FOOTNOTES
[1] See an article by M. Deschamps in the Réforme sociale of October 1, 1902, on the value of this kind of teaching.
[2] In an article on the teaching of the history of economic doctrines (Revue de l’Enseignement, March 15, 1900) M. Deschamps declares that it is unpardonable that we should be unable to make better use of the marvellous economic teachings of which both ancient and mediæval history are full, but he adds that “as far as the history of the science is concerned there is no need to go farther back than the Physiocrats.”
[3] In the new edition of M. Espinas’s work an entire volume is devoted to the study of economic doctrines in ancient and mediæval times.
[4] “What useful purpose can be served by the study of absurd opinions and doctrines that have long ago been exploded, and deserved to be? It is mere useless pedantry to attempt to revive them. The more perfect a science becomes the shorter becomes its history. Alembert truly remarks that the more light we have on any subject the less need is there to occupy ourselves with the false or doubtful opinions to which it may have given rise. Our duty with regard to errors is not to revive them, but simply to forget them.” (Traité pratique, vol. ii, p. 540.)
[5] Wealth of Nations, vol. i, p. 351.
[6] Quesnay’s first economic articles, written for the Grande Encyclopédie, were on Les Grains and Les Fermiers.
[7] Professor Hector Denis, speaking of the Physiocratic doctrine, remarks that its imperfections are easily demonstrated, but that we seldom recognise its incomparable greatness.
[8] “The genuine economists are easily depicted. In Dr. Quesnay they have a common master; a common doctrine in the Philosophie rurale and the Analyse économique. Their classical literature is summed up in the generic term Physiocracy. In the Tableau économique they possess a formula with technical terms as precise as old Chinese characters.” This definition of the Physiocrats, given by one of themselves, the Abbé Baudeau (Éphémérides, April 1776)—writing, we may be sure, in no malicious spirit—shows us that the school possessed not a little of the dogmatism of the Chinee.
[9] The first not only in chronological order but the chief recognised by all was Dr. Quesnay (1694-1774), the physician of Louis XV and of Mme. de Pompadour. He had already published numerous works on medicine, especially the Essai physique sur l’Économie animale (1736) before turning his attention to economic questions and more especially to problems of “rural economy.” His first contributions, the essays on Les Grains and Les Fermiers, which appeared in the Grande Encyclopédie in 1756 and 1757, were followed by his famous Tableau économique in 1758, when he was sixty-four years of age, and in 1760 by his Maximes générales du Gouvernement économique d’un Royaume agricole, which is merely a development of the preceding work.
His writings were not numerous, but his influence, like that of Socrates, disseminated as it was by his disciples, became very considerable.
The best edition of his works is that published by Professor Oncken of Berne, Œuvres économiques et philosophiques de F. Quesnay (Paris and Frankfort, 1888). Our quotations from the founders are taken from Collections des Principaux Économistes, published by Daire.
The Marquis de Mirabeau, father of the great orator of the Revolution, a man of a fiery temperament like his son, published at about the same date as the production of the Tableau his L’Ami des Hommes. This book, which created a great sensation, does not strictly belong to Physiocratic literature, for it ignores the fundamental doctrine of the school. La Théorie de l’Impôt (1760) and La Philosophie rurale (1763), on the other hand, owe their inspiration to Physiocracy.
Mercier de la Rivière, a parliamentary advocate, published L’Ordre natural et essentiel des Sociétés politiques in 1767. Dupont de Nemours refers to this as a “sublime work,” and though it does not, perhaps, deserve that epithet it contains, nevertheless, the code of the Physiocratic doctrine.
Dupont de Nemours, as he is called after his native town published about the same time, 1768, when he was only twenty-nine, a book entitled Physiocratie, ou Constitution essentielle du Gouvernement le plus avantageux au Genre humain. To him we owe the term from which the school took its name—Physiocracy, which signifies “the rule of nature.” But the designation “Physiocrats” was unfortunate and was almost immediately abandoned for “Économistes.” Quesnay and his disciples were the first “Économistes.” It was only much later, when the name “Economist” became generic and useless as a distinctive mark for a special school, that writers made a practice of reverting to the older term “Physiocrat.”
An enthusiastic disciple of Quesnay, Dupont’s rôle was chiefly that of a propagandist of Physiocratic doctrines, and he made little original contribution to the science. At an early date, moreover, the great political events in which he took an active part proved a distraction. He survived all his colleagues, and was the only one of them who lived long enough to witness the Revolution, in which he played a prominent part. He successively became a deputy in the Tiers État, a president of the Constituent Assembly, and later on, under the Directoire, President du Conseil des Anciens. He even assisted in the restoration of the Empire, and political economy was first honoured at the hands of the Institut when he became a member of that body.
In 1777 Le Trosne, an advocate at the Court of Orleans, published a book entitled De l’Intérêt social, par rapport à la Valuer, à la Circulation, à l’Industrie et au Commerce, which is perhaps the best or at least the most strictly economic of all. Mention must also be made of the Abbé Baudeau, who has no less than eighty volumes to his credit, chiefly dealing with the corn trade, but whose principal work is L’Introduction à la Philosophie économique (1771); and of the Abbé Roubaud, afterwards Margrave of Baden, who had the advantage of being not merely a writer but a prince, and who carried out some Physiocratic experiments in some of the villages of his small principality.
We have not yet mentioned the most illustrious member of the school, both in respect of his talent and his position, namely, Turgot (1727-81). His name is generally coupled with that of the Physiocrats, and this classification is sufficiently justified by the similarity of their ideas. Still, as we shall see, in many respects he stands by himself, and bears a close resemblance to Adam Smith. Moreover, he commenced writing before the Physiocrats. His essay on paper money dates from 1748, when he was only twenty-one years of age, but his most important work, Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, belongs to 1766. As the Intendant of Limoges and again as a minister of Louis XVI he possessed the necessary authority to enable him to realise his ideas of economic liberty, which he did by his famous edicts abolishing taxes upon corn passing from one province to another, and by the abolition of the rights of wardenship and privilege.
Unlike the other Physiocrats, who swore only by Dr. Quesnay, Turgot owed a great deal to a prominent business man, Vincent de Gournay, who at a later date became the Intendant of Commerce. Gournay died in 1759, at the early age of forty-seven. Of Gournay we know next to nothing beyond what Turgot says of him in his eulogy (See Schelle, Vincent de Gournay, 1897).
Bibliography. Books dealing with the Physiocratic system, both in French and other languages, are fairly numerous. A very detailed account of these may be found in M. Weulersse’s work, Le Mouvement physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770, published in 1910, which also contains a very complete exposition of the Physiocratic doctrine. In English there is a succinct account of the system in Higgs’ Physiocrats (1897).
[10] Especially in the celebrated pamphlet, L’Homme aux Quarante Écus.
[11] J. J. Rousseau, the author of the Contrat Social (1762), was a contemporary of the Physiocrats, but he never became a member of the school. Mirabeau’s attempt to win his allegiance proved a failure. The “natural order” and the “social contract” seem incompatible, for the natural and spontaneous can never be the subject of contract. One might even be tempted to think that Rousseau’s celebrated theory was formulated in opposition to Physiocracy, unless we remembered that the social contract theory is much older than Rousseau’s work. Traces of the same idea may be found in many writings, especially those inspired by Calvinism. To Rousseau the social question seemed to be a kind of mathematical problem, and any proposed solution must satisfy certain complicated conditions, which are formulated thus: “To find a form of association which protects with the whole common force the person and property of each associate, and in virtue of which everyone, while uniting himself to all, obeys only himself and remains as free as before.” Nothing could well be further from the Physiocratic view. Their belief was that there was nothing to find and nothing to create. The “natural order” was self-evident.
It is true that Rousseau was an equally enthusiastic believer in a natural order, in the voice of nature, and in the native kindness of mankind. “The eternal laws of nature and order have a real existence. For the wise they serve as positive laws, and they are engraved on the innermost tablets of the heart by both conscience and reason.” (Émile, Book V.) The language is identical with that of the Physiocrats. But there is this great difference. Rousseau thought that the state of nature had been denaturalised by social and especially by political institutions, including, of course, private property; and his chief desire was to give back to the people the equivalent of what they had lost. The “social contract” is just an attempt to secure this. The Physiocrats, on the other hand, regarded the institution of private property as the perfect bloom of the “natural order.” Its beauty has perhaps suffered at the hands of turbulent Governments, but let Governments be removed and the “natural order” will at once resume its usual course.
There is also this other prime difference. The Physiocrats regarded interest and duty as one and the same thing, for by following his own interest the individual is also furthering the good of everybody else. To Rousseau they seemed antagonistic: the former must be overcome by the latter. “Personal interest is always in inverse ratio to duty, and becomes greater the narrower the association, and the less sacred.” (Contrat Social, ii, chap. 3.) In other words, family ties and co-operative associations are stronger than patriotism.
[12] “There is a natural society whose existence is prior to every other human association.… These self-evident principles, which might form the foundation of a perfect constitution, are also self-revealing. They are evident not only to the well-informed student, but also to the simple savage as he issues from the lap of nature.” (Dupont, vol. i, p. 341.) Some Physiocrats even seem inclined to the belief that this “natural order” has actually existed in the past and that men lost it through their own remissness. Dupont de Nemours mournfully asks: “How have the people fallen from that state of felicity in which they lived in those far-off, happy days? How is it that they failed to appreciate the natural order?” But even when interpreted in this fashion it had no resemblance to a savage state. It must rather be identified with the Golden Age of the ancients or the Eden of Holy Scripture. It is a lost Paradise which we must seek to regain.
The view is not peculiar to the Physiocrats, but it is interesting to note how unfamiliar they were with the modern idea of evolutionary progress.
[13] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 615. “Natural right is indeterminate in a state of nature [note the paradox]. The right only appears when justice and labour have been established.” (Quesnay, p. 43.)
[14] “By entering society and making conventions for their mutual advantage men increase the scope of natural right without incurring any restriction of their liberties, for this is just the state of things that enlightened reason would have chosen.” (Quesnay, pp. 43, 44.)
[15] Pursuing this same idea, Dupont writes as follows: “It is thirteen years since a man of exceptional genius, well versed in profound disquisition, and already known for his success in an art where complete mastery only comes with careful observation and complete submission to the laws of nature, predicted that natural laws extended far beyond the bounds hitherto assigned to them. If nature gives to the bee, the ant, or the beaver the power of submitting by common consent and for their own interest to a good, stable, and equable form of government, it can hardly refuse man the power of raising himself to the enjoyment of the same advantages. Convinced of the importance of this view, and of the important consequences that might follow from it, he applied his whole intellectual strength to an investigation of the physical laws which govern society.” Elsewhere he adds: “The natural order is merely the physical constitution which God Himself has given the universe.” (Introduction to Quesnay’s works, p. 21.)
Hector Denis in his Histoire des Doctrines expresses the belief that the most characteristic feature of the Physiocratic system is the emphasis laid upon a naturalistic conception of society. He illustrates this by means of diagrams showing the identity of the circulation of wealth and the circulation of the blood.
[16] “Its laws are irrevocable, pertaining as they do to the essence of matter and the soul of humanity. They are just the expression of the will of God.… All our interests, all our wishes, are focused at one point, making for harmony and universal happiness. We must regard this as the work of a kind Providence, which desires that the earth should be peopled by happy human beings.” (Mercier de la Rivière, vol. i, p. 390; vol. ii, p. 638.)
[17] “There is a natural judge of all ordinances, even of the sovereign’s. This judge, which recognises no exceptions, is just the evidence of their conformity with or opposition to natural laws.” (Dupont, vol. i, p. 746.)
[18] Dupont, introduction to Quesnay’s works, vol. i, pp. 19 and 26.
[19] Baudeau, vol. i, p. 820.
[20] Letter to Mdlle. Lespinasse (1770).
[21] See some remarks on the Tableau économique on p. 18.
[22] Baudeau, Éphémérides du Citoyen.
[23] “The laws of the natural order do not in any way restrain the liberty of mankind, for the great advantage which they possess is that they make for greater liberty.” (Quesnay, Droit Naturel, p. 55.) And Mercier de la Rivière says (vol. ii, p. 617): “The institution of private property and of liberty would secure perfect order without the help of any other law.”
[24] Dialogues sur les Artisans.
[25] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 617.
[26] The origin of the famous formula is uncertain. Several of the Physiocrats, especially Mirabeau and Mercier de la Rivière, assign it to Vincent de Gournay, but Turgot, the friend and biographer of Vincent de Gournay, attributes it, under a slightly different form, laissez-nous faire, to Le Gendre, a merchant who was a contemporary of Colbert. Oncken thinks that the credit must go to the Marquis d’Argenson, who employed the term in his Mémoires as early as the year 1736. The formula itself is quite commonplace. It only became important when it was adopted as the motto of a famous school of thinkers, so that this kind of research has no great interest. For a discussion of this trivial question, see the work of M. Schelle, Vincent de Gournay (1897), and especially Oncken’s Die Maxime Laissez-faire et Laissez-passer (Berne, 1886).
[27] “The prosperity of mankind is bound up with a maximum net product.” (Dupont de Nemours, Origine d’une Science nouvelle, p. 346.)
[28] “Labour applied anywhere except to land is absolutely sterile, for man is not a creator.” (Le Trosne, p. 942.)
“This physical truth that the earth is the source of all commodities is so very evident that none of us can doubt it.” (Le Trosne, Intérêt social.)
“The produce of the soil may be divided into two parts … what remains over is free and disposable, a pure gift given to the cultivator in addition to the return for his outlay and the wages of his labour.” (Turgot, Réflexions.)
“Raw material is transformed into beautiful and useful objects through the diligence of the artisan, but before his task begins it is necessary that others should supply the raw material and provide the necessary sustenance. When their part is completed others should recompense them and pay them for their trouble. The cultivators, on the other hand, produce their own raw material, whether for use or for consumption, as well as everything that is consumed by others. This is just where the difference between a productive and a sterile class comes in.” (Baudeau, Correspondance avec M. Graslin.)
[29] “A weaver buys food and clothing, giving 150 francs for them, together with a quantity of flax, for which he gives 50 francs. The cloth will be sold for 200 francs, a sum that will cover all expenditure.” (Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 598.) “Industry merely superimposes value, but does not create any which did not previously exist.” (Ibid.)
[30] Baudeau, Éphém. ix (1770). One feels that the Physiocrats go too far when they say that “the merchant who sells goods may occasionally prove as useful as the philanthropist who gives them, because want puts a price upon the service of the one just as it does upon the charity of the other.” (Du Marchand de Grains, in the Journal de l’Agriculture, du Commerce, et des Finances, December 1773, quoted in a thesis on the corn trade by M. Curmond, 1900.) We must insist upon the fact that “unproductive” or “sterile” did not by any means signify “useless.” They saw clearly enough that the labour of the weaver who makes linen out of flax or cloth out of wool is at any rate as useful as that of the cultivator who produced the wool and the flax, or rather that the latter’s toil would be perfectly useless without the industry of the former. They also realised that although we may say that agricultural labour is more useful than that of the weaver or the mason, especially when the land is used for raising corn, one cannot say as much when that same land is employed in producing roses, or mulberry trees for rearing silkworms.
[31] Le Trosne, p. 945.
[32] “It seems necessary as well as simple and natural to distinguish the men who pay others and draw their wealth directly from nature, from the paid men, who can only obtain it as a reward for useful and agreeable services which they have rendered to the former class.” (Dupont, vol. i, p. 142.)
[33] It is rather strange that Turgot should have added this qualification, because he was more favourable to industry and less devoted to agriculture than the rest of the Physiocrats.
[34] “I must have a man to make my clothes, just as I must have a doctor whose advice I may ask concerning my health, or a lawyer concerning my affairs, or a servant to work instead of me.” (Le Trosne, p. 949.)
[35] On this point see M. Pervinquière, Contribution à l’Étude de la Productivité dans la Physiocratie. The indifference of the Physiocrats to mines shows a want of scientific spirit, for even from their own point of view the question was one of prime importance. No commodity could be produced without raw material, and wealth is simply a collection of commodities. Raw material is furnished by the mine as well as by the soil. In the history of mankind iron has played as important a part as corn. Agriculture itself is an extractive industry, where the miner—the agriculturist—uses plants instead of drills, and in both cases the product is exhaustible.
[36] Le Trosne, p. 942.
“Land owes its fertility to the might of the Creator, and out of His blessing flow its inexhaustible riches. This power is already there, and man simply makes use of it.” (Le Trosne, Intérêt social, chap. 1, § 2.)
[37] Quesnay, p. 325.
[38] Geschichte der National Oekonomie, Part I, Die Zeit vor Adam Smith.
M. Méline’s book, Le Retour à la Terre, though Protectionist in tone, is wholly imbued with the Physiocratic spirit.
[39] Essai physique sur l’Économie animale (1747).
[40] “There have been since the world began three great inventions which have principally given stability to political societies, independent of many other inventions which have enriched and advanced them. The first is the invention of writing, which alone gives human nature the power of transmitting without alteration its laws, its contracts, its annals, and its discoveries. The second is the invention of money, which binds together all the relations between civilised societies. The third is the Economical Table, the result of the other two, which completes them both by perfecting their object; the great discovery of our age, but of which our posterity will reap the benefit.” (Mirabeau, quoted in Wealth of Nations, Book IV, chap. 9.) Baudeau is no less enthusiastic. “These figures,” he writes, “are borrowed with the consent and upon the advice of the great master whose genius first begat the sublime idea of this Tableau. The Tableau gives us such a clear idea of the premier position of the science that all Europe is bound to accept its teaching, to the eternal glory of the invention and the everlasting happiness of mankind.” (P. 867.)
The first edition of the Tableau, of which only a few copies were printed, is missing altogether, but a proof of that edition, corrected by Quesnay himself, was recently discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris by Professor Stephen Bauer, of the University of Bâle. A facsimile was published by the British Economic Association in 1894.
[41] “The discovery of the circulation of wealth in economic societies occupies in the history of the science the same position as is occupied by the discovery of the circulation of the blood in the history of biology.”
[42] Quesnay’s table consists of a number of columns placed in juxtaposition with a number of zigzag lines which cross from one column to another. If he had been living now he would almost certainly have used the graphic method, which would have simplified matters very considerably, and it is somewhat strange that no one has attempted this with his Tableau. Hector Denis has compared his tables with those of the anatomist and traced a parallel between the links of the economical world and the plexus of veins and arteries in the human body.
His explanation of the Tableau by means of mathematical tables gives him a claim to be considered a pioneer of the Mathematical school. Full justice has been done to him in this respect. An article by Bauer in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1890, recognises his claim, and there is another by Oncken in the Economic Journal for June 1896, entitled The Physiocrats as Founders of the Mathematical School. His contemporary Le Trosne is even more emphatic on the point: “Economic science, being a study of measurable objects, is an exact science, and its conclusions may be mathematically tested. What the science lacked was a convenient formula which might be applied to test its general conclusions. Such a formula we now have in the Tableau économique.” (De l’Ordre social, viii, p. 218.)
[43] Turgot, although he is not speaking of the Tableau itself in this case, sums it up admirably in the following: “What the labourers get from the land in addition to what is sufficient to supply their own needs constitutes the only wages fund [note the phrase], which all the other members of society can draw upon in return for their labour. The other members of society, when they buy the commodities which the labourer has produced, simply give him the bare equivalent of what it has cost the labourer to produce them.” (Turgot, vol. i, p. 10.) For a more detailed account see Baudeau, Explication du Tableau économique.
[44] “This movement of commerce from one class to another, and the conditions which give rise to it, are not mere hypotheses. A little reflection will show that they are faithfully copied from nature.” (Quesnay, p. 60.)
[45] They imagined that it was actually so. “On the one hand, we see the productive class living on a series of payments, which are given in return for its labour, and always bearing a close relation to the outlay upon its upkeep. On the other, there is nothing but consumption and annihilation of goods, but no production.” (Quesnay, p. 60.)
[46] “It is impossible not to recognise the right of property as a divine institution, for it has been ordained that this should be the indirect means of perpetuating the work of creation.” (La Rivière, p. 618.) “The order of society presupposes the existence of a third class in society, namely, the proprietors who make preparation for the work of cultivation and who dispense the net product.” (Quesnay, p. 181.)
[47] “Immediately below the landed proprietors come the productive classes, whose labour is the only source of their income, but who cannot exercise that labour unless the landlord has already incurred some outlay in the way of ground expenses.” (Baudeau, p. 691.)
[48] The Physiocrats never mention the agricultural workers, and one might almost think that there were none. Their solicitude for the agriculturists does not extend beyond the farmers and métayers. M. Weulersse has referred to their system, not without some justification, as an essentially capitalistic one.
[49] “We may call them the nobility, as well as the propertied class. Nobility in this sense, far from being illusory, is a very useful institution in the history of civilised nations.” (Baudeau, p. 670.)
[50] “In the third line—they generally occupy the first rank—we have the landed proprietors who prepare the soil, build houses, make plantations and enclosures at their own expense or who pay for those outlays by buying property already developed. This revenue, they might argue, belongs to us because of the wisdom and forethought we have exercised in preparing the land, in undertaking to keep it in repair, and to improve it still further.” (Baudeau, Philosophie économique, p. 757.) “The foremost and most essential agent of production must be that man who makes it possible. But who is this agent but the landed proprietor, whose claims to his prerogatives are based upon the need for his productive services?” (Mercier de la Rivière, pp. 466-467.)
“It is this expenditure that makes the claim of proprietors real and their existence just and necessary. Until such expenditure is incurred the right of property is merely an exclusive right to make the soil capable of bearing fruit.” (Baudeau, p. 851.) In other words, so long as the proprietor has not incurred some expenditure the right of property is simply reduced to occupation.
The Physiocrats distinguished three kinds of avances:
1. The annual expenditure (avances annuelles) incurred in connection with the actual work of cultivation, which recurs every year, such as the cost of seed and manure, cost of maintaining labourers, etc. The annual harvest ought to repay all this, which to-day would be called circulating capital.
2. The “original” outlay (avances primitives) involved in buying cattle and implements which render service for a number of years, and for which the proprietor does not expect to be recompensed in a single year. The return is spread out over a number of years. Here we have the distinction between fixed and circulating capital, and the idea of the gradual redemption of the former as against the total repayment of the latter at one single use. It did not escape the Physiocrats’ notice that an intelligent increase of the fixed might gradually reduce the annual expenditure. Such ideas were quite novel. But they immediately took their place as definite contributions to the science. They are no longer confined to agriculture, however, but apply equally to all branches of production.
3. The avances foncières are the expenses which are undertaken with a view to preparing the land for cultivation. (The adjective “primitive” would have been better applied here.)
The first two kinds of expenditure are incumbent upon the agriculturist and entitle him to a remuneration sufficient to cover his expenses.
The third is incumbent upon the proprietor and constitutes his claim to a share of the funds. “Before you can set up a farm where agriculture may be steadily practised year in and year out what must be done? A block of buildings and a farmhouse must be built, roads made and plantations set, the soil must be prepared, the stones cleared, trees cut down and roots removed; drains must also be cut and shelters prepared. These are the avances foncières, the work that is incumbent upon proprietors, and the true basis of their claim to the privileges of proprietorship.” (Baudeau, Éphémérides, May 1776. A reply to Condillac.)
[51] “Without that sense of security which property gives, the land would still be uncultivated.” (Quesnay, Maximes, iv.) “Everything would be lost if this fount of wealth were not as well assured as the person of the individual.” (Dupont, vol. i. p. 26.)
[52] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. i, p. 242.
[53] Maximes, iv.
[54] Pp. 615, 617.
[55] It is necessary to make a note here of one of the many differences between Turgot and the Physiocrats. Turgot seems much less firmly convinced of the social utility of landed property and of the legitimacy of the right of property. He thinks that its origin is simply due to occupation. This weakens the Physiocratic case very considerably. “The earth is peopled and cultivation extends. The best lands will in time all be occupied. For the last comers there will only be the unfertile lands rejected by the first. In the end every piece of land will have its owner, and those who possess none will have no other resource than to exchange the labour of their arm for the superfluous corn of the proprietor.” (Vol. i, p. 12.) We are here not very far from the Ricardian theory.
[56] Baudeau, p. 378.
[57] “A proprietor who keeps up the avances foncières without fail is performing the noblest service that anyone can perform on this earth.” (Baudeau.)
[58] “The rich have the control of the fund from which the workers are paid, but they are doing a great injustice if they appropriate it.” (Quesnay, vol. i, p. 193.)
[59] Pp. 835, 839. And Mercier de la Rivière writes in terms not less severe; “He is responsible under pain of annihilation for the products of society, and no part of the produce which goes to support the cultivator should wittingly be employed otherwise.” The history of Ireland is an interesting commentary on these words.
But let us always remember that when the Physiocrats speak of the rights of the cultivator they think only of the farmer and métayer and never of the paid agriculturist. They are content to demand merely a decent existence for the latter. Were they put too much at ease they would perhaps leave off working. See Weulersse, vol. ii, p. 729. He seems a little unjust, and quotes some words of Quesnay, who protests against the belief that “the poor must be kept poor if they are not to become indolent.”
[60] One is perhaps surprised to find that freedom of work—in other words, the abolition of corporations—is not included in their list, especially since the credit for the downfall of those institutions is usually given to the Physiocrats. Their writings contain only very occasional reference to this topic, because industrial labour is regarded as sterile, and reform touching its organisation concerned them but little. They did, however, protest against the rule that confined the right to engage in a trade to those who had received an express privilege from the Crown. They considered that “to an honest soul this was the most odious maxim which the spirit of domination and rapacity ever invented.” (Baudeau, in Éphémérides, 1768, vol. iv.) Turgot’s famous Edict of January 1776, abolishing the rights of corporations and establishing liberty for all, is, with good reason, attributed to Physiocratic influence.
[61] “Exchange is a contract of equality, equal value being given in exchange for equal value. Consequently it is not a means of increasing wealth, for one gives as much as the other receives, but it is a means of satisfying wants and of varying enjoyment.” (Le Trosne, pp. 903, 904.) But what does this satisfying of wants and variation of enjoyment signify if it does not mean increased wealth?
[62] Mercier de la Rivière, p. 545.
[63] P. 548.
[64] “The settlement of international indebtedness by payment of money is a mere pis aller of foreign trade, adopted by those nations which are unable to give commodities in return for commodities according to custom. And foreign trade itself is a mere pis aller adopted by those nations whose home trade is insufficient to enable them to make the best use of their own productions. It is very strange that anyone should have laid such stress upon a mere pis aller of commerce.” (Quesnay’s Dialogues, p. 175.)
[65] “After all merchants are only traffickers, and the trafficker is just a person who employs his ability in appropriating a part of other people’s wealth.” (Mercier de la Rivière, p. 551.) “Merchants’ gains are not a species of profit.” (Quesnay, p. 151.)
[66] Ordre Naturel, p. 538.
[67] Enforcing sales in open market and in limited quantities only, keeping corn beyond two years, etc. Corn was to be supplied to consumers in the first place, then to bakers, and finally to merchants, etc.
[68] “Let entire freedom of commerce be maintained, for the surest, the exactest, the most profitable regulator both of home and of foreign trade for the nation as well as for the State is perfect freedom of competition.” (Quesnay’s Maximes, xxv.) “We must tell them that free trade is in accordance with the order and with the demands of justice, and everything that conforms to the order bears its own reward.” (Le Trosne, p. 586.)