The Physiocrats
Henry Higgs
[Part 2]
FRANCOIS QUESNAY, the founder of the school of the Economists (or, as
they came to be called in later years, the Physiocrates], was born at
… near Versailles on the 4th of June 1694, the same year as
Voltaire, and died at Versailles on the 16th December 1774, the same
year as Louis XV. His first published work was Observations sur
Ics effets de la saignee, 1730, in which he successfully opposed
the theories of bleeding of Silva, the leading contemporary medical
authority. The reputation of this work led to his selection as
Secretary of the Academy of Surgery at Paris, founded 1731. In 1736 he
published an Essay physique sur r economic animate, in 1749 a
Traite de la suppuration, and a Traite de la gangrene,
and in 1753 a Traite des fievres continues. Meanwhile
defective eyesight had led him to abandon surgery for medicine.
In 1749 he had settled at Versailles as physician to Madame de
Pompadour. In 1752 he successfully attended the Dauphin for smallpox,
and was rewarded by being appointed physician to the king, and given a
patent of nobility.[1] In 1756 he published an anonymous, metaphysical
article on "Evidence"' in the Encyclopedic, in which
appeared the same year his article "Fermiers," and the
following year "Grains," both over the signature of his son,
Ouesnay le fits, for the doctor's official position restrained him, as
he thought, from publicly writing upon matters of government and
administration, and he invariably, throughout his life, published his
economical views anonymously or pseudonymously, sometimes under the
name of one of his disciples.
The article "Fermiers" begins by balancing with minute
detail and intimate knowledge the direct and indirect advantages of
using horses or oxen in cultivation, and decides in favour of the
former, the grande culture, as against the petite culture? Most
farmers, Quesnay admits, were too poor to employ horses. The result
was a great national loss of wealth. The disastrous poverty of
agriculture was mainly due to three causes: (i) the desertion of the
children of the peasantry, driven by penury, taille, and milicc to
immigrate into the large towns, whither they brought some of their
parents' little capital; (2) the arbitrary taxation which deprived
agricultural investors of security in their property; (3) the
restrictions which embarrassed the corn trade. It might, he says, be
worth while to exempt farmers' sons from the militia, as some of them
chose a town life to evade this service. He satirises the view that
indigence is a necessary spur to rural industry: hope is a better
stimulus than despair, and activity is proportioned to success. He
examines the agricultural statistics of the country, of acreage,
arable and pasture, live stock, population, production and consumption
of corn, the range of prices, expenses of production, and profits.
Agriculture was the fundamental industry of the country; liberty and
security were its chief requisites. Free trade in corn, permission,
and even (as in England) encouragement to export, would greatly
diminish fluctuations in annual prices, and conduce to the prosperity
of farmers, which would in turn beget further prosperity, and result
in higher and more lucrative farming, increased national and
individual wealth, a larger and healthier population, and a more
flourishing treasury. But, above all, the arbitrary taille was to be
given up. Quesnay did not see, he says, how to impose taxation on any
just and simple principle; his impot unique had not yet presented
itself to him as the perfect solution of this problem. "La
reparti- tion proportionnelle n'est guere possible. ... II n'est guere
possible d'imaginer aucim plan general pour etablir une repartition
proportionnelle des imposi- tions."
Following, probably, the Abbe de Saint- Pierre's plan of a faille
tarifee, he suggested that a personal declaration, somewhat resembling
our income tax returns, might be the best basis for assessment. But at
any rate the taxes should be, as Adam Smith urged some years later,
certain, or, in the language of Bentham, cognoscible.
The only writers mentioned in this article are Locke and an agronomic
authority, Dupre de Saint Maur. In the next article, "Grains,"
we have a much more significant and important exposition of Quesnay's
views. For a long time the policy of the Government had been to
stimulate manufactures (and especially those of luxuries like silk
stuffs), to the detriment of agriculture. The people had been
forbidden to plant vines, and encouraged to plant mulberry-trees. The
true national economic policy was to turn to account the great
productive powers of the soil of France, and buy luxuries from abroad
exactly the reverse of what was being attempted. The country would
leap into prosperity by good harvests of corn and a free corn trade,
at home and abroad. The actual production of corn in the country he
estimated as worth about 595,000,000 of livres a year. If properly
cultivated, with horses everywhere, the harvests would amount to
1,815,000,000, or more than three times as much ; while the surplus,
after paying all the costs of production, would be 885,000,000
compared with 178,000,000, or nearly five times the amount.[5] The
details are as follows:
| … |
Actual |
Possible |
| Landlords |
76,500,000 |
400,000,000 |
| Taille |
27,000,000 |
165,000,000 |
| Farmers |
27,500,000 |
165,000,000 |
| Tithe |
50,000,000 |
155,000,000 |
| Cultivation |
415,000,000 |
930,000,000 |
| Total |
195,000,000 |
1,815,000,000 |
Agriculture and commerce are regarded as the two resources of wealth
in France; but this distinction is, he says, a mere abstraction, for
commerce and industry (which is much more considerable than commerce)
are but branches of agriculture, the primary and indispensable source
of the other two. The policy of Sully and the "fundamental truths
" expressed by Cantillon are praised, the hindrances to
viticulture and the wine trade deplored. Large farms, raised to their
highest value by well-to-do farmers, are the true basis of prosperity
and of a large population. By a rich farmer he means not "a
workman who himself tills the soil, but an entrepreneurer [sic] who
governs and manages his enterprise by his intelligence and his wealth."
"Those who regard the advantages of a large population only as a
means of recruiting large armies judge but ill of the strength of a
state. The military merely consider men as potential soldiers; but the
statesman regrets men destined for war as the landlord regrets land
laid out in a ditch to preserve his field. Great armies drain a state,
a large population and much wealth make it redoubtable. . . . Without
human labour land has no value. Men, land, and cattle are the
primitive wealth of a great state. The tattle, he now suggests, should
be based upon the farmer's rent, so as to spare taxation of his means
of production, and to enable him to take the tattle into account when
considering what rent to offer for his farm. This ideal is not easily
attained in the present state of affairs, and for that reason he had
proposed a different system in his article "Fermiers"; but
his new idea might be applied forthwith to farmers on lease, and,
though not without difficulty, to metayers. He would not speak of the
petty policy attributed to the Government[7] of regarding arbitrary
taxation as an assured method of keeping its subjects in submission.
Conduct so absurd was not to be imputed to great ministers, who all
knew how objectionable and ridiculous it would be.
The taillables were men of very modest fortune, needing to be
encouraged rather than humiliated. The author of the Remarques,
contrasting the enlightened policy and the wealth of England with the
unwise policy and the poverty of France, had concluded that England
had nothing to fear from her neighbour. But let us adopt free trade,
says Ouesnay, and we shall be as rich as they. We might, indeed, seem
to be in danger from the fertile soils of America ; but their
competition is not much to be dreaded, for their corn is not of such
good quality; it deteriorates in the sea-voyage; and they will soon
need all their corn themselves.[8] Our corn makes better bread, and
keeps in better preservation.
Arrived at this point he proceeds to compare the advantages of a
foreign corn trade with that of a trade in manufacture, and lays down
fourteen maxims of economic government. Of these maxims, each followed
by a short explanation, we shall hear again. Like other parts of this
article they are steps towards his crowning work, the Tableau
Oeconomique. (1) Labour expended in industry (les travaux d'
Industrie], as opposed to agriculture, does not multiply wealth,
though (2) it contributes to population and the increase of wealth,
unless (3) it occupies men to the prejudice of agriculture, in which
case it has the contrary effect. (4) The wealth of the agriculturist
begets agricultural wealth. (5) Industrial labour tends to increase
the revenue from the land, and this again supports industry. (6) A
nation having a large trade in its raw products can always keep up a
relatively large trade in manufactures; but (7) if it have little of
the first and is reduced to *the second for subsistence, it is in a
dangerous and insecure condition. (8) A large internal trade in
manufactured articles can only be maintained by the revenue from the
land. (9) A nation with a large territory which depreciates its raw
products to favour manufactures, destroys itself in all directions.
(10) The advantages of external trade do not consist in the increase
of money, (11) The balance of trade does not indicate the advantage of
trade or the state of wealth of each nation, which is (12) to be
judged by both internal and external trade and especially by the
first. (13) A nation which extracts from its soil, its men, and its
navigation the best possible result needs not grudge the trade of its
neighbours, and (14) in reciprocal commerce nations which sell the
most useful or necessary commodities have the advantage over those
which sell luxuries. Finally, he sums up the measures which Government
should take to render the country prosperous: freedom in the
production and circulation of goods; the abolition or diminution of
tolls on transport ; the extinction of local or personal privileges in
dues of the same character; the repair of roads and of river
communication; the suppression of the arbitrary discretion of private
persons in subordinate administrations, so far as the national revenue
was concerned.
With these reforms progress would be rapid. Under Henri IV. the
kingdom, worn out and burdened with debt, soon became a land of wealth
and abundance. To persist in the present courses would devastate the
country. A hundred years ago there was a population of 24,000,000. In
1700, after forty years of almost continuous war and the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, there were still 19,500,000. To-day there are but
16,000,000, and many of these in extreme, misery. Prices must not be
[unreadable] for abundance and inability to sell are not wealth;
dearness and penury are misery; [unreadable] … price, normal and
continued, are opulence. The export of surplus corn would conduce to
this fair price. Something must be done to remedy the "enormous
degradation of agriculture and of the population."
This is a bold and a statesmanlike programme. If a serious, cautious,
and continued effort had been made to carry it out, the subsequent
history of France and of the world would not have been what they are.
Other articles were to be contributed by Quesnay, Homines, Impot, and
Interet de Vargent, but the Encyclopedic fell under the official ban
in 1757, became a secret publication, and Quesnay withdrew his
co-operation. The manuscript of the article Hommes was discovered by
Dr. Stephan Bauer in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris in 1890. The
others are lost.
The article "Grains" shows wider economic reading and
deeper thought than the article "Fermiers." The text is
short, the dissertation comprehensive and far-seeing. It makes mention
of Dupre de Saint Maur, the Financier Citoyen?- D'Angeul's book
referred to above, Sully, Colbert, Cantillon, and Herbert's Essai sur
la police generale des grains, 1755. It contains many indications of
Quesnay's later views. But before he next went into print he made, as
already described, the acquaintance of Mirabeau, and it was after
discussion with that writer that he printed his Tableau Oeconomique in
December 1758 at the palace at Versailles. We shall find him inspiring
much of the work of other men, notably the Physiocratie of Du Pont,
1767 and 1768, but except some articles in the Journal de V
agriculture in 1765 and 1766, and in the phtmtrides dii citoyen in
1767 and 1768, he wrote little more that concerns us here; and the
Tableau Oeconomique may serve to explain at once the main doctrines of
the master and the school.
It is necessary, however, first to return for a moment to the Essai
of Cantillon. At page 55 of his Essai Cantillon begins to develop an
argument of this kind. If the owners of land shut off their property
and allowed no one to labour on the soil, there would be neither food
nor clothing available. Every inhabitant of a state is therefore, in a
sense, dependent upon the landowner. But since the latter himself
desires the means of subsistence he cultivates his land, or lets it
out to a farmer, who usually pays him about a third of the product for
the use of the soil, retains another third for himself, as profit, and
pays the remainder in wages and expenses of cultivation. Now the
landlord and .the farmer expend part of their shares of the product
upon services and commodities furnished by manufacturers, artisans,
and other members of society, who are not directly engaged in
agriculture. And so it comes about that "the annual produce of
the land and labour of the country," to use the later, favourite
phrase of Adam Smith, becomes circulated throughout the community. But
the landlords, and especially the sovereign as the largest proprietor,
by their modes of living determine the economic activities of the
nation. Industries are responsive to, and dependent upon, their
demands, their humours, fashions, and style of life. These regulate
the uses to which the soil shall be put, and thus determine indirectly
the number of inhabitants of the state, which must be limited by the
means of subsistence available. Here is the whole theory of the
Tableau Oeconomique. Cantillon, with his fine eye for light and shade,
characteristically adds (p. 59): "It is true that there are often
in the large towns many employers and artisans who subsist by foreign
trade, and therefore at the expense of landowners in foreign parts;
but at present I am considering a state only with regard to its own
produce and its own industry."
The practical economic problem of contemporary France, as it
presented itself to the mind of Quesnay, was of this character. Here
is a country, abounding in natural resources, but production is
starved in its infancy for lack of capital. Yet capital is only to be
obtained by setting it aside out of the fund created by production. If
this fund be turned into channels where it is not available for
utilisation as producer's capital, the nation is doomed to sterility.
How then is wealth distributed throughout the different classes of the
nation, and how is a larger portion of it to be divertecLfrom
immediate consumption to the benefit of future production? It was
clear to him that luxury and extravagance had reached a pitch at which
the nation was rapidly impoverishing itself, living above its means
and consuming not only its revenue but its capital. To make this
intelligible at a glance he designed a chart or table which, so far as
rapid intelligibility is concerned, is a ludicrous failure. It
occupies one quarto page, and consists of three columns, headed
respectively Dcpenses productives relatives ar Agriculture, etc.,
Dcpenses du Revenu, and Defenses startles relatives a VIndustrie y
etc.
He assumes that agriculture "as in England" produces a net
product (produit net) or net profit of 1.00 per cent (in other words a
rent of cent per cent) over and above all the expenses of production
including farmers' profits. Taking the hypothesis of an employment of
600 livres of capital a year (avances annuelles) in agriculture he
attempts to track out the fate of the resulting rent year by year.
First of all it goes to the landlord, who spends (it is assumed) half
in agricultural produce and half in other expenses (defenses
steriles); and the 600 livres by dotted lines are conveyed, as by
divergent streams, from the central column, one-half to the left and
one- half to the right. The 300 livres which go to the left are again
applied to agriculture, and again yield a rent of 100 per cent, or 300
livres (centre column), which is again divided right and left,
admitting of a further investment of 150 livres to agriculture, and so
on continually. Meanwhile the wealth which has found its way annually
to the right of the table in payment for manufactures, lodging,
clothing, interest of money, domestic servants, cost of transport,
foreign commodities, and generally for everything except the conduct
of extractive industry, is divided annually into two portions which
are assumed to be equal, of which one is re-expended upon raw material
or products of the soil, and is thus reconducted by dotted lines to
the column on the left; the other half is consumed "unproductively."
This zic-zac, as Quesnay calls it, was as significant as Lord
Burghley's nod in Sheridan's play of The Critic. Whole volumes of
political economy were read into it.
In a well-known passage, quoted by Adam Smith,[10] Mirabeau refers to
it as follows: "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 adorned 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."[11]
The Tableau is followed by twelve pages of "explanation,"
and this again by a restatement of the Tableau without the crossed and
dotted lines. Next come four pages of maxims, twenty-three in number,
headed Extrait des Oeconomies Royales de M. de Sully. The "explanation"
points out that the effective production of the country turns upon the
extent to which the left: hand column is alimented. If a large portion
of wealth is annually absorbed by the right-hand column without
finding its way back to the left, the national dividend is reduced. "Hence
it is seen that excess of decorative luxury may very promptly ruin by
magnificence an opulent state." As Voltaire says, when writing a
few years later against the Physiocrats, luxuries and new wants were
intensifying a refined misery. "Nous sommes pauvres avec
goiit?[12]
Given a wise employment of capital such as is assumed in the table,
and granting, as is also assumed, that horses everywhere replace oxen
in cultivation, it is estimated that the total capitalised wealth of
the country should amount to some 59,000,000,000 of livres, or,
allowing for a margin of error, from 55,000 to 60,000 of millions. But
all this is conditional further upon the absence of eight great
obstacles, the principal causes of decay of an agricultural nation.
These are:
- Bad forms of taxation, bearing upon the capital of cultivators.
- Excessive cost of collection of taxes.
- Excessive luxury of decoration.
- Excessive expense in litigation.
- Lack of export trade in raw materials.
- Lack of freedom (a) in internal trade in raw materials and ()
in cultivation.
- Personal harassing of the country people.
- Lack of return of the annual produit net to the category of t
productive expenses.
The pretended extracts from the Oeconomies royales of Sully are
really the Maximes of economic government of the article "Grains"
further worked up and developed. They are too succinct to be stated
without full quotation and explanation, and only the gist of them can
be given in the course of a further brief summary of Quesnay's views.
An able commentary upon them will be Tound in the excellent little
volume of Lavergne. Certain bold maxims or principles of government
had indeed been laid down by Sully, the favourite minister, chief
agent, and almost sole adviser of the most popular monarch who ever
sat on the throne of France; and there was in truth much affinity of
spirit between their reforming zeal and the predilection for
agriculture which characterised alike Sully and the Physiocrats. But
it is hardly doubtful that a further motive with Quesnay was his
desire to place himself under the aegis of the great rulers of the
state in a glorious past. To refer again to the Abbe de Saint-Pierre
for comparison, the Abbe's Projet de paix perpetuelle, 3 vols., 1713,
was abridged and published in 1728 as: Abrcge du projet de paix
perpetuelle invente par le roi Henri le Grand, etc. To claim the
sanction of Henri IV. and of Sully was to disarm much opposition. And
as Sully had declared labourage et paturage sont les deux mamelles de
la France, so Ouesnay too devised an apophthegm for the motto of his
Tableau, pauvres pay sans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi.
His desire was to publish the Tableau in the official Mercure de
France, but the tactful Pompadour dissuaded him, foreseeing that the
form of the Tableau would expose it to ridicule, such as it
.encountered at the merciless hands of Linguet in I77I.[13] It was,
therefore, privately printed in the royal palace of Versailles in
December 1758.[14] Only a few proofs were struck off, and until 1890
it was believed to be extinct, but in that year a copy of it, slightly
revised by Quesnay for further proof, was discovered by Dr. Stephan
Bauer among the manuscripts of Mirabeau in the Archives Nationales at
Paris; and this copy has been reproduced in facsimile by the British
Economic Association in honour of Quesnay's bicentenary in 1894. In
1760 Mirabeau printed the Tableau with some modifications in the sixth
part of his LAmi des Homines, and again in 1763 in the Philosophic
Rurale, and in 1767 in the Elements de philosophic rurale.
In June 1766 Quesnay published an Analyse du Tableau conomique in the
Journal de t agriculture, du commerce et des finances; in November
1765 Objections contre le Tableau economique, and in January 1766
Reponse aux objections, both in the same journal. Quesnay's analysis
of his Tableau appears also in the Physiocratie (November 1767), dated
Leyden, 1768. Baudeau's Explication du Tableau in the Ephemerides,
1767, Quesnay's Maximes, 1775, and the reprints of Forbonnais,
Linguet, Daire and Oncken complete the list of reproductions.
We come now to consider Quesnay's views with regard to taxation.
Identifying wealth with material objects he opines that the only
industry productive of wealth is that which produces raw material. The
labours of artisans and craftsmen may be productive of refinement and
utility, but do not add anything to the stock of wealth, for they
merely change the form of existing material, and the enhanced value of
the object upon which their work is expended is simply the equivalent
of the payment for their services. In other words, agriculture alone
yields a rent (produit net); manufacture yields none, and is sterile
an unfortunate and ill-chosen expression which did the Physiocrats
much mischief. The statesman's aim should be to meet the national
expenses out of national revenues, without trenching upon capital. But
as the produit net is the only true revenue, so should it be the only
corpus to be taxed. All taxation of persons or of manufactured
articles must eventually be paid out of this fund. Simplicity,
justice, and economy alike, therefore, require that the taxes should
be collected at their source. A single, simple, direct tax (itnpot
unique] should be levied upon land, and should not exceed one-third of
the produit net. Landowners and farmers will adjust their burdens by
raising the price of raw materials, every consumer of which will thus
pay a share of taxation with the minimum of expense for cost of
collection, and the whole cumbrous apparatus of existing fiscal
machinery will be swept away. To sum up, the Tableau prescribes wise
consumption (individuals, classes, and nations should direct their
expenditure so far as possible into "productive" channels),
taxation (which must fall eventually upon the land) should be directly
levied upon, and should not exceed a small proportion of, the annual
net production of the soil, and freedom should be allowed to
individuals to prosecute the production and circulation of wealth free
from let or hindrance on the part of Government.
So much for the economic and financial bearings of Ouesnay's
teaching. The philosophical foundation on which it seems to rest will
be found in his other writings, especially Le Droit Naturel, which is
included in the Physiocratie. Every man, he urges, has a natural right
to the free exercise of his faculties provided he does not employ them
to the injury of himself or others. This right to liberty implies as a
corollary the right to property, and the duty of the state to defend
it, in other words security. The guarantee of security is indeed the
sole function of the state. To extend it would be to encroach on
individual liberty. The state cannot be too strong for this purpose,
any constitutional checks and balance of power would but weaken the
central authority. The despotism of the state is to be tempered only
by enlightened public opinion, which will revolt against any
infraction of natural law, or rather render it impossible. The Dauphin
once bemoaned to Quesnay the difficulty of the kingly office, which he
was not destined to live to assume. "I do not see," said
Quesnay, "that it is so troublesome." What then," asked
the Dauphin, "would you do if you were king?" "Nothing."
"Then who would govern?" and the laconic answer was, "The
law." On another occasion a courtier, seeing the king wearied
with the disputes of clergy and parliament, proposed violent measures:
"It is the halberd which governs the kingdom." "And
pray, sir," asked Quesnay, "who governs the halberd?"
His adversary was reduced to silence. "It is opinion," added
the doctor: "therefore it is upon opinion that you must set to
work."
In Professor Hasbach's opinion Quesnay based his economic views upon
a deductive system of philosophy derived from the English writers,
Shaftesbury, Locke, and Cumberland. Like them, he appeals to the Law
of Nature, but unlike his predecessors (with the exception of Grotius,
who had declared for free trade) he extends its sphere beyond
religion, politics, and individual life, to the realm of political
economy. As Locke was the father of political individualism, so
Quesnay was one of the fathers of economic individualism ; and his
real originality lies in his organic theory of economic life.[15] It
might be argued that his economic principles were buttressed by,
rather than deliberately founded upon, his philosophy; but in the
hands of Mercier de la Riviere and others it undoubtedly took on more
and more of a philosophical form.
In 1758 Quesnay drew up a table of motives,[16] 4 pp., 4to, somewhat
resembling the later work of Bentham, and printed it at Versailles
about the same time as the Tableau Oeconomique, with which it is
uniform in type, paper, and form. The only copy which I have ever seen
is in the library of Professor Foxwell at Cambridge, bound up in a
volume once the property of Adam Smith, who wrote the name of Quesnay
against it in the title-page. It is entitled Observations sur la
psychologic ou science de rdme. The versatility of Ouesnay's genius is
further attested by several writings upon mathematics,[17] and in his
extreme old age he believed he had solved the problem of squaring the
circle. Some analogous belief he may well have held as to the
originality and unshakable accuracy of his speculations in economic
and financial science; for the exaggerated eulogies of his followers
were enough to turn the head of the most modest of men. Exacting from
each of his disciples an undertaking not to refer to him by name, and
publishing his own views on economics under the anagram of Nisaque, M.
H., M. N., M. Alpha, M. de l'Isle, anonymously, or under the sole name
of some collaborator, he was the victim of much hyperbolical
periphrase for which Mirabeau was usually responsible. He was in turn
"the greatest genius of our age," "the Confucius of
Europe," the Socrates of our day," "the Moses of modern
times." Well might Adam Smith say of the Physiocrats, "The
admiration of this whole sect for their master, who was himself a man
of the greatest modesty and simplicity, is not inferior to that of the
ancient philosophers for the founders of their respective systems."[18]
He was not without honour in England.
,br> The Royal Society elected him a Fellow.[19] On the death of
Louis XV. he lost his Court favour, lived just long enough to see
Turgot's accession to power and commencement of reforms, but died at
Versailles the same year, 16th December 1774, before the fall of
Turgot, and before the appearance of the Wealth of Nations (both in
1776) which it had been Adam Smith's intention to dedicate to this "very
ingenious and profound author," the "modest and simple"
founder of the physiocratic school.[20]
NOTES
1. See Note A, Appendix. The common
assertion that this was a recognition of his economic studies is
clearly unfounded. These had not yet seen the light.
2. This article was largely due to his study of Malebranche,
Recherche de la Verite, 1675; Traitt de Morale, 1684. It is to be
noted that the ordre de la nature of this article differs entirely
from the beneficent ordre naturel of Quesnay's later economic
writings, which was, in Professor Hasba^ch's opinion, borrowed from
Cumberland, Disquisitio de legibus naturae philosophic^ London, 1672,
4to, translated by Barbeyrac, Traite 1 des loix naturelles^ 1744.
3. Under the later influence of Turgot these terms came to mean, in a
more general sense, high farming (a liberal application of capital) as
against low farming.
4. See p. 8, supra. A little later he adds the corute to the list of
abuses needing abolition.
5. He makes some trifling allowances for taxation, but his arithmetic
is often inexact.
6. This is a noteworthy early use of an economic term whose origin is
sometimes attributed to J. B. Say.
7. He refers here to Remarques sur les avantages et les dhavantages
de la France et de la Grande Bretagne par rapport ail Commerce et aux
autres sources de la Puissance des tats. Tradtiit de VAnglois du
Chevalier John Nickolls, Leyden and Paris, 1754. This work, which owes
something to Tucker's Brief Essay on Trade, I75> was constantly
present to Quesnay's mind in writing this article and was quoted in
the course of it. The real author of the pretended translation was
Plumart D'Angeul; and the book was done into English and published at
London in 1754 after its appearance at Paris. Daire, by an
extraordinary blunder, attributes it to Thomas Mun, and gives the date
as 1700. Physiocrates, vol. i. pp. 264, 285.
8. Cf. a distinguished modern writer in 1882. "It seems certain
that in twenty-five years' time, and probably before that date, Ihc
limitation of area in the United States will be felt." Giffen in
Statistical Journal, vol. xlv. p. 543.
9. By J. B. Naveau, Paris, 1757, 2 vols. I2mo.
10. Wealth of Nations, bk. iv. ch. ix.
11. The original, rather freely translated by Adam Smith, will be
found in the Philosophic Rurale, 1763, vol. i. p. 19.
12. Uhommt at4x qtiaranie tfctts, p. i.
13. See post, p. 122, and Note B, Appendix.
14. The tradition that the king helped to print it must be dismissed
as mythical. See Note A, Appendix.
15. Die allgemeinen philosophischen Grundlagen> etc., 1890, pp.
59, 67.
16. A footnote refers to Malebranche, cf. supra, p. 27 ;;. French
economists have shown great fondness for synoptic tables, from Vauban
to Fourier.
17. E.g. V4ritfs gtometriques, Amsterdam, 1773.
18. Wealth of Nations > bk. iv. ch. ix.
19. 28th May 1752, before he commenced writing on economic subjects.
Mr. Robert Harrison, assistant secretary of the Royal Society, informs
me that his candidature was backed by Buffon, Walmesley, D'Alembert,
La Condamine, Grand Jean de Fouchy, Sallier, Bernard de Jussieu,
Lieutaud ; and W. Watson, Samuel Sharp, N. Munckley.
20. A statue of Quesnay has, since the date of this lecture, been
erected at Mere, where he was born. There are several portraits of
Quesnay in existence. To one of these Dr. Hodgson owed his interest in
economics. See his lectures on Turgot, London, 1870, p. 66.
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