
think they are not deficient in natural understanding, but they
have not the advantage of education."
|
| 1774 |
Thomas Jefferson's tract, Summary
View of the Rights of British North America, is published
|
| 1774 |
Quesnay dies
|
| 17 |
Mirabeau says of Quesnay at his
funeral: "Gentlemen, we have lost our
master the veritable benefactor of humanity belongs to this earth
only by the member of his good deeds and the imperishable record
of his achievements. …The doctrine of the net product
procures subsistence for the children of men, secures them in its
enjoyment from violence and fraud, lays down the principles of its
distribution and assures its reproduction."
|
| 1774 |
THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS ASSEMBLES IN
PHILADELPHIA, September
|
| 1774 |
Franklin distributes the
following to a select list of friends in England:
"History affords us many instances of
the ruin of states by the prosecution of measures ill suited to
the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in
favour of one part of a nation, to the prejudice and oppression of
another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An
equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and
advantages is what every part is entitled to and ought to enjoy;
it being a matter of no moment to the state whether a subject
grows rich and flourishing …"
|
| 1774 |
Voltaire writes (September) of Turgot's measures
to liberalize trade: "I have just read
M. Turgot's masterpiece. What new heavens and new earths, it would
seem!"
|
| 1774 |
Thomas Paine departs England (30
November) for North America, with a letter of introduction
provided by Benjamin Franklin to Franklin's son-in-law, Richard
Bache. |
| 1775 |
Paine writes to Franklin from Philadelphia (4
March, 1775): "Your countenancing me
has obtained for me many friends and much reputation, for which
please accept my sincere thanks." Paine becomes a
member of the Philosophical Society |
| 1775 |
Paine writes to Franklin:
"For my own part, I thought it very
hard to have the country set on fire about my ears almost the
moment I got into it." |
| 1775 |
THE AMERICAN COLONIES PETITION THE KING FOR A
REDRESS OF GREVIENCES, January. Negotiation for a peaceful
solution falters. Within a month, Franklin writes:
"When I consider the extreme
corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten
state, and the glorious public virtue so predominant in our rising
country, I cannot but apprehend more mischief than benefit form a
closer union." Franklin soon prepared to return to
North America (he had also received word that his wife had
suffered and died from a stroke) |
| 1775 |
Edmund Burke delivered his
speech before the House of Commons in defense of the colonials |
| 1775 |
Franklin arrives in Philadelphia on 5 May. The
following day he was chosen by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a
deputy to the Second Continental Congress - the oldest deputy in
the Congress, at age seventy |
| 1775 |
Franklin submits proposed "Articles
of Confederation and perpetual Union" to the Continental
Congress. In this, he proposed that Congress should have power to
regulate "general commerce." This is essentially an
expansion on his Albany Plan of Union put forward in 1754 |
| 1775 |
Franklin is chosen as a member of the Committee
of Secret Correspondence (to function as the Congress's department
of state); in November, the Committee is approached by a French
agent, Archard de Bonvouloir, regarding possible French assistance
- if and when the colonies declared independence from Britain |
| 1775 |
In France, supplies of wheat
were exhausted due to a poor harvest. Price skyrocketed, resulting
in widespread unrest, reaching Paris in May. The Parliament in
Paris attacked Turgot and those who had enjoyed monopolies and
privileges united in opposition to Turgot as well. |
| 1775 |
Turgot objected to providing assistance to the
Americans, writes Carl Van Doren, on the "ground
that the American colonies of all the European powers were sure to
become independent in time; and that England, instead of losing
her strength with her colonies, would be better off when trading
with them as independent states than now wile exercising her
colonial monopoly. France, Turgot thought, could not afford a
needless war, in view of her own financial circumstances." |
| 1775 |
Franklin suggests to Paine that
he consider writing a history of the events that led up to the
conflict between Britain and their American colonies |
| 1776 |
Turgot convinced the King to approve several
edicts, the most important of which was to replace the corvee
with a money tax on landowners. He also abolished the trade
guilds. However, faced with relentless opposition, the King
dismissed Turgot on 12 May, 1776
|
| 1776 |
Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common
Sense, appears. Paine sends the first copy printed to
Franklin. For a time, the pamphlet is attributed to Franklin |
| 1776 |
Franklin, fatigued, resigns from the Committee of
Secret Correspondence and the Pennsylvania Assembly, February |
| 1776 |
Benjamin Franklin became a
signer of the Declaration of Independence |
| 1776 |
Franklin's proposals for the funding of the war
and issuance of currency: "I took all
the pains I could in Congress to prevent the depreciation by
proposing, first, that the bills should bear interest; this was
rejected. …Secondly, after the first emission, I proposed
that we should stop, strike no more, but borrow on interest those
we had issued. This was not then approved of. …When, from the
too great quantity, they began to depreciate, we agreed to borrow
on interest; and I proposed that, in order to fix the value of the
principal, the interest should be promised in hard dollars. This
was objected to as impracticable. …The Congress did at last
come into the proposal of paying the interest in real money. But
when the whole mass of the currency was under way in depreciation,
the momentum of its descent was too great to be stopped by a power
that might at first have been sufficient to prevent the beginning
of the motion. The only remedy now seems to be a diminution of the
quantity by a vigorous taxation."
His views changed, however, by 1779: "The
effect of paper currency is not understood on this side the water.
And indeed the whole is a mystery even to the politicians: how we
have been able to continue a war four years without money; and how
we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund
appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency, as we
manage it, is a wonderful machine. It performs its office when we
issue it; it pays and clothes troops and provides victuals and
ammunition; and when we are obliged to issue a quantity excessive,
it pays itself off by depreciation." |
| 1776 |
Adam Smith writes in The Wealth
of Nations: the Physiocratic system "never
has done, and probably never will do any harm in any part of the
world." |
| 1776 |
Franklin arrived in France in December and soon
sought out Pierre Samuel DuPont, who became a frequent visit at
Franklin's residence in the village of Passy
|
| 1777 |
Franklin's visits to Paris
during this period are primarily to attend meetings of the Academy
of Sciences, waiting for Vergennes to respond to the American
proposal for an alliance against Britain |
| 1777 |
Franklin unexpectedly finds himself at the same
inn where the historian Edward Gibbon is a guest. As Carl Van
Doren writes: "Franklin, according to
the story, arrived at the inn, learned that Gibbon was there, and
sent to ask for the pleasure of his company. Gibbon answered with
a note saying that, much as he admired Franklin as a man and a
philosopher, he could not in loyalty to his king have any
conversation with a rebel. The rebel, with his flair for the last
word, wrote that he still had the greatest respect for the
historian. When Gibbon came to write of the decline and fall of
the British Empire, Franklin would be happy to furnish him with
the ample materials in his possession." |
| 1778 |
John Adams joins Franklin in
France as part of the American delegation. They dine with Turgot;
during the year Turgot writes of Franklin: "He snatched the
lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants." |
| 1778 |
Franklin meets with Voltaire in Paris
|
| 1781 |
Turgot dies, 20 March |
| 1781 |
Thomas Paine and John Laurens arrive in France in
March to seek emergency financial assistance for the Americans |
| 1781 |
Franklin contemplates stepping
down and leaving France: "I have
passed my seventy-fifth year, and I find that the long and severe
fit of the gout which I had the last winter has shaken me
exceedingly, and I am yet far from having recovered the bodily
strength I before enjoyed. I do not know that my mental faculties
are impaired; perhaps I shall be the last to discover that; but I
am sensible of great diminution in my activity, a quality I think
particularly necessary in your minister for the court. …I
have been engaged in public affairs, and enjoyed public
confidence, in some shape or other during the long term of fifty
years, and honour sufficient to satisfy any reasonable ambition;
and I have no other left but that of repose, which I hope the
Congress will grant me by sending some person to supply my place."
Instead, he was asked to stay on as a commissioner to negotiate
peace with Britain |
| 1781 |
Franklin responds to a letter from Edmund Burke
(October): "Since the foolish part of
mankind will make wars from time to time with each other, not
having sense enough otherwise to settle their differences, it
certainly becomes the wiser part, who cannot prevent those wars,
to alleviate as much as possible the calamities attending them."
|
| 1781 |
Turgot dies |
| 1781 |
CORNWALIS SURRENDERS AT YORKTOWN, November |
| 1782 |
Historian Claude Manceron
writes: "The innovations of the
physiocrats, for instance, those that La Rochefoucault-Liancourt
is trying out a little farther south, have not made their way into
this backwoods, where the poor are squeezed between the great
landowners and the prosperous farmers of Ile-de-France, Artois and
the Amienois." (V.5, p.132) |
| 1782 |
The Continental Congress dispatches John Adams
and John Jay to France to press the French harder than they
believe has been done by Franklin. Manceron writes (Vol.3, p.186):
"…they sometimes wonder if he
isn't so Allied that his French half has gotten the better of the
American one. …He is aging fast, though, cooling down,
beginning to look upon any sort of dispute as incomprehensibly
absurd; and his friends … have increasingly become the …
survivors of Turgot's dream." |
| 1783 |
Franklin's pamphlet, Information
to Those Who Would Remove to America, is printed. Carl Van
Doren writes: "The chief resource of
America is cheap land, made so by [quoting Franklin] "the
vast forests still void of inhabitants and not likely to be
occupied in an age to come.. [Not till] the lands are all taken up
and cultivated, and the excess of people who cannot get land
[thrown out of employment would there be any great poverty in
America]. …Our country offers to strangers nothing but a good
climate, fertile soil, wholesome air, free governments, wise laws,
liberty, a good people to live among, and a hearty welcome. Those
Europeans who have these or greater advantages at home would do
well to stay where they are." (p.705) |
| 1783 |
Franklin, in a letter (December) to Robert
Morris, expresses his views on society's claim to classes of
property: "Property, indeed, except
the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other
little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence,
seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the
Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other
Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the
Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the
Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species,
is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But
all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the
Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may
therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the
Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil
Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He
can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his
Club towards the Support of it." |
| 1785 |
Paine writes to Franklin from
New York (September): "It would give
me great pleasure to make a journal to Philadelphia on purpose to
see you, but an interesting affair I have with Congress makes by
absence at this time improper." |
| 1786 |
With the French economy and finances in ruins,
Joly de Fleury, d'Ormesson, Calonne, charged with coming up with a
plan, resurrected the physiocratic proposals. This included a tax
levied on all lands, without exception, and proportional to
income. Louis XVI endorsed the plan and agreed to convene an "assembly
of notables" to obtain public approval. DuPont is included on
the King's list of appointed notables
|
| 1787 |
Franklin writes to the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld (April): "Paper money in
moderate quantities has been found beneficial; when more than the
occasions of commerce required, it depreciated and was
mischievous; and the populace are apt to demand more than is
necessary." |
| 1787 |
Franklin writes to Alexander Small:
"I have not lost any of the principles
of political economy you once knew me possessed of, but to get the
bad customs of the country changed, and new ones, though better,
introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the
people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them their
interests will be promoted by the proposed change; and this is not
the work of a day. Our legislators are all landholders; and they
are not yet persuaded that all taxes are finally paid by the land.
…therefore we have been forced into the mode of indirect
taxes, i.e., duties on importation of goods." |
| 1787 |
Franklin participates in the
Constitutional Convention. He is described as being rather feeble,
his statements being read for him by James Wilson. As the
proceedings were coming to a close, Franklin urged approval, even
though few were fully satisfied with the result. Each should "doubt
a little of his own infallibility" he said. |
| 1787 |
Franklin remarks on the general prosperity of the
new nation, noting that farmers were being paid good prices for
their product, as evidenced by the "lands he possesses are
continually rising in value." Curiously, Franklin does not
see a land problem developing. He actively engages in land
speculation himself. In his will, he bequeathed "lands near
the Ohio" and three thousand acres granted by the State of
Georgia to him. |
| 1787 |
At the Convention, Franklin
enters the debate on how to guarantee small states equal power to
that of large states. He suggests one solution would be to reduce
the size of Pennsylvania in favor of New Jersey and Delaware. He
did not fear that the larger states would swallow the smaller,
given the creation of the Senate to protect the interests of the
states. |
| 1787 |
Franklin introduces a resolution that Congress be
empowered to cut canals where needed. After debate and concerns
expressed that this would create an excuse for setting up a
national bank and split the states into parties, the motion was
defeated. |
| 1787 |
Gouveneur Morris, on the
creation of the republic: "Men don't
unite for liberty or life … they unite for the protection of
property. …There never was nor ever will be a civilized
society without an aristocracy." |
| 1787 |
James Madison on Franklin that from time to time
he "expressed his dislike of every
thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If
honesty was often the companion of wealth, and if poverty was
exposed to peculiar temptation, it was not less true that the
possession of property increased the desire of more property. Some
of the greatest rogues he was every acquainted with, were the
richest rogues. …This Constitution will be much read and
attended to in Europe, and if it should betray a great partiality
to the rich, will not only hurt us in the esteem of the most
liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common
people from removing to this Country." |
| 1788 |
Franklin's essay, Reflections
on the Augmentation of Wages which will be Occasioned in Europe by
the American Revolution,. Published; here he virtually
develops the modern theory of the economy of high wages
|
| 1788 |
Condercet writes two pamphlets
"in support of an idea that he saw as
a development of some of Turgot's intentions," writes
Claude Manceron (V.5, pp.248-249). He writes a total of seven
pamphlets in less than five months, described by Manceron as
"reeking of tedium" although "everything
he writes is honest, high-minded, logical and consistent…"
(p.360) Condoret looks back on the era of Turgot and the
possibilities "if only Turgot had been
allowed to act." He expresses but one great hope for
the future: "The one means of
preventing tyranny, that is, the violation of human rights, is to
gather all those rights into one declaration, set them out clearly
therein …, and bring the declaration before the public with
all due solemnity." |
| 1789 |
Essay, Wail of a Protected
Manufacturer, published; he punctures some of the selfish
arguments of a favoured class. |
| 1789 |
THE FIRST PHASE OF THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE
ATTEMPTS TO BRING AN END TO FEUDALISM AND RESOLVE THE LAND
QUESTION. However, as J.M. Thompson writes: "Measures
so favourable to lawyers and land-owners led to renewed outbreaks
during the winter of '89-90. … Seigneurial justice was
transformed into a system of national courts. Seigneurial corvees
were replaced by a road-tax. …Feudalism, in fact, was not
abolished; it was municipalized." (pp.173-174) |
| 1789 |
The Marquis de Mirabeau dies
|
| 1789 |
DuPont opposes the creation of 'Assignats'-paper
money issued during the French Revolution), remained loyal to the
King and was forced to go into hiding, during the Terror, then was
imprisoned, escapaing the guillotine thanks to Robespierre's
downfuall. From 1793 to 1799 he lived quietly, becoming a member
of the Council of Elders in 1795. |
| 1790 |
Franklin's last public act was
to submit a petition to the Congress to abolish slavery and the
slave trade. |
| 1790 |
Franklin dies, 17 April
|
| 1790 |
Shortly after Franklin's death,
Thomas Jefferson writes to Ferdinand Grand: "the
good old Doctor Franklin, so long the ornament of our country and
I may say of the world, has at length closed his eminent career." |
| 1790 |
Condorcet delivers an eulogy on Franklin before
the Academy of Sciences (November) |
| 1790 |
Edmund Burke's book, Reflections
on the Revolution in France, is published |
| 1791 |
Part 1 of Paine's The Rights of Man is
published (February) and is almost immediately adopted as by the
Constitutional Societies in England, Scotland and France as their
guiding principles |
| 1795 |
Paine's pamphlet, Agrarian
Justice, appears. He writes: "Man
did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to
occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity
any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land
office, from whence title deeds should issue. …it is the
value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself that is
individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated
land owes to the community a ground rent, for I know of no better
term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds; and it
is from this ground rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to
issue." |
| 1799 |
DuPont brought his family to settle in the United
States
|
| 1802 |
DuPont returned to France, at
which time Thomas Jefferson enlisted his aid in negotiations for
the purchase of France's Louisiana Territory. |
| 1815 |
DuPont returned to the United States |
| 1816 |
Thomas Jefferson writes to
DuPont regarding government: "When we
come to the moral principles on which the government is to be
administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of
society... Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the
four cardinal principles of society. I believe... that morality,
compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human
constitution; that there exists a right independent of force." |
| 1843 |
Thomas Carlyle writes, in Past and Present:
"It is well said, 'Land is the right
basis of an Aristocracy'' whoever possesses the Land, he, more
emphatically than nay other, is the Governor, Viceking of the
people on the land. …The Land is Mother of us all; nourishes,
shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all; …Who can or
could sell it to us? Properly speaking, the Land belongs to these
two: To the Almighty God; and to all His Children of Men that have
ever worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it. No
generation of men can or could, with never such solemnity and
effort, sell Land on any other principle: it is not the property
of any generation, we say, but that of all the past generations
that have worked on it, and of all the future ones that shall work
on it." |
| *** |
|
| Franklin Quote
on rights |
In a letter to a friend in England, he wrote: "God
grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge
of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so
that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and
say, 'This is my country'."
|
| Adam Smith on
the Physiocrats |
"This system, with all its imperfections, is
perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been
published upon the subject of political economy." |
| Will and Ariel
Durant on the Physiocrats |
"To increase exports, diminish imports, and
take the "favorable balance" in silver and gold as a
prop of political and military power, France and England had
subjected their national economies to a mesh of rules and
restraints helpful to economic order but harming production by
hampering innovation, enterprise, and competition. All this - said
men like Gournay, Quesnay, Mirabeau, Du Pont de Nemours, and
Turgot - was quite contrary to nature; man is by nature
acquisitive and competitive; and if his nature is free from
unnecessary trammels he will astonish the world with the quantity,
variety, and excellence of his products." |
| Turgot's
Principles |
Linked tax surpluses to the enrichment of
society, which itself depended on the priority given to grain
policy
Argued free trade would lead to more stable grain prices and,
therefore, stable economic growth
That French support of the American uprising against Britain
would bring ruin to France As controller-general he abolishes
forced labor on the roads
|
| Dupont de
Nemours Principles |
Insisted that the population of a republic should
be divided into two classes or orders: real citizens, natural
aristocrats who could vote and govern, and "inhabitants,"
who owned no real property and were governed, albeit with reasoned
enlightenment
Advocated a comprehensive system of public education
Believed all social life and morality were based on
self-interest, making it imperative to educate citizens to become
virtuous, enlightened members of society
|
| Historian J.M.
Thompson on Conditions in France |
"In eighteenth-century France four out of
every five people lived in the country. To thousands of French
families the land was their only home, their only wealth, their
only security. Yet their holding in it was too small, their means
too poor, and their profits too heavily taxed by king and
tithe-owner, to afford them a living. A happy settlement of the
land question was the first condition of national prosperity."
(p.172)
"In those days [prior to 1789] the price of land had been
kept up by a number of causes - the failure to make the best use
of such areas as were under cultivation, or to bring new areas
under the plough, a growth of population out of all proportion to
the amount of land available; and the competition of new
purchasers whenever an old estate was broken up. In those days the
profits of farming had been reduced by the complicated burdens on
the land. Now all this was changed. The land was on the market.
The price was low, and the yield was high. It is not surprising
that all classes of society tried to improve the occasion."
(pp.177-178)
|
| John Adams on
Franklin |
After joining Franklin in France, Adams engages
Barbe Marbois in a discussion regarding Franklin's effectiveness.
Page Smith writes: "Marbois admitted that, while the man had
great with, he lacked the true qualities of statesmanship. …Marbois
was a shrewed professional diplomat far more skilled in 'art and
design' than Adams. …he was assiduous in playing upon John's
quite evident vanity and self-esteem." Marbois thought "Franklin
was the great philosopher and legislator of America. Here Adams
differed. A philosopher, yes; a legislator, no. 'It is universally
believed in France, England and all Europe that his electric wand
has accomplished this Revolution. But nothing is more groundless.
He has done very little. It is believed that he made all the
American constitutions and their confederation; but he made
neither. He did not even make the constitution of Pennsylvania,
bad as it is." |
| Francois Quesnay |
According to Alexander Gray, Quesnay's "economic
doctrine, such as it is, is really only a corollary to something
much larger. For Quesnay, as for all the Physiocrats, his
economics was but part of a Weltanschauung … He is a
moralist; primarily perhaps the foundation of the whole structure
is to be found in his view of natural and positive law, a
concetion indeed (that of the "rule of nature") to which
the school owes the title by which it is now universally known."
(p.97)
In an article, Fermes and Grains, he writes: "Agriculture
and commerce are constantly regarded as the two sources of our
wealth. Commerce, like industry, is merely a branch of
agriculture. These two states exist only by virtue of agriculture.
It is agriculture which furnishes the material of industry and
commerce and which pays both; but these two branches give back
their gain to agriculture, which renews the wealth which is spent
and consumed each year."
Quesnay developed the Tableau Economique as a tool to be
used by government. It attempted to trace the flow of wealth
through a community in terms of Physiocratic doctrine
Quesnay does not, under circumstances of internal and external
free trade, any great advantage to foreign trade. This is because
the exchanges must, by definition, be of equal value. If a country
is making the best use of its land and its labor, it will have
little need for the production of its neighbors.
Quesnay argues that the government should improve roads, rivers,
canals, remove all tolls on transportation, and free the products
of agriculture from all restraints of trade. He condemned luxury
and wasteful spending
Quesnay advocates a single direct tax falling on the "produit
net." He makes the case against indirect taxation in The
Second Economic Problem, that though the landowner might imagine
that he would be advantaged by some other form of taxation, yet in
the end, owing to the shifting of the tax, the burden - and
moreover an increased burden will fall on him. |
| Alexander Gray
on the Physiocrats |
"The distinction between productive and
unproductive labour was the more tiresome of the legacies which
the Physiocrats bequeathed to the economic world. …As
expressed by the Physiocrats, the distinction is clearly
untenable. There is no such sharp distinction between agricultural
labour and all other occupations as would justify us in
classifying the former as productive labourers and all others as
unproductive." (pp.105-106) |
| NOTES |
These men accepted the scientific methods as the
source of discovering, answers, of truth
They were in search of "the natural law" that would
yield a moral society
France remained more deeply tied to feudalism than Britain, where
fortunes came as much from trade and commerce as from
landownership. Britain also encouraged settlement abroad, which
acted somewhat as a "safety valve" against domestic
political upheaval
Quesnay's view on what would happen if there was free trade
between nations - under circumstances where land was fully
utilized - is not appreciated. If the wages of labor were not
siphoned off by the landed, then there would be a global standard
of wages, removing one of the cost advantages of shipping goods
thousands of miles to markets where consumers can afford to pay
for them
The Physiocrats trusted in natural law.
They classified the landowners as a productive class on the basis
of their original advances which made the land fertile. They were,
therefore, entitled to at that time to the "net product."
From this they argued that the landowners should bear all
taxation.
What Quesnay and the physiocrats meant by writing that all taxes
fall upon the owners of land is that rents are less than they
would be absent taxation of producers and of commerce. Thus, by
removing all other taxes, rents would rise and this windfall gain
in rents would be taxed away.
What did Franklin do when he returned from France? Did he advance
his physiocratic ideas at the Constitutional Convention? |
| REFERENCES |
Lionel Robbins. A History of Economic Thought,
The London School of Economics Lectures. (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1988). Comprised of lectures delivered between
1979-81.
Alexander Gray. The Development of Economic Doctrine (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1931).
|
