Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/377

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY 361 terrible picture drawn by La Bruyere is an indestructible record. The members of the physiocratic group were undoubtedly men of thorough uprightness, and inspired with a sincere desire for the public good, especially for the material and moral elevation of the working classes. Quesnay was physician to Louis XV., and resided in the palace at Versailles ; but in the midst of that corrupt court he maintained his integrity, and spoke with manly frankness what he believed to be the truth. And never did any statesman devote himself with greater singleness of purpose or more earnest endeavour to the service of his country than Turgot, who was the principal practical representative of the school. Qisnay. The publications in which Quesnay expounded his system were the following : two articles, on &quot; Fermiers&quot; and on &quot; Grains,&quot; in the Encyclopedic of Diderot and D Alenibert (1756, 1757) ; a discourse on the law of nature in the Physiocratie of Dupont de Nemours (1768); Maximcs generates de gouvernement economique d un royaume agricoh (1758), and the simultaneously published Tableau Economique avcc son explication, ou Extrait des Economies Royalcs de Sully (with the celebrated motto &quot; pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume ; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi &quot;) ; Dialogue sur Ic commerce ct les travaux des artisans ; and other minor pieces. The Tableau Economique, though on account of its dryness and abstract form it met with little general favour, may be considered the principal manifesto of the school. It was regarded by the followers of Quesnay as entitled to a place amongst the foremost products of human wisdom, and is named by the elder Mirabeau, in a passage quoted by Adam Smith, as one o f the three great inventions which have contributed most to the stability of political societies, the other two being those of writing and of money. Its object was to exhibit by means of certain formulas the way in which the products of agriculture, which is the only source of wealth, would in a state of perfect liberty be distributed among the several classes of the community (namely, the productive classes of the proprietors and cultivators of land, and the unproductive class composed of manu facturers and merchants), and to represent by other formulas the modes of distribution which take place under systems of Govern mental restraint and regulation, with the evil results arising to the whole society from different degrees of such violations of the natural order. It follows from Quesnay s theoretic views that the one thing deserving the solicitude of the practical economist and the statesman is the increase of the net product ; and he infers also what Smith afterwards affirmed on not quite the same ground, that the interest of the landowner is &quot;strictly and indissolubly connected with the general interest of the society.&quot; jtrnay. Jean V. Gournay, as we have seen, was regarded as one of the founders of the school, and appears to have exercised some influence even upon the formation of Quesnay s own opinions. With the exception of a translation of Sir Josiah Child, Gournay wrote nothing but memoirs addressed to ministers, which have not seen the light ; but we have a full statement of his views in the Eloge dedicated to his memory by his illustrious friend Turgot. Whilst Quesnay had spent his youth amidst rural scenes, and had been early familiar with the labours of the field, Gournay had been bred as a merchant, and had passed from the counting- house to the office of intendant of commerce. They thus approached the study of political economy from different sides, and this diversity of their antecedents may in part explain the amount of divergence which existed between their views. Gournay softened the rigour of Quesnay s system, and brought it nearer to the truth, by rejecting what Smith calls its &quot;capital error&quot; the doctrine, namely, of the unproductiveness of manufactures and commerce. He directed his efforts to the assertion and vindication of the principle of industrial liberty, and it was by him that this principle was formulated in the phrase, since so often heard for good and for evil, &quot;Laissez faire, laissez passer.&quot; One of the earliest and most com plete adherents of the physiocratic school, as well as an ardent and unwearied propagator of its doctrines, was Victor Mirabeau, whose sincere and independent, though somewhat perverse and whimsical, character is familiar to English readers through Carlyle s essay on his more celebrated son. He had expressed some physiocratic views earlier than Quesnay, but owned the latter for his spiritual father, and adopted most of his opinions, the principal difference being that he was favourable to the petite as opposed to the grandc culture, which latter was preferred by his chief as giving, not indeed the largest gross, but the largest net product. Mirabeau s principal writing s were Ami des Hommes, ou traite sur la population (1756, 1760), Theorie dc Timpot (1760), Lcs Economiques (1769), and Philosophic ruralc, ou Economic generalc ctpolitique dc I Agriculture (1763). The last of these was the earliest complete exposition of the physiocratic system. Another earnest and persevering apostle of the system was Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), known by his VMira- W. Ue ^&amp;gt;&quot;c ours treatises De V exportation et de V importation des grains (1764), De I originc et des progres d une science nouvclle (1767), Du commerce de la Compagnie des hides (1767), and especially by his more com prehensive work Physiocratie, ou Constitution naturelle du gouverne- ment Ic plus avantageux au genre humain (1768). The title of this work gave, as has been already mentioned, a name to the school. Another formal exposition of the system, to which Adam Smith Lariviere. refers as &quot;the most distinct and best connected account &quot; of it, was produced by Mercier-Lariviere, under the title L Ordrc naturel et essentiel des societes poliliques (1767), a title which is interesting as embodying the idea of the jus natures. Both he and Dupont de Nemours professed to study human communities, not only in rela tion to their economic, but also to their political and general social aspects ; but, notwithstanding these larger pretensions, their views were commonly restricted in the main to the economic sphere ; at least material considerations decidedly preponderated in their inquiries, as was naively indicated by Lariviere when he said, &quot; Property, security, liberty these comprise the whole social order ; the right of property is a tree of which all the institutions of society are branches.&quot; The most eminent member of the group was without doubt Anne Turgot. Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781). This is not the place to speak of his noble practical activity, first as intendant of Limoges, and afterwards for a brief period as finance minister, or of the circum stances which led to his removal from office, and the consequent failure of his efforts for the salvation of France. His economic views are explained in the introductions to his edicts and ordi nances, in letters and occasional papers, but especially in his Reflexions sur la formation ct la distribution des richesscs (1766). This is a condensed but eminently clear and attractive exposition of the fundamental principles of political economy, as they were conceived by the physiocrats. It embodies, indeed, the erroneous no less than the sound doctrines of that school ; but several sub jects, especially the various forms of land-economy, the different employments of capital, and the legitimacy of interest, are handled in a generally just as well as striking manner ; and the mode of presentation of the ideas, and the luminous arrangement of the whole, are Turgot s own. The treatise, which contains a surprising amount of matter in proportion to its length, must always retain a place among the classics of the science. The physiocratic school never obtained much direct popular influence, even in its native country, though it strongly attracted many of the more gifted and earnest minds. Its members, writing on dry subjects in an austere and often heavy style, did not find acceptance with a public which demanded before all things charm of manner in those who addressed it. When Morellet, one of their number, entered the lists with Galiani, it was seen how esprit and eloquence could triumph over science, solid indeed, but clumsy in its movements. The physio cratic tenets, which were in fact partially erroneous, were regarded by many as chimerical, and were ridiculed in the contemporary literature, as, for example, the impot unique by Voltaire in his L homme aux quarante ecus, which was directed in particular against Mercier-Lariviere. It was justly objected to the group that they were too absolute in their view of things ; they supposed, as Smith remarks in speaking of Quesnay, that the body politic could thrive only under one precise regime, that, namely, which they recommended, and thought their doctrines universally and immediately applicable in practice. They did not, as theorists, sufficiently take into account national diversities, or different stages in social development ; nor did they, as politicians, adequately estimate the impedi ments which ignorance, prejudice, and interested opposi tion present to enlightened statesmanship. It is possible that Turgot himself, as Grimm suggests, owed his failure in part to the too unbending rigour of his policy and the absence of any attempt at conciliation. Be this as it may, his defeat helped to impair the credit of his principles, which were represented as having been tried and found wanting. The physiocratic system, after guiding in some degree the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and awakening a few echoes here and there in foreign countries, soon ceased to exist as a living power ; but the good elements it com prised were not lost to mankind, being incorporated into XIX. 46